Recent paintings by Paul Sarkisian achieve an intense vitality of both color and surface structure that reflects a zealous enthusiasm for the physical realities of pigment. Working on the rough side of masonite on which he lays a ground, most often white, Sarkisian allows some color areas to ooze their way through undefined space, while other areas, sometimes built up with filler, form bold reliefs deep enough to cast shadow. Only occasionally do these areas take on the character of form; more often they retain the quality of the vigor of application. At times this vigor becomes obtrusive but,

Introducing collage drawings among a group of large heavy laden oils on canvas, Joan Brown once more gives an impressive demonstration of an explosive talent. In all works one or more quizzical feminine figures stand as stark repose in various points of frontality in nude bravado, clothed by swathes of enormous strokes of brilliant naples, cadmium red, or ultramarine blue, tinted and moulded by more or less graded patterns, offering a counterpoint to further rolling hills of oil that plummet about indicating some form, or layer of assumed content among spray, rocks and heavy water swells. “Girl

Fritz Schwaderer, a southern California artist, shows a large group of paintings, the most impressive of which belong to the German Expressionist movement. Now an American citizen, Schwaderer’s relationship to German Expressionism dates from studies at the Academy in Berlin (1920–24) under Karl Hofer. In the best of the paintings the most characteristic elements of Expressionism are employed with considerable conviction. “Lavender Workers” portrays in somewhat mystical and entirely arbitrary color the anxiety and suffering of symbolic rather than specific man. With natural form and color negated

Top sergeant’s stripes cubed, squared, chopped, mottled in a galaxy of spray gun finish, dubbed, stenciled, divided within and without space, even with oil paint, sun-like silver orbs advertise three angles over three half moons. Yellow kelly squared “Sonny” presents silver top-sergeant stripes edged in a full orbed orange-yellow surface. “Hawaiian Eye” gives us a chrome green square plus insignia over an enormous square on which stained glass effect shows a large myopic bugged fly eye, or a diamond black-blue grid studded with orange centers all on an over-all baby purple ground. One cannot

Some of the most sophisticated and refined workmanship, along with the most crudely primitive, can be found in this collection of icons, bultos and retablos. The greatest variation occurs in the religious expressions of the Southwest Indians. Here the usual material is wood although gesso may be combined with it, and tin too is used either as a ground or as a decorative embellishment. These votive pieces, bultos and retablos, are expressions of the Catholic faith transposed by the intense emotional and, in many instances, macabre nature of the Indian people, into ecstatic images of unique power.

With a flourish and a ready brush, Will Foster painted what he liked best in the world. His skill at pulling paint through paint is a lesson and although one can easily find his interests narrow, trivial and annoyingly modish, the virtuosity he displayed in the oil medium must be conjured with. His was a pinchable world populated with vampish women, nubile still lifes, and an occasional exotic bird—but mostly the women. He never seemed to tire of their prettiness and applied his Sargentesque heritage to the task of celebrating them with enthusiasm. The exhibition covers his work for the last 25

As a New York artist, Jack Sonenberg is probably more widely known for his woodcuts, yet his graphic work has always been related to his efforts as a painter. In both his drawings and paintings seen at the Feingarten Galleries there is an extremely fine sensitivity to surface textures. In the oils the color is keyed very low, achieving almost a dull metallic tonality in which bits of red, blue, yellow or green are all the richer because of their restraint. In “Sounding I” the subtle variations of ground are broken only by the hint of a calligraphic form that appears in a slightly raised surface.

A number of the small but fine paintings by the European masters of our century, seen last summer at the Edgardo Acosta Gallery, are again included in its “Christmas Exhibit.” Featured is a “Landscape” (1924–25) by de Vlaminck, but still available are Braque’s “Still Life with Pitcher” (1943), an oil and a watercolor by Dufy, two gouache and watercolor pieces by Chagall and Severini’s “Le Cygne Noir” (1952). More contemporary are works by Antoni Clave and Claude Venard whose “Locomotive,” although low in color key and less shocking, bears some of the “sophisticated cartoon” qualities of Dubuffet’s

Martinez exhibits both strength and clarity in a number of works from the estate of the late Mexican artist. Rich in carefully formed color moulds, clearly linear in outlined intent, formal and evocative in muralesque strength and character, the works are apt counterpart to the slick drawings of the young Chinas. Standout oil of the Martinez group is “Puro Mexicano,” a literal forthright creation where oil layers are carefully built of soft golden ochres, siennas, cadmium green overtones, all encased by rich ultramarine outlines. “La Joven de Cuernavaca” exhibits an Indian girl formally moulded

This latest series of luscious paintings are a continuation of the artist’s concern with color in harness with an elegant painterly attack. He has clarified his style further and the total impact is more sure and more consistent than in previous shows. “The Open Window” stands out as one of the best; being a little more economical in color it achieves a lyrical balance of parts and does not become bogged down with a kind of phthalocyanine intensity that affects some. Of the landscapes “Night Trees” is tremendously moving with all the complexity of color and shape held in bold pattern by the

The drawings and bronze and clay sculpture of this sensitive artist are concerned with the elusive aspects of figure imagery, such as the drama inherent in the subtle turn of a torso, a poignant gesture, and the elemental movements of limbs rising or tilting. There is an electrical sensuousness in the surface textures of his figures which displays a tremendous formal discipline. Hueter’s attitude is, in turn, classical and romantic. Without being eclectic, his sculpture strangely combines the grace of, say, Nadelman, with that of Giacometti, producing evocative and mystical images of serenity

In the dedication to “The Taste of Angels” the late Francis H. Taylor writes “to the collectors of the past who in their innocence have risked their lives and fortunes to encourage art, and to the patrons and critics of the present, this book is dedicated.” His untimely death prevented him from writing the subsequent volume which would have brought him up to date. One wonders if he would have included the Home Savings and Loan Association in such a book. Lacking the distance of time, we may be too involved to give fair judgment. A fortune may have been risked, but more for a broad, quantitative

The paintings of Joanne Calocerinos are characterized by various interlocking forms that are fashioned from bands of narrow ribbon-like strips of carefully gradated color. The absolute control of pigment, the geometrically inclined style, and particularly the holding of the color to accurate variations of tints and shades of either a monochromatic or analogous system, incline the viewer to react to the works in terms of the abstract classicists. Yet the potential “pretty color,” the excessive interwinding of form and, in the end, the titles (“The Testimony of a Soul,” “To a Nightingale,” “

An exhibition of 40 paintings and sculptures was organized by the American Cultural Center in Paris under the supervision of Miss Darthea Speyer who selected the works. It is being circulated in this country by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The painters represented are T. Appleby, O. Chelimsky, A. de Caro, J. Downing, D. Fink, S. Jaffe, J. Koenig, J. Levee, and K. Smith. The sculptors are C. Falkenstein, H. Cousins, H. Phillips, D. Schnable and R. Stackpole. All the artists settled in France between 1948 and 1950, a fact which is the only factor unifying this show.

Pensive excerpts from Israeli city, land, forest, or night-stapes feature small subtle strokes carefully built or related colors, softly and carefully moulded within a fragrance of night sounds, sparked by flicks of heavy cadmium yellow light and medium or crimson akin to the works of Max Gunther.

—S. C. Schoneberg

Miss Higgins show is comprised of drawings, collages and oils. Collages dominate, many of them of children. She is an ingenious ingratiating artist who has a sure eye and a deft hand, however some of them seem almost too facile and slick. She is clever about the use of paper to build the effect of paint and many of them achieve rich surfaces and brilliant color. She is a good draftsman and her drawings are clear and sure. “Children In the Rain” is a lyrical mono-type, a new medium in which she is now experimenting using tea-bag paper.

Alex Gonzales teaches and works in Monterey, California. It

This is a non-scheduled exhibition which puts on display many of the fine prints held by this gallery. In addition to the prints, however, there are two objects which make a visit here worth while. One is an untitled brush drawing by Philip van Aver who trained at Pomona and is now working in San Francisco. It is a six inch Tondo reminiscent of a microscopic projection which weaves a web of wonder through thousands of tiny abstract symbols compacted tightly together. It exposes the kind of skill necessary to inscribe the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin. The other object is by the Swiss-born

David Rosen handles transparent oil glazes almost as though they were washes and restricts palette to blacks, greys, umbers, ochres and much white space. This gives his work a certain graphic quality, heightened by a shallow picture plane; the figures tend to fill and even overflow the canvas top to bottom and edge to edge. The glaze wash is beautifully controlled. Perhaps the content is too specific, however, too topical, to have the kind of universality one would like to see his work achieve.

—Joan Hugo

A scattered sampling: a nice little Camille Bombois, two Marchands, a still life by Pierre Bisiaux, paintings by Ganne, Caffe. But a luminous painting by Saul Bernstein was the most vital thing to be seen here. The gallery now represents those artists formerly with the Parsons Gallery.

—Joan Hugo

Although it is from the scrap-pile of old automobiles that John Chamberlain gets most of the sculptural material for his assemblages, it is an exquisite junk yard, full of color and contrasting elements. The found object, worked to produce new images, retains at the same time its original meaning of fender, bumper and engine fragment, and even the connotation of the impact of a ruinous collision. Yet the carefree fitting together of these remains gives to them a new existence of a crass material nature that in itself is overpowering. The impact of accident, the essential ingredient of action

“. . . a show wherein each invitee, painter or sculptor, is seen in depth to the extent of four works apiece. I feel this will lend significant distinction in numerous ways: for the artist, it is a prestige show and may become the means of achieving wide national recognition, the point of ‘arrival’ so to speak; for the public it will offer better opportunity to know the work of mature artists who may be relatively unknown outside their own areas; for the museum or gallery involved, it means making authoritative selections based on living experience with the region’s artists—a responsibility at

If we can imagine an exhibition in the year 2062 of drawings by favorite artists from 1960–2020, we might be disappointed to learn that it had taken almost a century for them to come back into esthetic focus. Such is the case with the once-fashionable artists represented in this tasteful exposition.

The days when a lyric line would bring Dada demonstrations are over. Preceded by the wave of interest in the undulations of Art Nouveau, patterning like the rippling wet-drapery studies by Queen Victoria’s favorite, Lord Frederic Leighton, or Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s sensuous repetition of a golden

When a collector deigns to make his entire collection public, he places himself in the dangerous position of total exposure. He stands naked before a mob of stranger-experts and asks that he be examined and judged. At this moment, he joins the artist in his acceptance of the catharsis of exposure. Collectors who own only the “right” artists, or whose collections are composed entirely of masterpieces arouse suspicion. The “mistakes” are what give a collection its personality, and tell us something of the collector (as presumably they tell the collector something of himself).

This is not a

Occasionally, one is privileged to see a near-perfect art exhibition, and the Edvard Munch show at the Pomona College Gallery is such a presentation. This extremely fine collection of graphic works by the famous Norwegian expressionist was first compiled by J. B. Neumann, then brought to this country by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. Nine prints from the collection were shown in the Munch print show organized by the Museum of Modern Art in 1957, but the current exhibition presents the whole of the collection for the first time in this country.

Each phase of Munch’s graphic oeuvre is impressively

To claim a close connection between the works of Saul Steinberg and Paul Klee may seem to border on the incongruous, even flavor a little of Dadaism, or one might suspect that such an exhibition was simply another contemporary device to attract attention. In our current jazzed-up world where the museum is forced to pit itself against the competition of television, advertising, and the sports arena, one has come to expect the incongruous even in the overly precious and hallowed halls of the public museum and private gallery. While much of this forced competition has brilliantly spotlighted the

This so called retrospective is, in effect, a pick-up show including work from 1957 to the present. It does not function as a true retrospective in that it excludes some of Johns’ most important series of pictures—namely, the flags and targets. The show concentrates on the monotone paintings and collages of 1957–58 and the artist’s most recent work. The earlier pictures include two very excellent examples: “Newspaper,” a small grey collage, and the elegant “White Numbers.” The most recent works, though, are the most interesting in that they point up the major problem that today faces an important

Chavez is one of a new group of Banditos who trained at U.C.L.A. and who would rob you of your reason to place it as just offering before the warm altar of the Virgin. He is a spiritual expressionist plain and simple, denying every subtle gesture, every naughty sophistication, in favor of an honest appraisal of himself and his environment. The clumsy brush and faulty color only enhance his naive vision.

Though these are subject paintings that sometimes plod, sometimes dance, through Mexican allegories, floral arrangements, portraits, and ruinous landscapes, the real subject is Chavez. The exhibition

A city is a city, is a city, seems to be the conclusion of the painter, who, having traveled widely nevertheless secretly carries the same image with him. Chicago-Spain and Chicago-Italy and Chicago-Chicago are hurdles of light pin-pointed on the earth’s crust, beaming neon reassurances through the darkness to the homeless waif inside each of us. There is nothing fearsome looming in these jeweled architectural aggregates. The artist evokes some of the wonder and tameness felt in fairy tales when the prince approaches the sleeping kingdom.

Mix is not primarily a colorist; his paintings are gatherings

The regular gallery goer in the L.A. area can develop a set of symptoms that give the muzzy sensation that all art is manufactured mint fresh weekly in time for Monday’s Market. So much that is new is being exhibited and so little of the old models are to be seen that one can easily believe that the obsolescence-makers are at work on art. There is a subsequent atrophy of the past tense that the antidotes at the local museum dispensaries are not strong enough or massive enough in dosage to offset. Occasional imported miracles must suffice and often they are so specialized or deep-dyed in the

Like the smile on the Cheshire Cat, the portrait image in Jones’ pictures keeps dissolving and the next batch may well be just a smile of thin air. The paintings are dark-to-black surfaces, drawn into with a graffito line and rubbed for a minimal sort of value range in the background. They are less like paintings than suspensions of the developmental stage of an etching plate, inked, rubbed and ready to print. This understatement involves the viewer in the rather trivial pastime of merely trying to read the non-images rather than in participating in what is said. As psychological portraits they

These recent expressionist figure paintings have, at first glance, a look of importance. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection one realizes that their importance does not maintain itself. The main problem with McGarrell’s work is that others have done it better. McGarrell has received some prestige and, one assumes, sales, based most probably on all of the recent return-to-the-figure publicity. The paintings are competent, but they make one wish for a good Francis Bacon show to set a standard for this sort of painting.

—Donald Factor

A most tasteful selection of small canvas works in patterned collaged squares and rectangles gives Viacrucis a kind of presentation unlike many contemporaries that assume surface gusto or flagellation is art. The emergence of figures, ovals, shapes of a high and subtle order awake in the viewer a more than casual persuasion; orientalized black rubbed pasted hints of calligraphy are studded with other images or hieroglyphs which give notice of a highly organized work that intones a causative emotional or intuitive response. “Victory Garden”’s soft squares vie with oval flower forms that flow over

Highly personal and outside current contemporary expression, the recent paintings of Frederick Wight follow three distinct themes. There are the figure pieces: “Two Figures, Four Figures.” Perhaps these are the most disturbing of all the works for each can be discussed only in terms of coexisting polarities of thought and feeling. Bound together in pulsating rhythms, the figures lie motionless and apart, heavy and yet floating without gravity, existing in a timeless immediacy, a cold romantic color prevailing. The moon series are another thing. Here the illusion of fantasy is more constant and

The first one-man exhibition of work by Sam Francis to be seen on the Pacific Coast since his residence here is being shown at the Esther Bear Gallery in Santa Barbara. The works date from 1958 to the present and include paintings, drawings and lithographs. Sam Francis has been on the road since around 1950. His catalogs and other credits and mentions come in many languages: German, French, Japanese and so on. The French were probably the first to grant him first rank, then the Swiss and the English.

The work seen in the Esther Bear show is pervaded with an insistence on style, and judging from

The sweet liberties taken in this show have culminated in the American Dream: advertising at last has been accepted by art! Form and content are one! The better mousetrap has been built! In this best of all possible worlds the fig leaf of organic subject matter has been thrown away and modern man dotes on his nakedness.

Everybody knows that comic strips and hot dog stands are as American as apple pie, but have they understood that that wedge of apple pie is as rich in form as it is in calories?

The problem with social criticism is that within that intention, the skill of a Lichtenstein in his

Pegot Waring presents a large yet unbalanced exhibition in numerous technical areas. Her finest, simplest, most perfect works in sculpture give a quiet, sustained pause and reveal a depth of personal feeling and grace. But the least of the works, the oils, present a stretching or undigested talent too early to be viewed among more worthy works. The small wood sculpture “Snail” is a fine work both in warm burnt sienna tone, in moulded wood forms, in material, feeling and mounting where the sculptor extends her vision beyond the obvious and gives the forms an internal movement and grace. “The

“Recollections of Childhood,” a remarkable set of twelve lithographs by Jose Luis Cuevas, together with preliminary drawings, is the subject of the show at Simone. Drawings by a group representing the “Nueva Presencia,” dominated by Arnold Belkin and Jose Munoz, are exhibited at Zora’s. Although Cuevas’ work is highly autobiographical, and thus, in a sense, limited in scope, there is such an obvious kinship between him and the Nueva Presencia group that it might be rewarding to consider them together.

While it would be simple to dismiss Cuevas’ work as “grotesqueries” and Nueva Presencia as