After 28 years, new paintings by Judith Dolnick go on view in Brooklyn

  • NEW YORK, New York
  • /
  • May 14, 2015

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Judith Dolnick, Untitled, 2014, Acrylic on canvas, 34 x 36 in. Judith Dolnick, Untitled, 2014, Acrylic on canvas, 34 x 36 in.
Courtesy the Artist and Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn.

OUTLET FINE ART presents two one-person exhibitions featuring the work of two painters: Judith Dolnick: Paintings and Lucy Mink: comes in the moment so please stay in touch. This exhibition marks the first one-person exhibition of the work of octogenarian Judith Dolnick in New York in nearly three decades and features the first solo exhibition in New York by emerging painter, Lucy Mink. Opening reception for the artists will be held on Friday, May 15, 7-10pm and the exhibition continues weekends 12-6pm through June 28. Exhibition can also be viewed by appointment by calling 646-361-8512.

It has been nearly 30 years since Judith Dolnick has exhibited her lush paintings in New York. Her career began as a tough young artist living on North Wells Street in Chicago in the 1950's. Dolnick along with her husband Robert Natkin, Gerald van de Wiele, and Ann Mattingly opened the Wells Street Gallery, as a reaction to the lack of opportunities to exhibit the expressionistic paintings they were making at the time. While the struggling folk singer Odetta rehearsed upstairs, Dolnick and her crew created what critic Max Kozloff called "an avant-garde exhibition place filled with the most advanced abstractions in town.” The Wells Street Gallery is credited for giving the sculptor John Chamberlain his first solo exhibition. When Dolnick moved to New York City in 1959 she began exhibiting alongside such seminal abstract artists as Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline at the prestigious Ellie Poindexter Gallery. In the 1980s she was represented by Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery. Her last solo exhibition was held there in 1987 and was reviewed by Michael Brenson in The New York Times who called her work the answer to “Matisse, Kandinsky and Dufy.”

Dolnick is most influenced by expressionism, and her works pay homage to Van Gogh (with whom she shares a birthday), Gauguin, and Redon. Except for the slight pull of nostalgia, Dolnick's nonfigurative paintings are without a hint of gravity. Her seemingly endless expression of color is spontaneous and intuitive. In a mode of receptive reverie, Dolnick offers a surreal world dense with bucolic, ambiguous and semi-familiar shapes that suggest landscapes through scattered pulses of paint. Rhythm and gesture play a critical role in the process of Dolnick's work, a process she has continued to develop despite of her absence from the New York art world. This selection of paintings are like bright daydream fantasies. 

Judith Dolnick (b.1934) graduated from Stanford University and studied art in Chicago. Recent group exhibitions include To be a Lady: forty-five women in the arts, 1285 Avenue of the Americas Gallery, New York, NY ('12); Arshile Gorky and a selection of contemporary drawings, Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY ('14); The Wells Street Gallery Revisited, Lesley Helley Workspace (’12). Solo exhibitions include Well Street Gallery, Chicago, IL (’57, ’58, ’59), Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY (’76), Hoshour Gallery, Albuquerque, NM (’79); Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, New York, NY  (’83, ’87). Dolnick’s work can be found in the permanent collections of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, The Mint Museum of Art, Mint, Charlotte, NC and The Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS to name a few. Dolnick lives and works in Connecticut.


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