The View from Here Art from Local Estates
The View from Here The View from Here
highlights available works of art being deassessioned from several private and estate collections in Orange County. The works show the vibrant and forward-thinking perspectives of local art enthusiasts as they curated their personal collections. Many of these works were purchased in the 1970s and ‘80s, a period that has become increasingly collectible in recent years, and are by artists whose names add cachet to any collection. The exhibition highlights works from the Estate of Richard and Grace Narver, two important members of the Orange County arts community who served as Laguna Art Museum trustees and volunteers. Prior to taking up residence in Three Arch Bay, the Narvers were instrumen-
Cover: Ed Moses (b. 1926) Quest Marker, 1987 (detail; see page 21) Acrylic on canvas 60 x 48 inches
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tal supporters of the Pasadena Art Museum. Throughout their lives they were avid and progressive collectors of contemporary art, developing an eclectic and sometimes whimsical collection that included noteworthy works by such renowned artists as Larry Bell, Sam Francis, Henry Moore, Ed Moses, and Wayne Thiebaud, among many others. Several other private collections are also represented in the exhibition, which includes over forty works of art by artists of both national and international reputation. On the whole, the show highlights and celebrates an underrepresented facet of Orange County art collecting: the serious collector with a curatorial eye. Miriam L. Smith
Artists
Lita Albuquerque Larry Bell Nicolas Carone Alan Davie Gene Davis Werner Drewes Viola Frey David Gilhooly Michael Goldberg Robert Goodnough Cleve Gray Marie Zoe Greene-Mercier David Hockney Tom Holland Peter Lodato John McCracken John McLaughlin Ed Moses Kenneth Noland
John Okulick Bruce Richards James Rosenquist John Saccaro David R. Smith Wayne Thiebaud Ruth Wall Michael Corinne West Jack Zajak Larry Zox
David Gilhooly (b. 1943) Frog Sandwich, 1987 Ceramic 1.25 x 2.25 x 1.75 inches
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Ed Moses (b. 1926) Re Curr V, 1987 Oil and acrylic on canvas 43 x 43 1/2 inches
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John McLaughlin (1898 - 1976) Untitled, 1947 Oil on board 20 x 16 inches
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Michael Goldberg Michael Goldberg
was born on December 24, 1924 in New York City and spent most of his life in Manhattan. He began his artistic training at the Art Students League in New York (1938) and attended Hans Hofmann’s School of Fine Art (1941-1942) before interrupting his studies to serve as a paratrooper in the United States Army in North Africa, China, Burma, and India. After World War II Goldberg resumed his classes with Hofmann. He became involved in the avant-garde New York art scene, meeting Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Milton Resnick, among others. In 1951 Goldberg, under the name Michael Stuart, showed his paintings in the “Ninth Street Show,” arguably the first comprehensive display of Abstract Expressionist work. The following year he moved to 28 East 2nd Street and joined the artists’ “Club” on Eighth Street, gath-
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ering with other Abstract Expressionist painters to exchange artistic ideas. Goldberg had a prolific career. He painted dynamic, gestural canvases; monochromatic, minimalist works; grids; calligraphic images; and patterned or striped paintings; he also experimented with collage. By 2003 he had had 99 solo exhibitions since his first show at Tibor de Nagy in New York in 1953. Goldberg’s artworks are in numerous public collections in the United States, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Michael Goldberg (1924 - 2007) Untitled, 1951-52 Oil on canvas 60 x 64 inches 7
Larry Bell (b. 1939) Untitled, 1984 Vaporized precious metals on paper 28 x 22 inches
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Peter Lodato (b. 1946) Whitewash, not dated Oil on canvas 24.25 x 20.25 x 1.75 inches
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Larry Bell (b. 1939) Bare Bone, 1989 Mixed media on white canvas 67 x 47.5 inches 10
Jack Zajac (b. 1929) Capra L’Ultima, c. 1960 Bronze 12 x 24 x 12 inches Edition of 6
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Larry Bell (b. 1939) Meltin 2, 1984 Mixed media on paper 21 x 27.5 inches 12
Larry Bell (b. 1939) Untitled (MS 37, 1978), 1978 Mixed media on paper 70 x 46 inches 13
Nicolas Carone (1917-2010) Figure Study, 1953 Oil on paper 14 x 10 inches
Tom Holland (b. 1936) Pond Series #47, 1995 Epoxy on fiberglass 68 x 48 x 6 inches
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Gene Davis (1920 - 1985) Lincoln Center, 1971 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 40.5 inches
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Gene Davis Gene Davis
uses intervals of color to create complex rhythms and sequences of stripes in his large-scale paintings. The stripes themselves vary in hue and intensity, as well as in width, from one-half inch to eight inches. Davis considered the vertical stripe a vehicle for color that follows no preexisting chromatic scale. Of the stripes, he wrote, “There is no simpler way to divide a canvas than with straight lines at equal intervals.
This enables the viewer to forget the structure and see the color itself.� Forever associated with the Washington School of Color Field Painters, Davis was a self-taught artist whose early work represented several phases of experimentation, including Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada, and Proto-Pop. He taught at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and at a variety of other institutions.
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Cleve Gray (1918 - 2004) Conjugation #197, 1975 Acrylic on canvas 39 x 36 inches 18
Larry Zox (1937 - 2006) Untitled, not dated Acrylic on canvas 74 x 30 inches
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Ed Moses Ed Moses
received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the UCLA in 1958. California-born, he also did a series of coastal architectural drawings, and his affinity for grids became obvious. He later explored more sensual subject matter and in the 1970s worked in translucent resins. Characteristic of his technique is that he seldom uses a brush but instead works by staining, knifing, splashing and mopping; he achieves his lines by using tap and snap lines.Cross-hatching is the centerpiece of Moses’s abstraction. His work ranges from compositions featuring repeated patterns to large fields of flowing color to hardedged geometric forms. For him, color is used to establish pure aesthetic experience.
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Moses has been exhibiting since 1949 and was part of the original group of artists from the Ferus Gallery in 1957. He has had a career of more than 51 years as a noted artist in non-objective and abstract styles. In 1996 a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, organized by the poet and curator John Yau. Works by Moses are included in museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Menil Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Ed Moses (b. 1926) Quest Marker, 1987 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 48 inches
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Viola Frey (1933 - 2004) Swimmer and One Possession, 1984 Ceramic 27 x 27 x 7 inches
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John Okulick (b. 1947) Aura, 1988 Wood with acrylic and gold leaf 29 x 24 x 8 inches
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David Hockney (b. 1937) New and the Old and the New, 1991 Lithograph Edition of 50 30 x 43 inches
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David R. Smith (1906 - 1965) Untitled ink drawing No. 176, 1954 10 x 7.5 inches
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John Saccaro (1913 - 1981) Under the Viaduct, 1953 Oil on canvas 28 x 36 inches
Michael Corinne West (opposite page) (1908 - 1981) Still Life, 1955 Oil on canvas 44 x 29 inches
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Ruth Wall Ruth Wall
was born in Wyoming and raised in Utah where she taught high school until she enlisted in the Army. After her discharge, she used the GI Bill to enroll at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) where she studied under Elmer Bischoff, Edward Corbett, David Park, and Hassel Smith. In 1952 Wall left for Paris where she enrolled in the Academie Frochot. Three years later she returned to the CSFA and worked alongside James Kelly, Deborah Remington, James Wasserstein and Sonia Gechtoff and Roy De Forest under the tutelege of James Budd Dixon, Rob-
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ert McChesney and Nathan Oliveira. A writer of both prose and poetry, Wall’s passion nonetheless was art. She loved to draw the human figure and is best known for the Abstract Expressionist works she produced throughout the 1950s. She also created what the San Francisco Chronicle referred to as “an astonishing body of lithographs which were the subject of a book, ‘Love of the Stone.’” A native of San Francisco’s North Beach for more than fifty years, Wall died in 2009. Her work is included in the Blair Collection of the Crocker Art Museum and at the San Jose Museum.
Ruth Wall (1917 - 2009) Untitled, 1950-52 Oil on canvas 30 x 36 inches
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Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920) Country City, 1988 Color soft ground etching with drypoint and aquatint Edition of 60 22 x 32 inches
John McCracken (1934 - 2011) Painting #6, 1973 Resin on panel 96 x 14 x 2 inches
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Werner Drewes (1899 - 1985) Annunciation, 1943 Watercolor and gouache 12.25 x 9 inches
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Marie Zoe Greene-Mercier (1911 - 2001) Untitled, circa 1960s Bronze 15 x 6.5 x 5.5 inches
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Alan Davie Alan Davie
is considered one of the most significant British artists of the post-war period. His work is found in galleries around the globe, as well as in the Tate and the Scottish National Museum of Modern Art. His pieces reflect his diverse interests in primitive art, music (he is an accomplished jazz musician), and Zen Buddhism. Influenced by Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery, Davie made spontaneity the hallmark of his work; he paints as automatically as possible in an attempt
to permit his subconscience to flow through his brush. Davie has traveled widely and was influenced in Venice by the likes of Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and Joan Miro. Davie is adamant that his images have significance as symbols. He is, in the words of the Trinity House Fine Arts Consultants, “an inspired soothsayer resisting the inroads of rational civilization.”
Alan Davie (b. 1920) Carib Island #10, 1976 Gouache on paper 23.25 x 33 inches
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Yoga Structures #26, 1978 Gouache on paper 23.25 x 33 inches
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Lita Albuquerque (b. 1946) Barge #7066, 1986 Oil and iridescent powder on silk 6.75 x 71.5 inches
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Robert Goodnough (1917 - 2010) Soaring I, 1994 Oil on canvas 78 x 28 inches
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Robert Goodnough (1917 - 2010) Soaring II, 1994 Oil on canvas 78 x 28 inches
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Bruce Richards (b. 1948) Witness (Man Ray), 1992 Oil on linen, mounted on panel 17.75 x 14 inches
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James Rosenquist (1933 - 1991) When a Leak, 1980 Color lithograph 43.5 x 54 inches
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Kenneth Noland (1924 - 2010) Twin Planes, 1969 Screenprint on mounted canvas 6 1/4 x 59 inches Edition of 200 Signed, dated
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art resource group celebrating our 25th anniversary 20351 Irvine Ave., Studio C-1 Newport Beach, California 92660 949.640.1972 www.artresourcegroup.com