Displaying items by tag: collages

The artist, Robert Motherwell, was one of the important figures on the New York art scene in the 1940s and 1950s. A recent volume, “Robert Motherwell: Early Collages” (Guggenheim) by Susan Davidson and Megan Fontanella explores a little known aspect of his work.

The pieces, most made during his first decade of exploratory art making, are a combination of figurative and purely abstract works, unlike the purely abstract works and paintings that came later in his career.

Would Picasso have donated 271 works to an electrician who worked for him for a few years in south-east France?

A French court has begun to contemplate that mystery as the three-day trial begins of Pierre Le Guennec and his wife, Danielle. They claim the artist or his wife gave them the 180 lithographs, collages, and paintings and 91 drawings in about 1970 when Le Guennec began working as a general handyman at Picasso’s estate. Picasso heirs and a state prosecutor describe the couple’s account as ridiculous.

Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, which specializes in modern and contemporary art and design, has received a major gift from the Swedish-born sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his late wife and long-time collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen. The couple met in 1976 while van Bruggen was working as a curator at the Stedelijk. Together, they created a swath of colorful, large-scale public sculptures, including "Flashlight" in Las Vegas, "Clothespin" in Philadelphia, "Spoonbridge and Cherry" in Minnesota, and "Shuttlecocks" in Kansas City.

Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s gift includes 175 works by 34 artists and spans a wide range of media -- from correspondence material and archival documents to installations, collages, sculptures, photographs, works on paper, books, and posters. van Bruggen served as a member of the curatorial staff at the Stedelijk from 1967 to 1971, a breakthrough period for conceptual and minimalist art.

The New York School artist Robert Motherwell could be ponderous in oil on canvas. But on paper, he was lighter and looser, to judge from the Kasmin Gallery’s career-spanning mini-survey of Mr. Motherwell’s drawings and collages (organized with the artist’s Dedalus Foundation). Working with ink, charcoal, acrylic and assorted labels and wrapping papers, Mr. Motherwell offset strong colors and muscular gestures with the suggestion of chance and accident.

The show includes notable works from every phase of Mr. Motherwell’s long career, from the loopy 1951 ink drawing “Fowl” to the vibrant mixed-media piece “The Red and Black No. 24” of 1987-88.

Cardi Gallery, the Milan-based modern and contemporary art gallery, presents "Louise Nevelson: 55-70," an exhibition of over thirty important collages and sculptures created between 1955 and 1970 that reveal the formalist achievements of Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), an icon of the Feminist art movement and one of the most significant American sculptors of the 20th century. "Louise Nevelson: 55-70," is on view through December 20, 2014.

"Louise Nevelson: 55-70" features works created between 1955 and 1970, a period when the artist’s signature modernist style emerged, with labyrinthine wooden assemblages and monochrome surfaces, and evolved, as Nevelson incorporated industrial materials such as Plexiglas, aluminum and steel in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation has donated the artist’s private archive to Tate, the "Guardian" reported. The donation encompasses hundreds of boxes filled with drawings, collages, notebooks, and other ephemera and is one of the most significant archives given to the institution to date.

The material had filled the sculptor’s chaotic studio in London’s Chelsea until his death in 2005. Adrian Glew, the Tate’s archivist, said that Paolozzi’s belongings were stacked “almost floor to ceiling,” and consisted of “games, puzzles, TV circuitry, computer and transistor boards, optical instruments, piano keys, Lego, shoes, teeth, die, beads, bobbins, matches, chocolate molds, rubber stamps, playing cards, gramophone records, film and audio tapes.”

The Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City is currently presenting the exhibition “Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein -- Walls.” The show includes paintings, drawings, and collages dating from the early 1970s to the 1990s, some of which have never been exhibited before.

All of the works on view feature walls as the main subject matter. The exhibition illustrates how Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein both explored space and the notion of reality versus illusion in their work. Pieces such as Johns’ “Untitled,” which features a well-known Picasso image hanging on a wooden wall, and Lichtenstein’s “Trompe L’oeil with Léger Head and Paintbrush,” which includes an image from Fernand Léger, show how both artists also played with appropriation and referentiality in their wall works.

The Castelli Gallery was founded by the pioneering art dealer Leo Castelli in 1957. The gallery quickly became the international epicenter for Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art and exhibited works by Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Lichtenstein, and Johns. Castelli passed away in 1999 and the gallery is now directed by his wife, Barbara Bertozzi Castelli. The Castelli Gallery maintains a commitment to exhibiting the best of postwar American art.

“Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein -- Walls” will be on view at the Leo Castelli Gallery through June 27. 

The Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University is currently hosting the exhibition ‘Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey.’ Romare Bearden, one of the most important figures in 20th century art, created a series of collages and watercolors based on Homer’s epic poem, ‘The Odyssey’ during the late 1970s. Shortly after its completion, the series was broken up and scattered amongst private collections and public art museums. ‘A Black Odyssey’ presents the complete series thanks to the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, which assembled the show in cooperation with the Romare Bearden Foundation and Estate and DC Moore Gallery.

Bearden, who moved to New York City from North Carolina as a child, was part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the tumultuous South to greater opportunity in the North. Throughout his career, Bearden explored themes such as home, classical subjects, and belonging, all of which are touched upon in his Odyssey series.

‘Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey’ will be on view at the Michael C. Carlos Museum through March 9, 2014.

Romare Bearden: The Paper Truth opens October 24 at the 92^nd Street Y’s Milton J. Weill Art Gallery in Tribeca. Featuring 44 works on paper by Romare Bearden who is best known for his expressive depictions of African-American life, the exhibition includes watercolors, collages, and mixed media pieces.

The Paper Truth wouldn’t be possible without Russell Goings, a longtime friend of Bearden. The two met in the late 1960s when Goings was the chairman of the Studio Museum in Harlem and Bearden was a member of the institution’s board. The two struck up a friendship that resulted in Goings’ impressive collection of hundreds of Bearden’s works, some that he bought from Bearden and some he received as gifts from the artist.

The exhibition includes a self-portrait that Bearden made just days before his death in 1988 at age 75. Drawn on a page from a book of Jewish mysticism, the works has never been shown publicly. Two series, The Odyssey and The Historical Figures are also part of exhibition. Bearden made several versions of The Odyssey but the 22-piece series being shown has not been displayed in its entirety in New York in over thirty years. The Historical Figures series, a small collection of portraits of people of all races who helped to shape African-American history, has never been exhibited in New York.

The exhibition, which is on loan from the collection of Russell Goings and Evelyn Boulware (Goings’ longtime companion), will be on view through December 9.