Tranquil Power

tRANQUiL POWeR tHe ARt OF PeRLe FiNe

tHe ARt OF PeRLe FiNe

April 7-June 26, 2009

An exhibition organized by the Hofstra University Museum and Perle Fine Retrospective, Inc.

Front: Perle Fine at Day’s Lumberyard Studio, Provincetown, 1944, photograph by Maurice Berezov

Back: Perle Fine Painting ‘Flood Cloud’, Springs, 1960, photograph by Maurice Berezov

Foreword

It is quite meaningful and apt that Hofstra University and its museum premiere the frst major BetH e. LeviNtHAL retrospective focused on this frst-generation Abstract Expressionist. Perle Fine (1905-1988) was Director, Hofstra University Museum a faculty member in the Fine Arts Department at the University from 1962 to 1973. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Hofstra University Museum, and the vast majority of her artistic career was spent on the East End of Long Island, where the artist found a solitude that offered her “a wonderful undisturbed freedom for creativity.” 1

As the elements of the exhibition began to coalesce, it became clear to the organizers that to do justice to the exploratory nature of Fine’s work, Tranquil Power: The Art of Perle Fine would feature a variety of media, including paintings, prints, drawings, collages, and wood assemblages. The work of her husband, artist/photographer Maurice Berezov, would also have a role, as his photographic legacy includes images of their friends and colleagues such as Lee Krasner, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Ibram Lassaw.

This endeavor has received important support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Judith Rothschild Foundation, and The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust. The generosity of our funders assures that the exhibition, catalog, and Hofstra University’s accompanying symposium (Perle Fine and Early Leaders of Abstract Expressionism) provide the public, scholars and students with new insights about the artist, her contextual environment and her mentors, as well as her singular contributions to the Abstract Expressionist movement.

Our gratitude goes to the lenders, both public institutions and private collectors, who have made this exhibition possible. We are most grateful to the Hofstra University Offce of the President, the Hofstra University Offce of the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, to Natalie Datlof and the Hofstra Cultural Center. We extend thanks to Inge-Lise Eckmann Lane for her insightful essay, to Madelyn and David Berezov for their frm commitment and support of this endeavor, to Perle Fine Retrospective, Inc., and to Susan W. Knowles for her curatorial talents and expertise. Additionally, thanks go to my co-director for the symposium, Christina Mossaides Strassfeld, curator at Guild Hall, East Hampton, and to the members of the symposium committee: Karen T. Albert, Athelene Collins, Martha Hollander, and Eileen M. Matte.

1. Kathleen L. Housley, Tranquil Power: The Art and Life of Perle Fine (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 2005), 185. Quotation from Sherrill Foster, “Profle: An Interview With Perle Fine Working Around the Clock,” The Hampton Scene (October 11, 1960), n.p.

Right: Perle Fine at New York City Studio, 1967, photograph by Maurice Berezov

SUSAN W. KNOWLeS

Persistent vision: the Art of Perle Fine

At a glance, the collected works of Perle Fine (1905-1988) represent a panoply of infuences. Analytical cubism, surrealism, neo-plasticism, gestural abstraction, op, color feld, and minimalism play out over 40-plus years. But styles are primarily recognizable in retrospect.

Seeing Fine as a frst-generation New York School artist — one who was staunchly committed to absorbing and reinterpreting the infuence of European avant-gardism as she found her own artistic voice — places her among a group of peers striving to be as “modern” as possible.1 She was frst and foremost a formalist; her overarching concern was with the way in which forms, colors, and art media intersect to create meaning.2 Her late paintings, the minimalist Accordments, are a fnal manifestation of the abstract sensibility she developed in multiple forms throughout her life.

Fine worked through her infuences, retaining principles lear ned even as she emerged a fullfedged Abstract Expressionist, a label that encompassed a wider range of approaches than most histories allow. Critical to Fine’s work is that drawing is always present and pictorial space is conceived as a three-dimensional grid. Two untitled drawings (both 1957), one graphite, the other ink, conté crayon, graphite, and foil, exemplify the same sort of all-out energy represented by Wave and Undertow (1958) and Summer I (1958-59). Fine biographer Kathleen Housley notes that, except for quality of line, Fine made no real distinction between painting and drawing. She attempted to capture spontaneous painting by diagrammatic drawings created immediately afterwards, which could explain the presence of what appear to be companion pieces such as Second Wave II (1957) and Summer II (1959, not in exhibition).3

Fine came of age as an artist in the late 1930s, an active participant in the frst wave of American abstract art. She learned to create volume and perspective from Kimon Nicolaides at the Art Students League. Trained in Paris, he stressed drawing as a basic technique, and his book, The Natural Way to Draw, published posthumously in 1941, became a classic. Fine left Nicolaides’ classes to study with the newly arrived Hans Hofmann. Under the latter’s tutelage, she experimented with the formalism of Cézanne and Picasso and the emotionalism of form and color in Matisse. Through Hofmann, she also learned of Mondrian, whose concept of the plastic came from Cubist exploration of space. Although he was never a member, Hofmann had a profound impact on the group that founded the American Abstract Artists (AAA) organization in 1936. It was under AAA auspices that Fine met Piet Mondrian.

Found in almost every one of Fine’s compositions s her understanding of Mondrian’s spatial grid (height, width, and depth markers that position color and form on different planes). Clearly seen in Ideomorphic Composition (1942), the same basic structure — with more air breathed into it perhaps — also governs The Early Morning Garden (1957), Impact (1961), and The Far Side of a Thought (1971).

Fine’s ambition knew no bounds. Her pursuit of artistic mentors, her choice of a life partner who believed in her work, her decision not to have children, and her need to distance herself from the competitive downtown art scene and art market brought her to an isolated studio in an artists community on the East End of Long Island. Unfettered, she succeeded in producing several distinct series of mature work — all exploring forms in space undergirded by the modernist grid.

1 irving Sandler defnes this group (all male), active from 1947 to 1951, as close in age, living in the same neighborhood at the same time, and with a shared outlook and aesthetic. He quotes artist John Ferren as describing the scene as a friendly tension with artists exploring the painterly gesture from abstraction to representation. Sandler cites Willem de Kooning and Hans Hofmann as the primary infuences on the artists who followed. irving Sandler, The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties (1976), ix-1.

2 Dorothy Seckler, Perle Fine interviews, 1968 Jan. 19, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian institution.

3 Kathleen L. Housley, Tranquil Power: The Art and Life of Perle Fine (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 2005), 158.

Perle Fine Sketching Outdoors/at Springs Studio, 1955, photographs by Maurice Berezov

Perle Fine and the Language of Paint

Perle Fine, throughout her life a gifted painter and a keen observer of new ideas, translated the infuence of the culture into her own complete language. Fine learned from Hans Hofmann and, through him, cubist and fauve masters. Later in her life Fine’s work was greatly infuenced by Piet Mondrian. Artists throughout time have learned by copying masterworks, and in 1947 Fine made a precise copy of Mondrian’s last painting, Victory Boogie Woogie. This level of close study reveals the language of paint.

In the late ’30s and early ’40s Fine took classes with Hans Hofmann, who had encountered cubist, fauve and surrealist paintings in Paris, including the work of Arp, Braque, Masson, Matisse, Miro, and Picasso. After coming to the United States in 1930, Hofmann taught frst at Berkeley, and subsequently at the Art Students League in New York and in Provincetown.

Hofmann taught animation of the picture plane and the counterbalancing effects of form and color he described as push and pull. He taught fgure drawing in relation to the environment and the importance of activating space with energetic line. Hofmann explored spatial effects of overlapping rectangles, and Fine, interested in synthetic cubism, used repetitive fat forms to impart rhythm and dimension in her cubist still life series. Inventive shapes inhabited Fine’s paintings in the ’40s. Although not surrealist in concept, these shapes bear similarity to the biomorphic forms in the paintings of Miro, Rothko and Gorky.

Perle Fine had an inherent gift for color that she developed into mastery while taking classes with Hofmann. Hofmann taught that each color emanates a particular light. Fine’s color glows,

though her palette tends toward tints and shades of secondary and tertiary hues in contrast to Hofmann’s primaries. The paint Fine used was usually leaner than the rich paint Hofmann preferred, and her paint quality more closely resembled Braque’s. Like Braque, she created tension between the fattening of the picture plane and a tactile depth created with soft dabs of color.

Like Hofmann and Braque, Fine contrasted sharper edged forms with organic shapes and made space palpable with a textured painterly surface. Braque frequently mixed sand into his paints to add qualities of weight, density and surface texture, a technique also favored by Fine. Her paint surface ranged from matte to satin,

and her inventive brush handling gave volume to color. Fine’s tactile surface was paramount and infused her paintings with a sensual quality.

Hofmann’s signature was his expressive touch and vigorous pushing, stroking, and splashing of paint. He often reworked and blended already applied paint with a palette knife to create complex surface texture. He also scraped paint thinly over the canvas. His paintings refect the sensual act of painting, creating tension in the contrast of spontaneous gestures and controlled geometric forms. Hofmann’s extraordinary facility in handling paint clearly infuenced Perle Fine. Fine developed a distinct touch, contrasting daubs and playful strokes with smooth passages, creating variety and energetic rhythm.

In the early ’40s Perle Fine visited Mondrian in his New York studio. After his death in 1947, collector Emily Tremaine commissioned Fine to make a precise copy of Mondrian’s last and unfnished painting, Victory Boogie Woogie, 1944. During the last weeks of his life, a burst of inspiration led Mondrian to make signifcant changes to Victory Boogie Woogie by applying colored tapes over painted forms. Fine’s charge was to copy the painting, a daunting task.

Fine dedicated herself to studying Mondrian’s paint and technique closely to reproduce subtle variations in color and brushwork. Optical reproduction of hue, saturation and value is especially diffcult in white, gray and black, the colors Mondrian called “non-colors.” In addition to studying Mondrian’s color, Fine learned to simulate the gentle caress of his brush and the direction of each stroke, a process requiring great discipline and empathy.

Diversity of form, gesture, and touch enliven all of Fine’s work, but in the late 1950s, after moving from Manhattan to Springs, New York, she explored increasingly vigorous gesture, thick impasto, and larger format. Use of black became a dominant element in her paintings and, like Franz Kline, her paintings melded lean and rich black paints to create depth and vigorous energy. Fine also enriched her paintings of this period with an inventive use of collage. She embedded shapes of cut canvas, metal foil and fragments of woven basket into her paint. Along with this rich mix of materials, she continued to use pencil and crayon drawing integrated under and over paint layers.

In the mid-1960s, while recovering from illness, Fine took up a new style. Working on hardboard (Masoniteœ®) panels, she attached cutout plywood forms to make complex bas-relief supports painted with acrylic dispersion paints. The liquid quality of water-based acrylic paint allows for a subtle brush-marked texture with a soft satin sheen. Fine painted the face and edges of her bas-relief supports frst with white, then additional drawn and painted elements. She used graphite pencil and thin layers of saturated color and the “non-colors” black and gray. The importance of the surface and edge of Fine’s bas-relief paintings emphasize the object quality of the works and their relationship to surrounding architecture. These qualities, in my view, clearly reference Mondrian.

Line is a key element in Mondrian’s work. He meticulously refned his painted line, repeatedly adjusting width, texture and precision of edge. Fine integrated line in her paintings by drawing both under and over paint layers. She integrated bold pencil and crayon lines in her work from

the ’50s, sometimes incising lines into thick paint or allowing underdrawing to shine through translucent paint. In the more thinly painted works of the ’60s and ’70s, lines are equally important but more discreet.

In Fine’s paintings from the ’70s, she worked with an overall grid. Taking a lesson from Mondrian, Fine made subtle variations in the paintings to disrupt the regularity of the grid and keep the eye moving back from the edge to the center.

In her mature work, Perle Fine’s extraordinary palette, assured and delicate brush handling, and velvet surface vibrate with contrasting qualities of warmth and coolness, opacity and translucency. Her brushwork is beautiful as lace painted over dark ground in an old master painting.

Perle Fine at New York City Studio, 1943, photograph by Maurice Berezov

Juxtaposition of Soft Black Forms (detail, p. 17)

Summer I (detail, p. 36)

A Woven Warmth (detail, p. 47)

Works in the exhibition

Untitled, ca. 1957 (detail) ink, gouache, conté crayon, graphite, and foil on paper

13 ½ x 20 inches

Collection of Dr. John Hunt and Carol Hunt

Sketch for a Cubist Still Life , 1938

Charcoal drawing, 8 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches gift of Dr. thomas B. Brumbaugh Art History Collection, Augustana College Art Museum, Rock island, iL

Signed: bottom right in graphite, “Perle Fine 2.11.’38”

exhibited: AAA: The Language of Abstraction, Marilyn Pearl gallery, 1979 *

* Note: the exhibition histories noted with individual works were compiled from Perle Fine studio archives by Madelyn Berezov and Kathleen Housley. Only exhibitions taking place during the artist’s lifetime have been included.

Untitled ca. 1935-1940 Oil on canvas, 10 x 24 inches the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, gift of the estate of Perle Fine, 1989.10.1

Ideomorphic Composition I 1942 Oil on canvas, 34 x 34 inches

Courtesy McCormick gallery, Chicago, iL

Signed: bottom left in graphite, “Perle Fine 1942” exhibited: Perle Fine: Recent Works Nierendorf gallery, 1947

Juxtaposition of Soft Black Forms, 1944 Oil on canvas, 22 x 18 inches Collection of David Berezov

Signed: bottom right, “P Fine /44” exhibited: Museum of Non-Objective Painting, 1945; reproduced in Art Digest, January, 1946; Paris exhibition in conjunction with Museum of Non-Objective Painting, 1948

Carrousel, 1944

etching, edition of 30 image: 7 ¾ x 6 inches

Courtesy Hirschl & Adler galleries, NY

Note the French spelling of the title. the British Hayter established what is considered by many to be the frst modern printmaking studio in Paris in the late 1920s. Forced to abandon it when the city was invaded in 1939, he fed frst to London, then to New York. in 1941 he began offering an “Atelier 17” course at the New School for Social Research. New York School artists gravitated to printmaking, and he was soon able to reestablish his shop.

Complete Abandon 1944

etching, edition of 30 image: 7 x 5 inches

Courtesy Hirschl & Adler galleries, NY

Omnipotent One, 1944-1946

Weathervane, 1944

etching, edition of 30 etching, edition of 30 image: 5 ¼ x 5 inches image: 7 ¾ x 5 5/8 inches

Courtesy Hirschl & Adler galleries, NY

This series of etchings was created at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in New York between 1944 and 1946. Fine experimented with an engraver’s burin to create feathery lines and used soft-ground and aquatint techniques to suggest layers of texture. Weathervane was included in an exhibition of works from Atelier 17 at the Museum of Modern Art, 1944. Omnipotent One and Weathervane were shown at the Society of American Etchers 31st Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, and Hayter chose fve of Fine’s prints for a show in Paris, 1946. Carrousel, Weathervane, and Omnipotent One were featured at Wittenborn & Schultz Gallery in the summer of 1947.

Enigma, 1944

Oil on canvas, 10 1/8 x 10 ½ inches

Solomon R. guggenheim Museum, NY, estate of Karl Nierendorf, By Purchase, 48.1172.410

Signed: bottom right, “P Fine/44”

Taurus, 1946

Oil on canvas, 28 x 24 inches

edward Wales Root Bequest, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts institute, Museum of Art, Utica, NY

Signed: bottom left, “P. Fine ‘46”

exhibited: Perle Fine: Recent Works, Nierendorf gallery, 1946

Nautical Composition/Provincetown, 1946

Oil and sand on canvas, 45 ½ x 39 inches

Collection of Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA, gift of Susan C. Larsen, 1998

Signed: top left in oil, “P Fine 1946,” and bottom right, “Provincetown ’46”

exhibited: Perle Fine: Recent Works Nierendorf gallery, 1947

Summer Studio #2 1948-49

Oil on canvas, 44 x 60 inches

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. earl Simcox Swensson

Signed: bottom left in oil, “Perle Fine” exhibited: Perle Fine: Recent Paintings, Betty Parsons gallery, 1949

Silver Night, 1950

Oil and sand on canvas, 44 x 38 inches

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, Anonymous gift

Plan for The White City, 1950 Oil and sand on canvas, 56 1/4 x 38 1/4 inches

the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, gift of Dr. Melvin Fine, 1956.3

Signed: bottom left in oil, “Perle Fine 50” Signed: bottom left in oil, “Perle Fine 50”

Surfacing, 1950

Oil on paper, 24 5/8 x 30 inches

Collection of Janice C. Oresman

Signed: scratched into paint at bottom right, “Perle Fine 50”

exhibited: ingber gallery, 1986

The Tolling Bell, 1954 Oil on canvas, 60 x 54 inches

Whitney Museum of American Art, NY

gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Fields, 55.3

Signed: bottom left, “Perle Fine” exhibited: tanager gallery, 1954; Whitney Museum of American Art, 1955; Artists of Suffolk County Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY, 1970; Artists and East Hampton: 100 Year Retrospective, guild Hall, 1976

Wide to the Wind, 1952 gouache and collage on paper, 10 x 24 inches

Collection of thomas and Darlene Furst

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine 52”

this appears to have been a prototype for the woodcut that Perle Fine developed in 1955. She showed ten stages of development from the gouache to the six-color print at Wittenborn & Schultz in June 1955.

Wide to the Wind, 1955 Woodcut in color, 12 x 28 inches Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 55.57

this print was shown at the Brooklyn Museum’s Ninth Annual National Print Exhibition, April 1955 and, with fve other works by Fine, in 14 Painter-Printmakers, November 1955.

Astraea, 1956 Oil and collage on canvas, 58 1/8 x 68 1/8 inches

Courtesy McCormick gallery, Chicago, iL

The Early Morning Garden, 1957 Oil and collage on canvas, 44 x 36 inches Art enterprises, Ltd., Chicago, iL

Signed: bottom left in oil, “Perle Fine”

exhibited: Perle Fine: New Paintings, tanager gallery, 1960; Carnegie international, 1961; graham gallery

Signed: bottom left, “Perle Fine 57” exhibited: Paintings from the 50s and 60s, Ingber Gallery, 1985

Untitled, 1957 graphite on paper, 24 x 30 inches

Courtesy McCormick gallery, Chicago, iL

Untitled, ca. 1957 ink, gouache, conté crayon, graphite, and foil on paper, 13 ½ x 20 inches

Collection of Dr. John Hunt and Carol Hunt

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine 57”

Second Wave II, 1957 graphite, conté crayon, gouache, and collage on paper, 25 x 33 inches Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection, Little Rock, gift from the Diane and Sandy Besser Collection, 1992.003.036

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine ‘57”

exhibited: Around Jackson Pollock: East Hampton, Long Island , American Cultural Center, Paris, 1979; 17 Abstract Artists of East Hampton , Parrish Art Museum, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut-Storrs, and Zabriskie gallery, 1980

Wave and Undertow, 1958 Oil, charcoal/crayon, and collage on canvas, 40 ½ x 68 3/16 inches

Collection of Charles and Kathleen Harper

Signed: bottom right in oil, “Perle Fine ‘58”

exhibited: New York City Center gallery, February 1958; Pittsburgh international, Carnegie institute, 1958; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, 1973

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine ‘57” exhibited: Around Jackson Pollock: East Hampton, Long Island , American Cultural Center, Paris, 1979; 17 Abstract Artists of East Hampton , Parrish Art Museum, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut-Storrs, and Zabriskie gallery, 1980

Summer , 1958-59

Oil and collage on canvas, 57 x 70 inches

Collection of Jeanne Nielsen

Signed: bottom right in oil, “Perle Fine” exhibited: 10th Regional Show: Painters, Sculptors, guild Hall, 1959; Perle Fine: New Paintings tanager gallery, 1960; graham gallery; Perle Fine: Major Works, 1954-1978, guild Hall, 1978

Untitled (study), ca. 1960 Oil and collage on cut canvas, 17 1/8 x 10 3/4 inches

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. earl Simcox Swensson

Untitled (study), ca. 1960 Oil and collage on cut canvas, 17 1/8 x 10 3/4 inches

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. earl Simcox Swensson

Impact, 1961

Oil on canvas, 34 x 67 7/8 inches

gift of David t. Owsley via the Alconda Owsley Foundation, Ball State University

Museum of Art, Muncie, iN

Unfurling, 1961

Oil and crayon on unprimed canvas

29 x 40 ¼ inches

Collection of Madelyn Berezov

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine ’61” exhibited: André Zarre gallery

Unfurling, 1961

Oil and crayon on unprimed canvas 29 x 40 ¼ inches

Collection of Madelyn Berezov

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine ’61” exhibited: André Zarre gallery

Striate Red, circa 1965

Oil and graphite on canvas primed on reverse, 50 x 50 inches

Courtesy A.e. Artworks, Nashville, tN

Convolution, 1966-67

Oil, ink, graphite on linen, 49 7/8 x 49 7/8 inches, Collection of the Hofstra University Museum, NY HU 68.58

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine” exhibited: Perle Fine: Ten Year Retrospective,

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine” emily Lowe gallery, Hofstra University, 1974

Blue, 1967

Unequivocably

Acrylic on plywood, mounted to hardboard, 48 x 47 7/8 x 1 ½” gift of the Artist in Memory of Simon M. Seley, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, ithaca, NY

exhibited: graham gallery, 1967; Sixth

Annual Festival of the Arts Southampton College, 1970; Cornell Collection, Montclair Art Museum, 1974

and graphite on canvas, 61 x 61 inches

Courtesy A.e. Artworks, Nashville, tN

exhibited: Riverside Museum (From 1945 to the late 1960s, Fine exhibited at the Riverside Museum with the American Abstract Artists group and the Federation of Modern Painters.); Aprilfest International, Southampton College, 1970.

The Far Side of a Thought, 1971

Acrylic and graphite on linen, 58 x 66 inches

Signed: on reverse, on stretcher cross bar, “Perle Fine”; on tacking edge of canvas, “the Far Side of a thought 1971” exhibited: Women in the Arts, University of Wisconsin Fine Arts gallery, Milwaukee, 1972; The American Abstract Artists, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1972; Perle Fine: Major Works 1950-1978, guild Hall, 1978

Courtesy A.e. Artworks, Nashville, tN

Green Gold, ca. 1977

Acrylic paint, metallic paint, graphite and canvas collage on paper-faced illustration board, 20 x 24 inches

Courtesy A.e. Artworks, Nashville, tN

Signed: bottom right in graphite, “Perle Fine” exhibited: Artists of Suffolk County: Drawing Today, Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY, 1978

inscribed: on reverse, on

Fine showed one of her frst “Accordments” at Paula

throughout the

others in this

Blue Haze Autumn (Accordment Series # 18) 1977

Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 18 x 18 inches Collection of ernestine Lassaw

Signed: bottom right, “Perle Fine”

A Woven Warmth (Accordment Series #3), 1977

Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 68 x 68 inches guild Hall of east Hampton, NY, gift of Dr. Melvin and Dorothy Fine

tacking edge, in pencil, “Accordment Series #3: A Woven Warmth” exhibited: Winterscape, guild Hall, 1982

Cooper gallery

1972.

1970s, she exhibited

series at the University Art gallery, SUNY Binghampton; guild Hall; Pratt institute; Ashawagh Hall; André Zarre gallery; Freedman Art gallery, Albright College; and the Summit Art gallery, Summit, NJ. 47

Perle Fine and Friends: An intimate Portrait by Maurice Berezov

Maurice Berezov (1902-1989) met Perle Fine at the Grand Central School of Art in 1929. The following year, they won the top two prizes in illustration, with Fine coming in frst. Fine, who wanted more classical training, soon left for the Art Students League. Fine and Berezov were married on September 1, 1930. Berezov, who had studied with Charles W. Hawthorne in Provincetown, parlayed his artistic talent into a career in advertising. Fine remained determined to succeed as an independent artist.

While their career paths diverged, Berezov and Fine remained lifelong partners and steadfast participants in the downtown New York art scene. For more than a decade, they occupied two apartments at 51 E. Eighth Street, one of which Fine used as a studio. She took occasional classes at the Hans Hofmann studio school across the street. Their circle of acquaintances included other artists living in close proximity, many of them students of Hofmann. For several summers, Fine and Berezov also took painting with Hofmann in Provincetown. Berezov documented the scene and began taking photographs of other artists with a medium format Rolleifex camera. By the late 1940s, Fine was offering classes of her own to groups of four or fve students.

Berezov’s fne eye for composition made setting up photographic images second nature. His artistic curiosity and friendly nature took him into the studios of fellow artists, where he focused on capturing both personality and studio milieu. On occasion, he was asked to do portraits the artists could use for publicity. Fritz Bultman, Adolph Gottlieb, and William Baziotes used images from the same photo sessions included here for brochures for solo shows at the Kootz Gallery. A Berezov photograph of Hans Hofmann, taken in New York, was published in Time magazine (December 3, 1951).

In the early 1950s, Fine and Berezov purchased property on the East End of Long Island. They built a small studio/home in Springs in 1954 where Fine could work year-round. Berezov, whose successful career as a Madison Avenue art director kept him in the city, commuted to Amagansett on weekends.

The photographs selected for this exhibition capture a moment in history when the population of professional artists in New York City was reaching critical mass. Artists were engaged in overturning the narrative mode altogether and experimenting with multiple forms of non-literal meaning. The avantgarde was taken seriously, and the public was curious about this new breed of American artist. In Berezov’s rich artistic portraiture, many of his subjects appear to be consciously inventing a persona, while others are so engaged in their practice that they seem barely aware of the observer.

PHOtOS LeFt tO RigHt: 1. William Baziotes (1912-1963) at New York City Studio, ca. 1952 2. Maurice Berezov (19021989) at New York City Studio, 1940s 3. Fritz Bultman (1919-1985) at Provincetown Studio, 1952 4. Kenneth Campbell (1913-1986) at Provincetown Studio, ca. 1952 5. elaine de Kooning (1918-1989) at Franz Kline Opening, New York City, 1950s 6. Perle Fine, Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Ruth Kligman at Zogbaum Party, Springs, 1958 7. Perle Fine at Day’s Lumberyard Studio, Provincetown, 1944 8. Perle Fine painting Flood Cloud at Springs Studio, 1960 9. Perle Fine at Springs Studio, Unequivocably Blue in background, 1968 10. William Freed (1904-1984) at Provincetown Studio, 1952 11. Adolph gottleib (1903-1974) at Provincetown Studio, 1952 12. Peter grippe (1912-2002) at Provincetown Studio, 1945 13. Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), 9th Street Studio, New York City, 1951 14. Weldon Kees (1914-1955) at Provincetown Studio, 1938 15. Lee Krasner (1908-1984) at Brooklyn Studio, 1940s 16. ibram Lassaw (1913-2003) welding outdoors, Provincetown, 1951

John Little (1907-1984) at tower gallery, Southampton, 1977 18. Anita and Conrad Marca-Relli (1913-2000), Springs, 1955 19. george McNeil (1909-1995) at Provincetown Studio, 1952 20. Lillian Orlowsky (1914-2004) at Provincetown Studio, 1952 21. Charlotte Park (b. 1918) outside Montauk Studio, 1958 22. Betty Parsons (1900-1982) at Perle Fine exhibition, Betty Parsons gallery, New York City, 1949 23. Philip Pavia (1912-2005) at Fine/Berezov third Avenue Studio, New York City, 1962 24. Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) at New York City Studio, 1951 25. Robert Richenburg (1917-2006) at Provincetown Studio, 1949 26. Mischa Richter (1901-2001) at Provincetown Studio, 1949 27. James Rosati (19121988) carving, 1950s 28. Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978) at desk, ca. 1968 29. theodoros Stamos (1922-1997) at New York City Studio, 1950s 30. Wilfrid Zogbaum (1915-1965) at Springs Studio, ca. 1958

17.

Credits

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY

Stuart Rabinowitz

President and

Andrew M. Boas and Mark L. Claster

Distinguished Professor of Law

Herman A. Berliner

Provost and Senior vice President for Academic Affairs

Lawrence Herbert Distinguished Professor

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY MUSEUM

Beth E. Levinthal Director

Karen T. Albert

Assistant Director of exhibitions and Collections

Caroline Bigelow Senior Assistant to Director

Eileen M. Matte Development and Membership Coordinator

Marjorie Pillar Museum education Outreach Coordinator

Eleanor Rait Curator of Collections

Nancy Richner

Museum education Director

Eva Rappaport graduate Assistant

Molly Shannon

graduate Assistant

PERLE FINE RETROSPECTIVE, INC. a 501-C-3 organization

Madelyn M. Berezov President

Hofstra University Museum and Perle Fine Retrospective, Inc. gratefully acknowledge the following exhibition and symposium sponsors:

Premiere

Mr. and Mrs. Earl S. Swensson

A.E. Artworks

Presenting

National Endowment for the Arts

New York State Council on the Arts

The Judith Rothschild Foundation

Supporting Hofstra Cultural Center

Tom and Janis McCormick, Kanter Family Foundation

The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust

Perle Fine photographs by Maurice Berezov copyright A.E. Artworks

Additional Photography:

p. 15 The Parrish Art Museum, p. 20

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, p. 21

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute

Museum of Art, p. 25 The Parrish Art Museum, p. 26 Janice C. Oresman, p.

27 Whitney Museum of American Art, photograph by Sheldan C. Collins, p. 29

Brooklyn Museum of Art, p. 41 Hofstra University Museum

Logistics Coordinator Museum Support Services Nashville, TN

Art Preparation and Logistics Coordination: Museum Support Services LLC, Nashville, TN

Special Thanks:

Cumberland Art Conservation Center, Nashville, TN and Bonsai Fine Arts Inc., Glen Burnie, MD

Design:

Cstudio Design, Christine Sullivan and Alexandra Ståhlberg

Photography of artworks (except as noted): John Schweikert Photography