Left to right: Norman Bluhm, Friedel Dzubas, Cleve Gray
Left to right: Shirley Goldfarb, Norman Bluhm, Friedel Dzubas
Left to right: Friedel Dzubas, Cleve Gray
Ronald Bladen
Connie's Painting, c.1956-59
Oil on canvas
38 x 35 1/2 inches
Provenance:
Estate of Ronald Bladen
Exhibitions:
Exhibited in “An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle, 2013 - 2015” Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA (2013); “Beat Culture and the New America: 1950 - 1965” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (1995-1996). Traveled to Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA and Grey Art Gallery, New York, NY. Reproduced in “An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle” Michael Duncan (2013) and “Ronald Bladen: Sculpture” Robert Mattison (2019).
Detail of
Ronald Bladen
Connie's Painting, c.1956-59
Oil on canvas
Until the mid 1950s, Bladen lived and worked in San Francisco, fully ensconced in Beat culture and involved with poetry, film, and jazz. In Connie's Painting, the physical quality of heavy impasto created by pigment is so exaggerated that it becomes a kind of relief sculpture.
Norman Bluhm
Jay Peak, 1961
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
Provenance:
Marisa Del Re Gallery, NY
Private Collection, NY
Detail of
Norman Bluhm
Jay Peak, 1961
Oil on canvas
The term 'action painter' describes Bluhm perfectly: he was an Air Force fighter pilot in WWII, flying more than forty bombing missions.
Detail of
Norman Bluhm
Jay Peak, 1961
Oil on canvas
In his poem "Three Airs", Frank O'Hara described Bluhm's painting:
So many things in the air! soot,
elephant balls, a Chinese cloud
which is entirely collapsed, a cat
swung by its tail
and the senses
of the dead which are banging about
inside my tired red eyes.
Nicolas Carone
Soliloquy, 1961
Oil on paper mounted on masonite
25 x 35 1/2 inches
Provenance:
Estate of Nicolas Carone
Detail of
Nicolas Carone
Soliloquy, 1961
Oil on paper mounted on masonite
On living and working with Italians, Carone stated, “There’s something about their aesthetic that sort of seeps in, you know. For instance, the Italians speak about tone. They don't paint pure color. It's a tonal idea. But that tonal idea also has a metaphysical meaning. It has a time sense. It's like pushing; it's pushing forward in time."
Nicolas Carone
Untitled, c. 1954
Oil on canvas
26 x 32 inches
Provenance:
Gift from the artist, 1954
Private Collection, NY
Detail of
Nicolas Carone
Untitled, c. 1954
Oil on canvas
Post WWII, Carone lived in Italy having won the Rome Prize and a Fulbright. His work was influenced by surrealist paintings he encountered in Europe as well as studies of Jungian psychology. Carone synthesized these concepts into the new American advanced art that he went on to show at the Stable Gallery in New York.
Edward Dugmore
Big Yellow, 1952
Oil on manta cotton
107 x 80 inches
Provenance:
Estate of Edward Dugmore
Literature:
Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue with essay by David Anfam, Curator, Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, CO “Edward Dugmore: Topography of Body and Land, Paintings and Drawings from 1969” Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY (2019).
Detail of
Edward Dugmore
Big Yellow, 1952
Oil on manta cotton
Big Yellow belongs to one of Dugmore's most acclaimed bodies of work, the Mexico paintings from the early 1950s. In 1951, Dugmore moved to Mexico to study at the University of Guadalajara where he received an M.F.A. Big Yellow is heroic in scale, and the mosaic-like clusters of paint almost shimmer in what we might imagine is an abstract homage to the brilliant yellow of the sun and the solar deities worshiped by the Mayan people of Mexico and Central America.
Friedel Dzubas
Over the Hill, 1957
Oil on canvas
69 5/8 x 106 1/4 inches
Provenance:
Estate of Friedel Dzubas
Literature:
Reproduced and discussed in essay by Patricia Lewy in ”Friedel Dzubas: Gestural Abstraction" (2018); and Karen Wilkin “Friedel Dzubas: Paintings of the 1950's" Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY (2010).
Detail of
Friedel Dzubas
Over the Hill, 1957
Oil on canvas
Dzubas fled Nazi Germany in 1939, just before WWII. The expressiveness of Over the Hill is therefore in part, autobiographical, communicating both actual and internal angst.
Detail of
Friedel Dzubas
Over the Hill, 1957
Oil on canvas
The Abstract Expressionism trope of artists throwing themselves into their works is underscored here, as Dzubas has very intentionally and literally put himself in the painting. We can see his footprint not just once but many times, just as we can see the handprint of Jackson Pollock in Number 1A, 1948. Each instance serves as a personal index, a mark of the artist's body and its action.
Shirley Goldfarb
Untitled (64), 1957
Oil on canvas
7 x 5 1/2 inches
Provenance:
Estate of Shirley Goldfarb
Exhibitions:
To be included in the upcoming exhibition, “Americans in Paris: Artists Working in France, 1946–1962” at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY (2021); reproduced and recorded in “Shirley Goldfarb: Paintings in Paris” (2017) and “Shirley Goldfarb: A Retrospective” (2013) Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY.
Detail of
Shirley Goldfarb
Untitled (64), 1957
Oil on canvas
Unlike the other American Abstract Expressionist painters, Goldfarb went to Paris in 1954 and never came back. It was in Paris that she felt entirely free and able to “paint up a storm” as she said.
Shirley Goldfarb
Abstract Composition, 1960
Oil on paper laid on panel
5 1/4 x 8 inches
Provenance:
Estate of Shirley Goldfarb
Exhibitions:
To be included in the upcoming exhibition, “Americans in Paris: Artists Working in France, 1946–1962” at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY (2021); reproduced and recorded in “Shirley Goldfarb: Paintings in Paris” (2017) and “Shirley Goldfarb: A Retrospective” (2013) Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY.
Detail of
Shirley Goldfarb
Abstract Composition, 1960
Oil on paper laid on panel
5 1/4 x 8 inches
In France, Goldfarb identified with the Tachisme movement of the 1950s, exemplified by Paris painters Riopelle and Dubuffet. Goldfarb was well known as one of the key members of the bohemian expatriate life in post war Paris along with Joan Mitchell and Sam Francis.
Cleve Gray
Les Jours S'en Vont, 1963
Oil on canvas
70 x 50 inches
Provenance:
Estate of Cleve Gray
Literature:
Illustrated and discussed in “Cleve Gray: Auguries: Paintings 1963-1964” Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY (2015).
Detail of
Cleve Gray
Les Jours S'en Vont, 1963
Oil on canvas
'Les Jours S'en Vont' refers to the Guillaume Apollinaire love poem and can be loosely translated as, "how the days fly by." During this period, Gray's work was informed by cubist structure, expressionist brush work and the concept of empty spaces found in Chinese landscape ink and wash paintings.
Vivian Springford
Untitled (VS71), c. 1960
Acrylic on canvas
56 1/2 x 52 1/2 inches
Springford’s oeuvre was deeply influenced by Shanghai-born, New York-based painter Walasse Ting, whom Springford met initially in 1957 and went onto share a studio with for ten years. Springford’s practice was guided by the Chinese calligraphic philosophy that every mark is excellent even in its imperfection. In her own words, “I liked the direct approach of early Chinese painters. Whatever they put down on paper stayed there; they didn’t edit. They didn’t copy nature, either; they interpreted it… I adapted their rhythm and free motion to develop my own paintings.”
