Displaying items by tag: minimalist

Inverleith House, Edinburgh presents the first exhibition in a UK public gallery by the great American artist John Chamberlain (1927-2011). One of the pioneers of post-war American art, Chamberlain was a key figure in the vibrant New York art scene of the 1950s and ‘60s; his innovative work in sculpture, painting and film spans six decades.

Chamberlain represents a unique link between the vivid colour palettes and frenetic energy of Abstract Expressionist painting and the truthfulness to material found in Minimalist sculpture.

The Dia Art Foundation is well known for its stewardship of two of the greatest pieces of American land art: Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” in Utah and Walter De Maria’s “Lightning Field” in New Mexico.

In 2015, after years of planning, it will open an ambitious new long-term project that is intended to ask provocative questions about what “American” means and to push the boundaries of the foundation’s roots in the Minimalist and Conceptual movements of the 1960s and ’70s.

The artist Richard Serra is working on a major new sculpture for an exhibition in May 2015 at David Zwirner’s vast space on West 20th Street in New York.

The news will be seen as a coup for Zwirner but a blow for Gagosian Gallery, which has been Serra’s primary dealer since the 1990s and is currently showing four large works at its space in Britannia Street, London (until 28 February).

Although Serra’s relationship with Gagosian has long been non-exclusive, it had been assumed that this was the only gallery with the space and structural capacity to show the artist’s large Minimalist sculptures, which can weigh hundreds of tons.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. received a promised gift of 250 paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs from the American art collector and gallerist Virginia Dwan. The bequest, which includes works by Robert Smithson, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt and Sol LeWitt, will help bolster the museum’s postwar and minimalist holdings.

The National Gallery’s director, Earl A. Powell, said, “The National Gallery of Art is thrilled to be the beneficiary of Ms. Dwan’s seminal collection. The pledge will significantly strengthen our holdings of art from the 1960s and 1970s.” Dwan owned and helmed the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles and New York during the ‘60s and ‘70s. She presented the group exhibition My Country ‘Tis of Thee in 1962, one of the earliest pop art shows in the United States.

Dwan’s collection will be featured in the exhibition From Los Angeles to New York: The Dwan Gallery 1959-1971 when the National Gallery’s East Building reopens in 2016. The space will close next year for a maintenance and expansion project.

The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY has revealed the final design of its North Wing expansion, which is expected to open to the public in late 2014. The addition was designed by New York-based architecture firm Thomas Phifer and Partners and will add 26,000-square-feet to the museum. The project will create a new gallery for contemporary glass art and a 500-seat glassmaking demonstration venue in Steuben Glass’ former factory ventilator building, which is next door to the museum.

The contemporary art gallery will be in the minimalist style and feature large exterior glass panels that will allow sunlight to flood into the galleries, which will include massive curvilinear concrete walls. A state-of-the art light-filtering system will be used to adjust the natural sunlight to create ideal lighting for viewing the art. The new gallery will be the largest space dedicated to the presentation of contemporary glass art in the world.    

The Corning Museum of Glass, which opened in 1951, is the world’s leading art museum dedicated to the presentation, display and interpretation of glass and glassmaking. Since its inception, the museum has made a point of incorporating glass into its architecture. Karol Wright, the executive director of the museum, said, ‘Thomas Phifer’s design for the North Wing gallery marks a dramatic new chapter in the rich history of modern and contemporary glass architecture on our campus.” The project, which will cost $64 million to bring to completion, is being full-funded by the museum’s major benefactor, Corning Incorporated.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is celebrating Ellsworth Kelly’s (b. 1932) 90^th birthday by reuniting his Chatham Series for the first time in 40 years. The series of paintings were the first works Kelly made after leaving New York City for upstate New York in 1970. Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series will be on view at MoMA through September 8, 2013.

All of the 14 paintings in the Chatham Series are made out of two joined canvases, which come together to create an inverted “L” shape. All of the works vary in color and proportion and were made intuitively by the artist. For the final paintings in the series, Kelly used pieces of colored paper to determine the right hues and ratios for the finished works. The Chatham series was first exhibited in 1972 at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Following the show, the works were split up until their reunion at MoMA.

Kelly, who was already an established artist when he created the Chatham Series, is best known for his hard-edge and color field paintings, which are defined by an overarching minimalist aesthetic. Kelly aimed to erase any trace of the artist’s hand, making what he described as “anonymous” art.

A monumental mural by Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923), an American painter and sculptor often associated with color field painting and the Minimalist movement has found a temporary home at the Barnes Foundation just outside of Philadelphia.

The Barnes, an educational art institution, is currently hosting the exhibition Sculpture on the Wall, which includes Kelly’s Sculpture for a Large Wall. Created between 1956 and 1957, the work was commissioned for the Philadelphia Transportation Building and it was the first public abstract sculpture in Philadelphia. The work was removed from the Transportation Building after it closed in 1993 and was later acquired by Ronald S. Lauder, the former chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. Lauder and his wife promptly donated the work to MoMA where it has only been exhibited twice.

Sculpture for a Large Wall, which measures over 65 feet long and 11 feet high, is accompanied by four other works from later in Kelly’s career including the geometric Red Curve (1986) and the minimalist Two Curves (2012). The sculptures will be on view at the Barnes Foundation through September 2, 2013.  

Ellsworth Kelly: Colored Paper Images is currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through December 1, 2013. Kelly (b. 1923), a painter, printmaker, and sculptor, is best known for his hard-edge and Color Field paintings as well as for his involvement in the minimalist movement.

The exhibition at the National Gallery features a series of paper-pulp works that were first unveiled in 1977. The 23 works, which are drawn from the museum’s collection, feature erratic edges and irregular textures, a departure from Kelly’s previous works, which are comprised of sharp angles and precise curves. Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art said, “Kelly has long been recognized for his mastery of form and color, but even to those who know his work well, these Colored Paper Images will come as a revelation.”

A pioneering force in postwar abstraction, Kelly created his colored paper images by placing molds on single sheets of paper and filling them with colored and pressed paper pulp. Once the pulp settled, the molds were removed and the sheet along with the colored pulp was run through a printing press, fusing the damp paper layers together. Multiple impressions were made of each image.

The National Gallery of Art has a longstanding relationship with Kelly, which began in 1975 when the institution acquired its first work by the artist. The Gallery now owns over 200 pieces by Kelly including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints.