The Gift of Art
2
The Gift of Art Louis Newman Director of Modernism
LewAllenGalleries Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com cover: Emily Mason, Nom de Plume, 2017, oil on canvas, 67 x 52 in $52000
Bernard Chaet's career
spanned nearly 60 years and includes a long and distinguished history of prominent gallery and museum exhibitions. He served for many years as chair of the Yale University Art Department. Chaet’s paintings are known for possessing enormous energy and artistic conviction. There is a sense of classicism in his work that gives it a subconscious connection with the past, yet one that is entirely free of constraint or convention. Tradition is juxtaposed with a clear feeling for improvisation. His pictures can be likened to a sort of visual jazz: riffs of loaded brushstrokes are pulled across the surface then released in lively syncopation; images are built layer upon layer with an obvious delight in the tactility of the paint. In her essay for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition A Good Day for Painting at the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, University of Richmond, art historian Isabelle Dervaux concludes, "Chaet has found the natural expression of the abstract ideas he pursues in his art, the balance of forms, colors, rhythms, and textures that best materialize his sensations and emotions on the canvas."
above: Bernard Chaet (1924-2012), 3 Bathers, 1988 oil on canvas, 14 x 8 in $6000 right: Bernard Chaet (1924-2012), Girl with Telephone, 1970 oil on canvas, 54 x 36 in $32000
4
5
Brian Rutenberg’s response to the natural
world melds together both the seen and the imagined in masterful combinations of color and generously applied oil paint. His style is conspicuous and recognizable: high-keyed, fauvist-inflected color applied to the canvas with rich physicality and vigorous texture, revealing an ecstatic alertness to nature’s beauty. His vibrant, energetically choreographed compositions assert themselves with an idiosyncratic muscularity that bursts forward from the surfaces of his canvases. Over the course of his career, Rutenberg has moved away from the literal landscape in order to explore what he calls “sustained meditations on the sheer transformative power of looking.” Even though his paintings are populated with references to vaguely recognizable forms—trees, horizon, bodies of water— his work is anchored in a reverence for the aesthetic properties of paint itself. His paintings reflect a desire to immerse his viewers not only in the universe of the landscape, but more specifically in the universe of painting—which, to Rutenberg, has always manifested an artist’s state of profound wonder.
6
Brian Rutenberg Thicket, 2017 oil on linen, 52 x 77 in $42000
7
SKIP STEINWORTH’s radiant drawings, rendered with extraordinary finesse and minimal context, reach for the infinite. Steinworth states, “It’s a process of mentally deconstructing, analyzing and distilling the visual essence of a subject.” In his hands, a potted plant becomes far more than just a potted plant: effortlessly, he transcends subject matter by capturing its ultimate, almost spiritual essence, what Ingres called its “inner form.” While Steinworth’s drawings, according to Art Scene Magazine, are “gutsy in their rejection of bombast,” they retain a remarkable energy in their masterful composition and evocation of light, space, and form. 8
above: Skip Steinworth, Apple, 2016 graphite on board, 13.75 x 11 in $6500 left: Skip Steinworth, Beachstones #7, 2017 graphite on board, 11 x 11 in $9000
9
David Ligare, Woman with a Box (Pandora), 2016, oil on canvas, 38 x 48 in $45000
10
David Ligare, Still Life with Pitcher and Cherries, 2017, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in $26000
For more than fifty years, David Ligare has executed paintings that seem like reincarnations of the very spirit of classicism. These exquisitely detailed representational paintings incorporate an evocative visual language inspired by Greco/Roman mythology, art and culture. In their composition, they echo the graceful elegance of classical ideals of balance, unity from oppositional forces, restraint and geometric proportion. Often their allegorical subjects allude to Greek and Roman myths, which Ligare views as timelessly relevant to excellence in contemporary life
11
Bill Barrett explores the
interplay between positive and negative space with grace, elegance, and incomparable technical mastery. Barrett’s sophisticated constructions in fabricated aluminum, bronze, and steel strike an exquisite balance between volume and space, light and shadow, organic intuition and tectonic invention. His manipulation of the formal relationships between these forces amass a fluid choreography of polyrhythmic counterbalances and reveals the masterful skill and unequaled vision of one of the foremost sculptors of our time. The energy of gesture infuses his graceful, dance-like forms with an elegant spontaneity reminiscent of action painting and the improvisational spirit of Abstract Expressionism. For this reason Barrett’s work manifest a striking quality of kinesis that manages to seem graceful and organic despite the solidity of the metal medium. For Barrett, artwork is “a vehicle through which my humanity communicates with the viewer’s. There is beauty in humanity—and art that reflects this beauty can elevate the quality of life.”
right: Bill Barrett, Libretto, 2007 fabricated bronze & stainless steel, 114 x 96 x 51 in Price on Request above: Bill Barrett, Bonsai, 2015 cast bronze, 20 x 14 x 7 in $20,000
12
13
Renowned Italian sculptor, printmaker and painter Mimmo Paladino gained international recognition in 1980 when his work was showcased at the Transavantgarde-specific Aperto exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Paladino was part of the Transavantgarde movement, a neo-expressionist art movement that swept through Italy and the rest of Western Europe in the latter part of the 20th century. This movement sought to return figuration, mysticism and emotion back into avante-garde art that many believed presently lacking in painting and sculpture. Paladino's work is part of the permanent collections of prominent museums worldwide including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Tate, London; Kunstmuseum, Basel; Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf; Berlin Neue Galeries; Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, France; Los Angeles County Art Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and Setegaya Museum in Tokyo. Mimmo Paladino Untitled, c. 1995 terracotta, 53 x 19 x 10 in $45000
2
3
Ben Aronson, View from a Window, 2019 oil on panel, 48 x 36 in $36000
4
Ben Aronson, Lake Shore, Chicago, 2017, oil on panel, 24 x 24 in $22000
BEN ARONSON is recognized as one of America’s most respected
painters of the contemporary urban landscape. With paintings included in the permanent collections of more than fifty museums, Aronson’s paintings of the material sensations of the city activate both memory and the imagination. The most recent exhibition of new work by the artist, entitled Views from Above, featured paintings that reorient the viewer to a higher, more contemplative vantage point: the rooftops. In these paintings, the viewer is situated high off the ground, the visceral tumult of city life receding from view and its clamor reduced to a low hum.
5
Wishing you happy holidays and a healthy and prosperous new year
Louis Newman 6
7
Emily Mason, Look Further On, 2012 oil on canvas, 54.25 x 26.25 in $28000
Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com Prices as listed are current as of December 1, 2019 and subject to change. Š 2019 LewAllen Contemporary LLC Artwork Š LewAllen Galleries