Untitled (A), 1946 oil on canvas, 19 1/2 x 20 inches
Catalogue Design: Dallas Dunn Photography: Jeffrey Sturges Printing: Project Graphic Management, Long Island City, NY
john grillo
October 5 - 26, 2013 Monday - Saturday, 10:00am - 5:30pm
DAVID FINDLAY JR GALLERY E s ta b l i s h E d 1870 724 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10019 212-486-7660 www.davidfindlayjr.com (cover image detail) Untitled (22), 1952 oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches (back cover image) Untitled (19), 1962 oil on canvas, 50 x 63 3/4 inches
Untitled (D), 1947 oil on canvas, 32 1/2 x 65 inches
Untitled (5), 1946-47 watercolor on paper, 15 x 19 1/2 inches
Untitled (17), 1947 watercolor on paper, 23 1/2 x 18 inches
BeYoND The FiFTies The sun comes out in many mind’s eyes at the mere mention of John Grillo’s name. His first show at Howard Wise Gallery on a stormy miserable day in 1961 had such great impact – “It was like walking into a room full of sunshine.” “It seemed ten degrees warmer in there.” “Everyone was so depressed by the bad weather and their spirits lifted as soon as they entered the room,” etc. –that no one forgets the experience. One artist called Grillo the Renoir of Abstract Expressionism; another compared him to Ruebens for his sensuality. One critic brought up Turner while another waxed eloquently about Venetian luminosity in his regard. All these references still seem apt when you see these gorgeous, light filled canvases.
Grillo had rebelled as a Hofmann student, moving out of his late 40s mythologizing biomorphism into impastoed squares of brilliant color in huge grid formats. He comes close to Hofmann in these painterly canvases of the early 60s and then returns to sterner control in the hard-edge abstractions of the late 60s. Of course, Hofmann had is Constructivist side as well, but it was never as rigorously employed as Grillo’s…
One reference which was not made at the time might be made now, and that is to Futurism… Like the Futurists, Grillo painted pure energy. Unlike them (primarily because of his Abstract Expressionist training with Hans Hofmann) he wasn’t tied to the world of object or specific mechanized forms of action. Thus the noisy, heated, super-charged world they depicted seems controlled in comparison with the explosive painterly manifestations of Grillo…
The verbal rhetoric—as opposed to the painted kind—of these years focused on light; this is the main reason these paintings by Grillo were so exciting to the audience that greeted them. As one reviewer, Dario Suro, said “He produces the light that acts as its own statement.” Grillo actually painted quite thickly, with all manner of palette-knife flash and dash and semi-automatic techniques; however, the substance of the pigment seems to evanesce before your eyes it is so ‘light.”… Like the restless seas on which young Grillo sailed during the war, light never falls the same way twice. It takes an open, ever-changing responsive sensibility such as Grillo’s to capture its palpitating essence in such recalcitrant materials such as pigment on wood-stretched canvas.
Upon occasion, he successfully resisted the temptation to impose order on the maelstrom of flying forms which the Futurists were never able to do, and at those times he indulged his love of pigment for its own sake to the fullest. The canvases and huge collages, in which he mashes paper into paint like pulp, seem hedonistic and full of joy as the best Hofmann’s of the 60s and are even more sensuous.
Yellow was the color of the spirit according to Van Gogh, and Grillo redefines it as high spirited. His paintings exude happiness. Rhetorical Abstract Expressionism, which was the crucible in which he was formed, was much more sober and “down” in mood.
April Kingsley**
Between the Dawn Spheres, 1962 oil on canvas, 60 x 80 inches
Untitled (29A), 1956 oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 62 inches
Number 9, 1956 collage, 10 1/4 x 15 1/4 inches
Untitled (12A), 1953 oil on canvas, 84 x 23 inches
Untitled (27), 1952 oil on canvas, 14 x 25 inches
seLeCTeD mUseUm CoLLeCTioNs Bennington College Museum. Bennington, VT Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, TX Bundy Center For the Arts. Waitsfield, VT Butler Institute. Youngstown, OH Chrysler Museum of Art. Norfolk, VA Foro de Arte Contemporáneo. Mexico City, Mexico George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum. Springfield, MA Hood Museum, Dartmouth College. Hanover, NH Los Angeles County Museum. Los Angeles, CA Museo de Antioquia. Medellín, Colombia Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia. Cali, Colombia Museo Rayo. Roldanillo Valle, Colombia Newark Museum. Newark, NJ Portland Museum. Portland, ME Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Provincetown, MA Smith College Museum. Northampton, MA Springfield Art Museum. Springfield, MO Stamford Museum of Art. Stamford, CT The British Museum. London, England The Brooklyn Museum of Art. Brooklyn, NY The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, NY The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art. New York, NY The University of Massachusetts. Amherst, MA The University of New Hampshire Museum of Art. Durham, NH The Wadsworth Athenaeum. Hartford, CT The Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, NY The Worcester Museum of Art. Worcester, MA University of California Museum of Art. Berkeley, CA Walker Art Center. Minneapolis, MN Zimmerli Art Museum. Rutgers University, NJ
seLeCTeD soLo eXhiBiTioNs 2013 2011 2002 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1997 1991
1991 1991 1989 1989 1988
David Findlay Jr Gallery, New York, NY (Also 2012) Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Provincetown, MA. Museo Italo Americano. San Francisco, CA. Robert Green Fine Arts. Mill Valley, CA. (Also 1998, 2000) The Cove Gallery. Wellfleet, MA. (Also 1989, 1998, 2000) Aaron Galleries. Chicago, IL. Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery. New York, NY (Also 1996) Galerie Zhouf. Prague, the Czech Republic. Galeria Vylvaricko – Umeni. Havlíčkův Brod, The Czech Republic. The University of New Hampshire Museum of Art. Durham, NH. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst Fine Arts Center. MA. (Also 1983, 1987, 1989, 1990) Museo de Antioquia. Medellin, Colombia. Eli Marsh Gallery, Amherst College. Amherst, MA. Carlson Gallery. San Francisco, CA. Museo de Antioquia. Medellin, Colombia. (Also 1985, 1987) Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Provincetown, MA.
1985 1984 1984 1982 1982 1981 1981 1980 1978 1970 1967 1964 1963 1962 1962 1960 1959 1953 1948 1947
La Universidad de Medellín. Medellín, Columbia Gal A.R.T. Bogotá, Colombia. Jean Lumbard Gallery. 57’Th Street, New York, NY. Sloan Rocotta Gallery. Mexico City, Mexico. Galeria Pluma. Bogota, Colombia. Museo Zea. Medellin, Colombia. Arte Actual Gallery. Mexico City, Mexico. Foro de Arte Contemporaneo. Mexico City, Mexico Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, NY. (Also 1975, 1977) Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY. New School for Social Research, New York, NY. Butler Institute. Youngstown, OH. Howard Wise Gallery, New York, NY. (Also 1961, 1962) Worth Ryder Hall, University of California at Berkeley, CA. Ankrum Gallery. Los Angeles, CA. Tanager Gallery, New York, NY. (Also 1952) Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, NY. (Also 1955, 1957) Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY. Artist’s Gallery, New York, NY. Daliel Gallery. Berkeley, CA
*The Formative Years was excerpted from John Grillo: The San Francisco Years, 19461947 by Susan Landauer - as published in “Grillo. Abstract Expressionism, The Formative Years 1946-1948” by The Provincetown Art Association and Museum in conjuction with Fields Publishing. (2010) Susan Landauer is an independent art curator and a writer. She is the author of “Clyfford Still: The Buffalo and San Francisco Collections” (1992); “The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism” (1996); “Elmer Bischoff: The Ethics of Paint” (2002), as well as numerous exhibition catalogue essays and articles on modern and contemporary art. She lives in Oakland, California. **Beyond The Fifties was excerpted from an essay by April Kingsley published in “Grillo: Abstract Expressionism, Beyond The Fifties” by The Provincetown Art Association and Museum in conjuction with Fields Publishing. (2010) April Kingsley is Emeritus Curator at the Kresge Art Museum with responsibility for Modern and Contemporary Art. Prior to this, she was a freelance curator, author, and art critic based in New York City. She is the author of “Emotional Impact: American Figurative Expressionism” (2013).
Untitled (22), 1952 oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 19 1/2 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