In her courageous program, Miss Ninfa Valvo, the curator, has presented many important one man exhibitions of contemporary art at this museum. Amadouni’s current exhibition is a serious mistake. These paintings are large, yet trivial, abstract expressionist performances, where a brightly colored ground is overpainted with wide bands of dense, black paint in the manner of Soulages. The paintings are bad and unworthy of a museum presentation, because they are: (1) nakedly derivative. (If we took Amadouni seriously, we would extrapolate Soulages as the supreme genius of mid century art.) (2) Decorative in form, devoid of any serious content. (3) Totally lacking in any painterly touch whatsoever.
––Walter Hopps
September 1962
VOL. 1, NO. 4
