John Ferren (1905-1970) The Witch Doctor, 1963 Oil on canvas, 59 x 65 inches
JOHN OPPER HERmaN CHERRy JOHN FERREN KylE mORRis
February 8 - March 8, 2014 Monday - Saturday 10:00am - 5:30pm Opening Reception: Saturday, February 8th, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
DAVID FINDLAY JR GALLERY E S t a b l i S h E d 1870 724 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 212-486-7660 www.davidfindlayjr.com
(cover) John Ferren (1905-1970) Bittersweet, 1958 Oil on canvas, 66 1/6 x 49 3/4 inches
Herman Cherry (1909-1992) Two Verticals (Wavering Columns), 1960-63 Oil on canvas, 60 x 42 inches
The three artists in this exhibition, John Ferren, Herman Cherry and Kyle Morris, congregated to what had became an artists’ enclave at the East End of Long Island and settled there (as others did), after having crisscrossed the world and straddled the country where they were educated. Ferren, the oldest of the three, brought back a European sophistication to theUnited States, transforming Stanley William Hayter’s concise, etched wave lines and Jean Helion’s plastic, floating shapes. He would pass through Surrealist waters into his own quixotic and very vibrant, emotional abstraction – deconstructing sculptural forms, ultimately calming and flattening his personal color space towards the end of his journey. Morris left early colorful, romantic figuration and moved from almost monochrome gestural shimmer of the Fifties into compressed and condensed bold gestures confronting the viewer like geological faults; only to be absorbed in his following work into broad flat shapes – from action to calm, from urban environment to landscape; eventually dissolving into minimal lines crossing interrupted sculpted fields in his last pursuit. Cherry, moving west from the East Coast and back as Ferren did, worked through early figuration, some surrealist exploration – with color always being the important foil – and found his place (having returned from Europe in 1950) in the American abstract gestural world. His was a very personal, rhythmic and energetic language which calmed and crystallized into flattened lyrical color space, organic charcoal lines defining limits, and lastly, to let color become the structure of his paint. All three artists interacted with each other in New York first, and later on the East End. Inevitably, the particular environment and the intellectual, as well as social intercourse affected the outcome of their efforts generating a certain calm and concentration in their later work. Regina Cherry New York City, January 13, 2014
(back) Kyle Morris (1918-1979) Number 2, 1953 Oil on canvas, 36 x 43 inches
Kyle Morris (1918-1979) Breakthrough, 1959 Oil on canvas, 48 x 54 inches
Herman Cherry (1909-1992) Green Band Red Square, 1958-59 Oil on canvas, 51 1/4 x 68 inches
DAVID FINDLAY JR GALLERY E s ta b l i s h E d 1870 724 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 212-486-7660 www.davidfindlayjr.com