NYC Gallery Openings | Frank Wimberley: Collage
March 24, 2021 - NYC GALLERY OPENINGS
March 16, 2021 - NYC Gallery Openings
March 3, 2021 - Troy McMullen for ABC News
New York -- In 2005, on the eve of a solo show of his work in Southampton, N.Y., the abstract artist Frank Wimberley explained that he often viewed his artwork as living things. Giving a painting “time to breathe,” was an important part of the creative process, he said, adding that it wasn’t uncommon for him to step away from a work in progress. “Then you can return to it, just like with any living, breathing thing, and find a few surprises.”
At 94 years old, Wimberley is still uncovering surprises in an expanding body of work infused with bold colors and dramatic, gestural strokes. In a career that has spanned more than 50 years, and that includes paintings, sculptures, and ceramics, he’s managed to embrace the creative process as a continuous adventure.
This month Berry Campbell Gallery in New York’s Chelsea district is hosting a survey exhibition of collage works by Wimberley that will feature both paintings with collage elements as well as traditional collage works on paper.
(Take a gallery tour of the artwork with Frank Wimberley here.)
The show, to be held March 18 to April 17, will also highlight some of the artist’s most important collages to date, including several examples going back to the early 1970s, says gallery co-owner, Christine Berry. She opened the 2,000 square-foot ground floor gallery and exhibition space with Martha Campbell in 2013 with a focus on Postwar Modern and Contemporary Art.
March 3, 2021 - Eazel
Mary Dill Henry (1913 - 2009)
Mary Dill Henry’s most notable works are in large oil paintings, alongside acrylics and prints; they are characterized by geometric abstraction. Henry built a signature style, synthesizing past and present art movements into bold and striking compositions.
A rare exhibition of paintings from 1965 to 1970 is on show at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, titled Mary Dill Henry: Love Jazz (Feb 11 - Mar 13, 2021). Works from this period include oscillating shapes form kinetic patterns and Op Art illusions. This qulity can be seen in works such as Love Jazz (1965), same title as the exhibition, which represents two abstract hearts that seem to beat together in rhythmic unison with the variously striped patterns that both unite and divide them; that daringly juxtaposed colors arrest the eye with the immediacy of Pop Art.
The most significant influence on her practice occurred in the mid-1940s, while studying at the Institute of Design in Chicago with the Bauhaus teacher and visionary, László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946). Studying under Moholy-Nagy exposed Henry to the illustrious history of the Bauhaus and its many manifestations. At the Institute, she pursued the full Bauhaus curriculum, receiving training in photography, architecture, and design.
After receiving an MA at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Henry was offered technical positions from several schools. However, the cultural atmosphere at the time normalized women to follow men’s career over their own; so Henry moved whenever her husband’s work required them to relocate. Although Henry was a serious artist and had regular exhibitions, she kept a low profile. In 1966, liberation from the marriage enabled Henry to focus on her art, although it meant she had to deal with financial struggles to a certain extent.
“It was as if, after 20 years of fulfilling conventional expectations as a wife, worker, and mother, she was released into a constant stream of creative production, capturing the exuberant hedonism of Northern California, while reined in by the consummate formal control she had assimilated as an American Constructivist in Chicago.”
- from Matthew Kangas’ review of Mary Dill Henry’s first solo exhibition at Arleigh Gallery, San Francisco (Artforum, 1969)
Through her artworks, Henry showed the utopian ideals associated with Constructivism, as well the principle behind de Stijl movement; that art and life are inseparable. Although influenced by these movements, Henry expressed more idiosyncratic and humorous constructive patterns in her works. She achieved a beauty of form that transcends the ordinary and gave joy and surprise to the eye. Henry’s consideration of contemplative spaces speaks to the viewer with energy and insight, while her sense of humor is also evident.
“Art sustains us when the chaos of the world with its wars and depressions engulf us. And the bright hope of humanity to know that even in the midst of such hopelessness, we can and do create art that can lift and inspire.”
- Mary Dill Henry
Mary Dill Henry: Love Jazz at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York (Feb 11 - Mar 13, 2021)
Starting from her first solo exhibition in 1967, Henry participated in hundreds of shows. Since 1980, seven retrospective exhibitions have been held in California, including several museum shows. Among many honors, she received a Flintridge Award for Visual Artists in 2001 and the Twining Humber Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the Artist Trust, in Seattle, in 2006.
Henry’s paintings belong to many public collections, including the Seattle Art Museum; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; the Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington; the Tacoma Art Museum; the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma; the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; the Sheldon Art Museum, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; and the Institute of Design, Chicago, as well as corporate art collections, including Microsoft, Safeco, Ampex, Varian Associates, and Hewlett-Packard.
February 13, 2021 - Fairfield University Art Museum
The Fairfield University Art Museum has received a major gift of more than 130 paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, and sketchbooks from the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation.
The Fairfield University Art Museum is pleased to announce that the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation has gifted more than 132 works by Stephen Pace (American, 1918-2010) to the museum, with outstanding examples from across the artist’s oeuvre.
Stephen Pace was born in Missouri in 1918 to a farming family. He began his formal art training at the age of 17, studying drawing and watercolor with WPA artist and illustrator Robert Lahr. He continued to hone his skills while serving abroad during World War II, painting views of European landscapes. Pace’s early works are represented in this gift by a very early and accomplished watercolor of a farm scene from his childhood in Missouri. After WWII, Pace studied art on the GI Bill at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel Allende, Mexico before he made his way to New York City. This period is represented by a lovely oil painting of the Mexican desert landscape looking towards San Miguel Allende.
In 1947, Pace moved to New York City where he continued his art studies on the GI Bill at the Art Students League and developed important friendships with members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionist. Still lifes, nudes, and early abstractions are among the works included in the gift from this period. Pace used the last of his GI bill funds to study with the renowned abstract expressionist artist and teacher Hans Hofmann, in New York and then in Provincetown, Mass. Hofmann had an immediately visible influence on Pace’s work in the 1950s, particularly in Pace’s use of color planes to describe volume.
During the 1950s, Stephen was singled out by Hofmann as one of the finest painters to emerge from the second generation of abstract expressionists. During his long career, Pace made important contributions to the tradition of Abstract Expressionism. This period of abstract expressionism is represented by several important paintings, as well as numerous watercolors, prints, and drawings.
In 1960, Pace returned to painting more figural subjects in a style characterized by simplified forms and imaginative colors, and this remained the focus of his artistic practice for the remainder of his career. Returning to his rural roots, Pace’s work begins to depict subjects ranging from gardening and nudes, to horses and lobstermen. The gift to Fairfield includes all of these subjects, and is particularly strong in paintings of horses — one of Pace’s favorite subjects.
The donated works collectively are very important because they demonstrate Pace’s process in moving from studies to finished works. Pace's artwork will be well-used in teaching across disciplines, especially in Studio Art and Art History classes.
Three of the gifted works by Pace are among those in the current Fairfield University Art Museum (FUAM) exhibition in Bellarmine Hall Galleries, The Birds of the Northeast: Gulls to Great Auks: an ink drawing of a Great Blue Heron, and a watercolor and a lithograph of Herring Gulls. A full exhibition of Pace’s work is in the planning stages.
February 13, 2021 - J.V. for Air Mail
The 20th-century artist Mary Dill Henry (1913–2009) flouted expectation with great seriousness. She left her role as a housewife to focus on her art, even if that meant being short on cash. She lived in Mendocino, a sleepy northern-California town with little culture but plenty of visual inspiration. She was influenced by the work of the Bauhaus visionary Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, as well as by Piet Mondrian. She was touched by Constructivism and Op art. But she painted in a style of exuberant precision that was completely her own. “Love Jazz” brings Henry’s bright, joyous pieces into focus after many decades spent out of the public eye. —J.V.
Read More >>February 13, 2021 - Maggie Duffy for Tampa Bay Times
ST. PETERSBURG — The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg’s major renovation of their permanent collection galleries last fall made the museum feel like a new place.
Now, through a yearlong sharing collaboration, four paintings from the Art Bridges Collection by celebrated 20th century American artists are on display in the museum’s Modern and Post War galleries.
Works by Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee-Smith, Norman Wilfred Lewis and Lee Krasner will remain on display through February 2022. A fifth painting by Marsden Hartley will arrive in June and remain on view through August 2022.
The loans expand the museum’s inclusivity with works by Black, female and LGBTQ artists.