Spanierman Gallery is pleased to announce the opening on May 3, 2012 of Gallery Selections, presenting paintings from the 1950s to the present by Mary Abbott, Stanley Boxer, James Brooks, Dan Christensen, Willem de Kooning, Friedel Dzubas, John Ferren, Perle Fine, Balcomb Greene, Gertrude Greene, Carol Hunt, John Little, Lisa Nankivil, Stephen Pace, Charlotte Park, Katherine Parker, Jack Roth, Frank Wimberley, and Vidvuds Zviedris.

The show consists of works by many artists associated with the New York School as well as artists who have carried on its tradition in vital individualistic works. An untitled painting of 1952 by James Brooks demonstrates the method the artist pioneered at the time of pouring paint on canvas and swiping it energetically across the surface, producing a look of skid marks and flight. His composition has a sense of kinetic elegance. Perle Fine's Untitled (Prescience Series), which also dates from 1952, represents the lyrical style Fine was employing in the 1950s, while the movement of shapes into and across the picture plane suggest the influence of her studies with Hans Hofmann. In yet another work of 1952, John Ferren's SKI reveals the artist's distinctive Abstract Expressionist style. By considering the movement and complexity of simple, subtly shifting colors and nuanced brush handling, Ferren explored the ideas of spontaneity, chance, and unity within Eastern philosophy, of which he was an avid student.

Called a lyrical abstractionist, Friedel Dzubas created romantic images, such as Renewal (1961), which have been linked in spirit to the contemplative landscapes of the nineteenth-century German painter, Caspar David Friedrich. A surrealist sensibility is also present in biomorphic shapes in his painting. The exhibition also includes Willem de Kooning's Woman in a Landscape (ca. 1965), in which the figure has a more benign presence than in other works by the artist. Her shape is integrated into a background suggestive of a landscape, indicative of the artist's interest in exploring landscape subject matter after moving to Springs, New York, on the East End of Long Island in 1963.

Works by Mary Abbott, Stanley Boxer, and John Little epitomize the gestural methods of action painting, which are carried forward in new directions by contemporary artists Carol Hunt and Frank Wimberley. The quieter mode of color field is demonstrated by the paintings of Dan Christensen, in which the artist stained his canvases and made use of the spray gun and window washing squeegee to express a spiritual sensibility. The color field approach is continued by Katherine Parker, in images in which time and change are recognized in the emerging and fading elements within her layered paintings.

SPANIERMAN MODERN
Gallery Selections
Paintings from the 1950s to the Present
May 3-June 2, 2012
Gallery Hours: Monday-Saturday, 9:30a-5:30p
212-832-1400

If you wish further information, please email inquiry@spaniermanmodern.com.