print February 1963

Joel Barletta

Barletta’s 1961 exhibition at this gallery consisted of a series of horizontally banded romantic landscape images derived from Monet’s wave series of 1880. Painted in dark low key colors used atmospherically and expressionistically, they had a certain interest due to the multiplicity of the horizon lines. In his current exhibition the horizontal landscape bands have been replaced by vertical and horizontal divisions with harder edges. The color, black, white, grey and dark brown, still atmospheric, is scrubbed on in a slightly flatter manner than his previous work. The organization of these

print February 1963

“The Longview Foundation Collection”

In comparison to art collections belonging to other collegiate institutions—Oberlin, for example—the University of California’s makes a pretty weak showing. It is to the credit of the Longview Foundation that it has even this much, and, since the collection is a growing one, any judgment of its overall quality is conditional. If future additions match the excellence of such recent arrivals as Mark de Suvero’s large and powerful junk metal construction, the possibilities are bright. If, on the other hand, di Niro’s footless and barely “Standing Figure” is a sign of what is to come, the future is

print February 1963

“Jack Zajac: Francis de Erdely Memorial Exhibition”

The sacrificial goat is a theme that has held Zajac’s attention for some years; this exhibition includes several examples from between 1956 and 1960. Their dates mean little as neither their meaning nor their style changed in the interim. The image, its mood, and its meaning for our time were first defined by Picasso at the time of the “Guernica”—the syntax goes back to Rodin cum Marini. Some of the works dealing with the human figure, particularly those on the theme of Metamorphosis, are less obviously derivative, and the drawings, which are for the most part formally unrelated to the sculpture,

Bruce Boice