print March 1986

Jonathan Scoville

With much poetic sensitivity and considerable painterly flair, Jonathan Scoville is renewing one of the most overworked themes in the history of Modern art. The landscape, in his paintings of the sky and countryside surrounding his home in Cornwall, Connecticut, is given fresh significance as both a metaphoric representation and a symbol of personal consciousness. The products of a unique marriage of two distinct traditions in landscape painting—which can be generically labeled the objective and the subjective impulse, respectively—Scoville’s paintings immediately trigger associations. More

print March 1986

Lynn Chadwick

By offering New York audiences their first major exposure in 15 years to the powerful vision of Lynn Chadwick, this exhibition had the ability to teach us all a valuable lesson on sculpture in general and contemporary sculpture in particular.

With this selection of 29 works, dating from 1973 to 1985, Chadwick could be seen as more than deserving of his high reputation as one of England’s greatest sculptors. Ranging in size from small maquettes to monumental sculptures, all in bronze, the examples of single figures and of seated or walking couples were breathtaking to be hold. What is so special

print October 1983

Ivan Kliun

This show furthered the exposure of New York audiences to the rigorous, sophisticated sensibility of Ivan Kliun, a leading member of the Russian avant-garde whose work is still relatively unknown here. Born in Kiev in 1870, he belonged chronologically to the generation of Russian Post-Impressionists and Symbolists represented respectively by Alexandre Benois and Victor Borissov-Mussatov, both of whom were also born in that year. Kliun, however, after studying art in Kiev, Moscow, and Warsaw and going through a Symbolist phase, in about 1910 chose to ally himself esthetically with the next,

print October 1983

“Multiples By Latin American Artists”

This show, curated by Fatima Bercht, offered New York audiences their first extended look at contemporary artists’ books, mail art, and other printed matter by Latin Americans. These forms of expression, free from the usual commercial pressures and constraints of the art market, have provided Latin American artists with alternative means of communication with their audiences, according to Bercht. The rise in interest in multiples in the region coincided with the increased availability of industrial printing and reproductive technology that took place in Latin America during the ’60s and ’70s;

print Summer 1983

Roman Opalka

In stark contrast to those chameleon-like artists who seem to change directions at the first drop of a new trend stands Roman Opalka, whose career is a paradigm of relentless, singleminded, creative pursuit. Since 1965 Opalka, a Pole now living in France, has followed a strictly determined course: his aim is to make paintings and related photo- and audio-documentation based on the progressive listing of numbers. His activities over the last 27 years have been governed by a rigorous, rule-oriented, and repetitive method.

The paintings, which Opalka calls “details,” are the product of a series of

print Summer 1983

Lydia Masterkova

This show and its sister, “Russian Women Artists: 1930–1980,” both curated by Margarita Tupitsyn, have introduced to New York audiences a new, exciting group of Russian women artists, including both colleagues of and successors to the talented likes of Alexandra Exter, Lyubov Popova, Olga Rosanova, and Nathalia Goncharova. What links these artists is the desire they share to use art as a serious means of self-expression, as a revelatory key to emotion and self-awareness, but never—and I must repeat never—as the propaganda arm of the official Soviet style and sensibility of Socialist Realism.

print May 1983

“Homenaje Los Nacional A Contemporáneos”

The Mexican avant-garde movement of the ’20s and ’30s known as the “contemporáneos” is a relatively neglected interlude in 20th-century culture, deserving of wider exposure. This exhibition, organized by Carlos Monsiváis, was an attractively designed didactic display that brought to life the aspirations of this small but distinguished group of writers and artists. Fraught with accusations of elitism and radicalism, the controversial history of the movement was detailed through documentary photographs and printed materials as well as books, magazines, paintings, and theater designs. The manifold

print May 1983

“Los Picassos De Picasso En Mexico”

This show looked at Picasso from the exciting perspective of the artist’s personal collection of his own work. Presumably Picasso retained the works for his own enjoyment and use; no doubt many of them held special significance for him, as turning points in different directions, treatments of favorite subjects, or sentimental icons. The majority of the 175 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints came from the Musée Picasso in Paris, and were filled out with some additional examples from private collections, including those of the Picasso heirs. The selection, made by William S. Lieberman,

print March 1983

Joan Fisher

What the viewer saw in this showing of Joan Fisher’s recent paintings (part of a group show) were strikingly specific shapes boasting sharply defined, curvilinear silhouettes, contrapuntal linear infrastructures, and lush, light-sensitive surfaces. The works immediately impress as strong and lively arrangements of lines, planes, and colors. What the viewer senses, however, are “loaded landscapes” of the extra-formal, metaphorically charged kind pioneered by Wassily Kandinsky, Americanized by Marsden Hartley, and psychologized by the Surrealists. While different facets of the work of these artists

print March 1983

Joseph Hilton

It is time to take a closer look at Joseph Hilton. Now, when figurative painting is the trend, this Baltimore - and - Washington - based artist provides an engaging alternative to the current neo-Expressionist fare. Throughout the ’70s and since, Hilton has cultivated a personal style that takes inspiration from pre-High Renaissance modes of rendering people and places. Its trademarks include deliberately, clumsily drawn anatomies, pictographic compositions, and abstract, shallow settings. For subjects Hilton rifles through art history and chooses grand mythological and religious themes, which,

print February 1983

Miriam Schapiro

Miriam Schapiro continues to do what she probably does best—pattern painting. The works here reveal a strikingly sharp and specific vision, able to exploit the dynamic potential of the shape on which the artist has recently focused—the rectangle—with skill and sensitivity. Though best known for shaped paintings (numerous past examples are based on various house and fan configurations), Schapiro manages to play some exciting visual games with the rectangle. Not only do her compositions bring out the elegant order and regularity associated with its framing function, but they make it enclose and

print February 1983

“Collages and Reliefs 1910–1945”

“Collages and Reliefs 1910–1945” was a knockout of a museum-quality show jointly sponsored by this New York gallery and Annely Juda Fine Art in London. With works by such Dada and Constructivist artists as Jean Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, Alexandra Exter, and Liubov Popova, as well as Picasso, the exhibition captures the visionary conviction and intellectuality that drove the artist pioneers of early-20th-century Modernism to esthetic heights rarely matched today.

Picasso’s and Braque’s injection of collage into their Cubist paintings of 1912 opened the eyes of many

Ronny H. Cohen