Berry Campbell Gallery is pleased to announce Walter Darby Bannard: Paintings from 1969 to 1975 featuring seventeen important paintings, including several large-scale canvases that have not been seen since the 1970s. In these rare early works, Bannard used Alkyd resin paints before turning to acrylic gels in 1976. This is Berry Campbell Gallery’s fourth solo exhibition of Walter Darby Bannard (1934-2016) since announcing the artist’s representation in 2013. The exhibition will run from November 15 through December 21, 2018 with an opening reception on Thursday, November 15 from 6 to 8 pm.
The brochure essay, written by esteemed art historian and curator, Phyllis Tuchman, explores a “look anew at Bannard’s middle period” for the first time in half a century. Tuchman writes: “In a series of dense, speculative essays he began publishing in Artforum in 1966, Bannard focused on pivotal issues he and his fellow abstractionists faced. He was particularly interested in the interaction between color and space. For centuries, when representational art reigned supreme, art historians considered another matter more consequential: the nature of color versus line. But times had changed. Abstract art was ascendant. And, in 1967, Bannard opined: ‘I believe the avant-garde in painting today consists of painters who are dealing with color problems.’ Three years later, he boldly declared: ‘Recently, artists who have been making the very best paintings have been making them in terms of color rather than space.’”
