print December 1962/January 1963

Marc du Plantier

Marc du Plantier is a French artist now living in Mexico City. This is his first Los Angeles show. Accustomed as we are to a surfeit of cleverness, his sculptures and paintings are, at first, disarmingly simple. Wall in Mexico, Burning City, and a series of fantasies on the space theme––Spatial Geology, From Outer Space––the simple titles belie a deep interest in the essential images of the New Realism. The sculptures use mineral sources, bronze, gemstones, mica. They are static, totemic, with emphasis on shape, texture, and relief, without developing volumes. The paintings also rely on relief

print December 1962/January 1963

Saburo Nakayama

Torn between traditional disciplines and an urge toward the abstract, his paintings waver between two and three planes. The paint is thick without real density, the image essentially static. His watercolors are more conservative and make fewer demands on a seemingly hesitant approach.

Bertil Vallien, a Swedish ceramist, shows charming clay figures.

—Joan Hugo

print December 1962/January 1963

“Local 839, Iatse, Film Cartoonists”

Tony Rizzo shows paintings limited in concept, tight in execution, done in showcard colors, ultimately derived from Eugene Berman’s theatrical grab-bag of sets and props. Cornelius Cole shows sensitive gesture drawings that owe much to Daumier and Charles Dana Gibson. He is unpretentiously interested in people and what people do. His paintings are luminous and pleasant.

—Joan Hugo

print December 1962/January 1963

Michel Albert

This young French painter has already learned the lessons of the School of Paris, especially from de Stael. Thick slices and wedges of color are stacked on top of each other to form a simple image. Color and paint are the order of the day, but the most interesting paintings are those in which these two elements serve an end instead of being exploited for their own sake. Square Table and Snowscape best typify the direction this decided talent might take.

—Joan Hugo

print December 1962/January 1963

Takashi Senda

Successful as a conservative painter, Senda struck out in 1956 toward a freer mode of painting. The canvases are dynamic, his interest is in space and movement. The strokes cluster and group themselves, moving with ease from canvas edge to converge with force. New Dimension and Sound of Valley are the most successful.

—Joan Hugo

print November 1962

Santa Fe

The Fiesta staged over the Labor Day weekend marks the climax of an active summer here, and the Fine Arts Museum schedules its Annual Fiesta Show to coincide with the festivities. The Fiesta Show is open to all entrants; there were 181 this year. A jury of three awards small cash prizes (a total of $350) and three honorable mentions. While the jurors state in the catalog that the show is a “good representative cross-section of New Mexico art,” not all the artists currently active in New Mexico are represented, for reasons best known to themselves. Another juror says “We are catching up to the

print November 1962

John Bernhardt

The very real need to paint as well as assemble is apparent in the work of John Bernhart. He can shape colors, curve and bend the lines in a way impossible with the arbitrarily formed bits and pieces that make up the assemblages. Some of the paintings have a strange “inside-of-a-box, seen from above” quality, with what seems to be well defined bottoms and sides. Others are energetic, even violent. Life and Death in Indianapolis is an ambitious painting in sections; elements swirl in and out of focus, dominated by a skull in majesty. The tensions of orange and gray are here exploited, as in

print September 1962

Group Show

An over-the-summer “pot-pourri”: A Bourdelle “baigneuse” graces one window, a second figure stands in a niche, an early Epstein portrait head greets one at the door. There are paintings by Oliver Foss, H. Lambert-Naudin and Jun Dobashi. There is a bad Carzou, a 1948 Buffet, and a strong, less glittery-than-usual “intarsia” by Mary Bowling, who remains pre-eminent in this technique. Foss and H. Lambert-Naudin work in a style of glib “savoir-plaire,” colorful impressions of Parisian landmarks, destined for the tourist who wants more than a post-card to prove he was there. (Montmartre, where no

print August 1962

Lovis Corinth

It is a real treat to see the 35 etchings, lithographs and drawings by this important German Impressionist, member of the Berlin Secession group. The range is broad, from an early, formal etching Nude (1893) and work based on mythological subjects, through the graphic humor of the period seen in the “ABC” lithographs, to the dappled Beech Forest (1922). The self-portraits are revealing and should be compared with his paintings of 1919–1923. His graphics, like his paintings, reflect his interest in mass shaped by shadow and light-mottled surfaces; his etching Badeanstalt (1919) is a gem. Collectors

print August 1962

Gordon Wagner

Very engaging, full of humor, impressively composed, with sensitive insistence on form and color. They have nothing to do with the “trash-can” school which uses the detritus of a culture to mock it. Wagner’s interest in the “found object” is poetic, human. The gallery also shows selected works by the other artists it represents. Most important of these, surely, is Jose Luis Cuevas. The influence of Goya is obvious; his drawings have the profundity and originality to merit such a noble parentage.

—Joan Hugo

print August 1962

Moissey Kogan

Moissey Kogan died in a German concentration camp in 1942 at 63. An attempt was made to erase all traces of his life and work. One can destroy the man, but not the memory of him; one can destroy the record of his life, but if one fragile work remains it becomes eloquent testament to man’s timeless dialogue with life. His small, graceful, Archaic bronzes and almost hesitant drawings endure, immortal, serene, poised forever in a moment of Arcadian peace.

—Joan Hugo

print August 1962

Group Show

This small, new gallery is showing the works of Edward Biberman, Fritz Faiss, Ted Gilien, Eric Ray, Taro Yashima, Mischa Kallis, Perli Pelzig, Albert Wein, Joseph Young, and Maurice Ascalon. These last five will be Artists-in-Residence at Brandeis during the summer. Most interesting were Fritz Faiss’ Klee-like interior imagery, Eric Ray’s drawings and work by Perli Pelzig. The gallery also plans to show crafts.

—Joan Hugo