This summer, the Al Held Foundation will exhibit two important sculptures by Ronald Bladen on its scenic campus in the Catskill Mountains. These works of geometric abstraction in painted aluminum were created in the 1970s at a moment when Bladen deepened his exploration of form in space. The installation is a partnership between the Al Held Foundation and the Estate of Ronald Bladen, honoring the vital thirty-year friendship between these pioneers of postwar American geometric abstraction.
On Sunday, September 8 at 2:30 pm there will be public discussion with Jim Clark, director of the Estate of Ronald Bladen; Daniel Belasco, executive director of the Al Held Foundation; and Loretta Howard, gallery director and historian. The discussion will occur at the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, NY. To attend, please rsvp to info@alheldfoundation.org. Space is limited.
The Bladen exhibition appears in conjunction with the fourth edition of On the Grounds, an annual exhibition of outdoor sculpture organized by River Valley Arts Collective. Curated by Alyson Baker, it features new ceramic sculpture by Natalia Arbelaez, Nicole Cherubini, Re Jin Lee, and Katy Schimert. Additionally, a new site-specific fiber installation by Michelle Segre titled Der Wolley Eulb 07 will be on view in Al Held’s former drawing studio. Public tours of Ronald Bladen, On the Grounds, and Michelle Segre: Der Wolley Eulb 07 will be offered at 10 am and noon on August 19, September 8, September 23, and October 13, 2024. The Bladen discussion on September 8 will take place immediately following the noon tour that day, and visitors are invited to participate in both opportunities. To learn more and register for public tour dates, visit alheldfoundation.org.
The two Bladen sculptures are mid-sized aluminum iterations of three-dimensional concepts that the artist developed in stages, from drawings to large-scale public commissions.
Wedge (1971) is literally that, an 11-foot-long, 3-foot-wide, and 5-foot-tall black aluminum object resting on the foundation’s lower lawn. A much larger plywood version, measuring 33-foot-long, was installed in the Netherlands in 1971. With both iterations, we are reminded that wedges are among the simplest of machines invented by humans to augment labor and effort. Accordingly, this minimalist sculpture redirects our awareness of our place within its immediate environment.
Kama Sutra (1977), a six-and-a-half-foot tall white painted triangular form buttressed by two smaller black elements, is both pictorial and sculptural, animated as the viewer perceives it from different profiles, shifting our vision from the horizontal to vertical plane. A 30-foot-tall plywood version was displayed at Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Manhattan in 1977. “It opens up a whole vista of sky and buildings and the world up there,” Bladen said in the New York Times. Bladen and Held met in San Francisco in 1955 and after moving to New York became founding members of the Brata Gallery in 1957. They shared studios on several occasions and looked closely at each other’s paintings of thickly painted brushstrokes in the style of gestural Abstract Expressionism. Their media in the early 1960s diverged as Held shifted to acrylic paint and discovered hard edge abstraction while Bladen moved into three dimensions. They continued to share a common preoccupation with scale, mass, and tension.
The presentation of the two Bladen sculptures on the grounds of Held’s former home and studio continues a tradition of Held encouraging Bladen to create or install monumental works on site. Bladen built the 22-foot-high wood The X in 1967 before it was installed at the Corcoran Gallery. Then in 1980, Bladen temporarily sited the 56-foot-long Boomerang on the hilltop above Held’s studios with a sweeping view of the Catskills. It later went on to Washington, DC as part of the Eleventh International Sculpture Conference. Bladen and Held’s shared interest in the mythic and epic quality of geometric abstraction, realized in monumental scale, nourished their ongoing aesthetic conversation.
A selection of Bladen sculptures and drawings from the collection of the Al Held Foundation will be presented in Held’s historic painting studio.
Ronald Bladen (1918–1988), born in Vancouver, was a greatly admired poet, painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He is best known for his contributions to the development of minimalism, appearing in formative exhibitions such as Primary Structures at The Jewish Museum in 1966 and Documenta 4 in Kassel, 1968. He had numerous solo exhibitions at the Fishbach Gallery and museums in the U.S. and North America. Over the past few years, the travelling survey ANGLE/EDGE/PLANE: The Sculpture of Ronald Bladen appeared in university galleries and museums across the country. His monumental sculptures are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin), and Storm King Art Center (New Windsor, New York) and on view in public spaces in Buffalo, New York and Peoria, Illinois.
The Al Held Foundation is charged with the stewardship of the art and creative legacy of Al Held (1928–2005). The Foundation’s mission is to foster the appreciation and advancement of the principles of modern art and the public’s understanding of Held’s contribution to art of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the last decade the Foundation has facilitated the organization of exhibitions, lent works of art, promoted scholarly research, and conducted educational programs in the United States and abroad. The Foundation is represented by White Cube. Follow us on Instagram @alheldfoundation.