The Art of Sol Schwartz A Celebration of the Arts
The Art of Sol Schwartz
A Celebration of the Arts The Welles Gallery Lenox, Massachusetts July 2013
Early Work This show is an overview of my life’s work. Many of the paintings and drawings have not been seen before even by me since I did them over 70 years ago. I though it might be interesting to see the work of an individual from the beginning to almost the end point of his life. The first image in this catalog is my first oil painting done on a cardboard from my father’s store. I had just entered the high school of Music and Art and had discovered Picasso and Braque. The 2nd painting is of my father’s laundry. My mother on the left at the sewing machine, my father weighing a bundle of dirty laundry and I in a balaclava hat having just come in from the cold with new bundles of dirty laundry. Eva Simon is in the lower right-hand corner ironing a shirt. The next oil painting was done in my first year in high school and an homage to Braque and Matisse, both recently discovered. The skeleton of the small horse biting a fly off his rear leg was done on Sunday at the Museum of Natural History , in New York while I attended high school. I discovered painting on the New York Times when I started college in the art department at Brooklyn College. The seltzer bottle with shells and bamboo was done in my 1st year in college and so was the horseshoe crab. This painting done at right is at 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue from the 2nd floor while they took down the 3rd Avenue elevated train.
The following still lifes with radiators and plants were all done in our honeymoon apartment on 3rd Avenue.
Landscapes This long narrow landscape was done on my honeymoon in Hampton Bays, of Penny Cove. It was done on masonite with casein paint. The next three paintings also on masonite were done along the Harlem River at Highbridge. The first two are oil, the last landscape is done in casein paint. This watercolor done in college is an aerial view of the Canarsie area in Brooklyn. The next two watercolors were done on sabbatical leave in Europe. The first of La Remise CafĂŠ in Cadenet, France, in the Provence, is a group of French singers who copy The Weavers singing folk songs in French. The next watercolor was done in Yugoslavia in the Neretva Valley. You can see the yellow grasses separated by waterways with some fishing boats and two small villages on either side of the valley. The mountains are black because the Venetians had stripped all the lumber from the mountainsides for their sailing vessels in the time of Othello.
Nudes I have included four figure drawings to demonstrate my love of the figure. They are all backs because of library rules where this show is taking place.
Dance These are a sampling of the many drawings of dancers at Jacob’s Pillow.
Savion Glover
Cloud Gate
Musicians
Garrick Ohlsson
Rafeal Popper-Keiser
Elliot Philips
Angela Lee
Jory Fankuchen
Portraits The next series of drawings, prints, and paintings are portraits of musicians, actors, friends and strangers.
Poppa Julius
Jeremy Comins
August Lindt
Gene Garfinkel
Walter McTeigue
Lillian
Elayne
Loet Vellman
Arin Arbus
Carol Hyatt
Jason Asprey
Audience member
Often when I am in the subway in New York City I encounter so many marvelous faces that I cannot resist drawing them even though it may be for only a few seconds. The last series of drawings was done recently on the number 6 IRT train which was packed and I could see these faces peeking out at me from across the aisle. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.
For over three decades, Mr. Schwartz has been drawing musicians, conductors, actors and dancers at cultural venues in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, Sarasota, FL, and New York, NY. He has an open invitation from many arts organizations to capture the vibrant and spontaneous spirit of the artists during performance and rehearsal. “It happened by accident,” the artist said. “I used to make little sketches in the corners of my programs when I attended concerts.” Eventually, he began bringing a sketchbook along to work in and, over the years, has completed thousands of studies, including likenesses of musical, dance, and theater superstars such as Andre Previn, Itzak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Seiji Ozawa, Yo-Yo Ma, Katherine Dunham, Savion Glover, Mark Morris and Tina Packer. “The novelty of my work is that I do it while a performance is underway, sometimes in the pitch dark,” Mr. Schwartz notes. He prefers not to adjust or complete an artwork after the fact, and enjoys the sense of immediacy that is conveyed by drawing on site. Working in pencil, ball point pen, and Japanese sumi brush, he tries to convey “the spirit of the production, that ineffable nature of a great performance.” His sketches, drawings and books can be viewed and purchased at galleries and museums throughout the Northeast region, as well as online at solschwartz.com. Mr. Schwartz resides in Lenox, Massachusetts and Sarasota, Florida.
All artwork ©2013 Sol Schwartz solschwartz.com
Design/production, Studio Two studiotwo.com
solschwartz.com