Made in America - The Thousands Lights of New York

NORMAN

JAMES

FRITZ

JOHN

SAM

BLUHM

BROOKS

BULTMAN

FERREN

FRANCIS

MADE IN AMERICA The Thousand Lights of New York

MICHAEL

JOHN

PAUL

MARCA

BEVERLY

GOLDBERG

GRILLO

JENKINS

RELLI

PEPPER

MADE IN AMERICA The Thousand Lights of New York

MADE IN AMERICA The Thousand Lights of New York texts by Beatrice Buscaroli

GALLERIA OPEN ART PRATO

MADE IN AMERICA The Thousand Lights of New York GALLERIA OPEN ART, PRATO 18 November 2017 - 27 January 2018

Testi a cura di | Texts by Beatrice Buscaroli Produzione e coordinamento Production and coordination Mauro Stefanini Realizzazione grafica | Graphics-layout Andrea Giurintano Supervisione | Supervision Giovanni Carfagnini Traduzione e revisione in lingua inglese Translation and English-language editing Paula Elise Boomsliter per Lexis srl, Firenze Edizioni | Publisher Carlo Cambi Editore, Poggibonsi (SI) Digital cromalin | Digital chromalin Tap Grafiche, Poggibonsi (SI) Stampa | Printing Tap Grafiche, Poggibonsi (SI) Assicurazioni | Insurance

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All works by Paul Jenkins: © The Estate of Paul Jenkins

Frontespizio | Title page Paul Jenkins Eyes of the Dove: For Mantic Medium 1959 Oil and enamel on canvas 99 x 74 cm. (detail)

CONTENTS

MADE IN AMERICA 1 Le Mille Luci di New York 2 The Thousand Lights of New York Beatrice Buscaroli 12 Norman Bluhm 30 James Brooks 40 Fritz Bultman 46 John Ferren 50 Sam Francis 58 Michael Goldberg 64 John Grillo 68 Paul Jenkins 90 Conrad Marca-Relli 106 Beverly Pepper

MADE IN AMERICA Le Mille Luci di New York

La natura dell’arte si è fatta incerta, o, quantomeno, ambigua.

Nessuno può dire con certezza che cosa sia o, quel che più conta, che cosa non sia un’opera d’arte. Dove è presente un oggetto d’arte, come nella pittura, si tratta di ciò che ho definito un “oggetto ansioso”.

H.Rosenberg, La s-definizione dell’arte, 1972

Ansie a parte, forse è proprio un musical il filo rosso che annoda i segmenti di una mappa rigogliosa, esuberante, densa di melodie, di cadenze, così come di soluzioni di continuità, di fratture, che nella New York dell’immediato secondo dopoguerra investe le arti.

La diaspora dei maestri del Bauhaus, da Walter Gropius a László Moholy-Nagy, da Josef Albers a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, si è ormai compiuta. La Nuova Frontiera indicata dalla grande mostra dell’Armory Show nel 1913, già attraversata da Marcel Duchamp e da Salvador Dalí, ora si presenta come il grande teatro nel quale le esperienze del modernismo artistico possono trovare attenzione e una risonanza mondiale.

Nel 1942 Peggy Guggenheim apre la galleria-museo Art of This Century; Leo Krausz (Leo Castelli), dopo le collaborazioni parigine a fianco di René Drouin, è impegnato nella ricerca dei giovani talenti che si affollano nella “grande mela” e, nel 1957, apre la sua galleria.

La “scuola di New York” sta sbocciando tumultuosa sul finire degli anni Quaranta, accomunando i cultori del segno e del gesto pittorico – gli action painters – e coloro che invece prediligono le relazioni tra forma e colore – i color field painters. Nel 1950, gli irascibili – come spregiativamente li chiama l’ “Herald Tribune” – contestano vivacemente il progetto di mostra presentato dal Metropolitan Museum. Tra di essi, assieme a Barnett Newman, ci sono Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Clifford Still, Arshile Gorky: il cuore di quell’ “espressionismo astratto” che sta ricercando un equilibrio originale tra vigore del segno e “sublime”, tra astrazione e visione interiore.

Ma non solo. C’è una generazione di artisti che ha interrotto gli studi con Hans Hofmann o con Barnett Newman, con Clyfford Still o con Adolph Gottlieb, che ha combattuto, ma che ha voglia di riprendere a “fare arte”, per confrontarsi con gli esiti più sorprendenti che si stanno dispiegando nella East Coast. Sam Francis, Gandy Brody, Lawrence Calcagno, Norman Bluhm, John Hultberg appartengono a questa schiera di talenti che si appresta a scendere in campo.

Eppure, all’interno di questo musical, che relazioni si stringono tra le visioni metafisiche di Hultberg e le installazioni di Jim Dine? Tra i “color fields” di Francis e di Paul Jenkins e i “fantasmi architettonici” di Louise Nevelson? Tra il concettualissimo pop di Alex Katz e le nebulose spaziali di Claire Falkenstein? O, ancora, tra lo spirito zen del gruppo giapponese Gutai e il materismo informale di Antoni Tàpies o la grazia drammatica delle combustioni e dei legni di Alberto Burri? Nessuna, o per meglio dire, la sola relazione è Martha Jackson.

E a tener unite quelle esperienze tanto differenti è il desiderio della collezionista Martha Jackson; un desiderio che – negli anni di vita della sua galleria newyorkese, tra il 1953 e il 1969, anno della sua morte (gli succede il figlio David Anderson) – sopravanza di gran lunga lo spirito mercantile che

La locandina della mostra 9th St. Show, tenutasi a New York dal 21 maggio al 10 giugno 1951 Poster announcing the 9th St. Show, held in New York from May 21st to June 10th, 1951

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MADE IN AMERICA The Thousand Lights of New York

‘The nature of art has become uncertain. At least, it is ambiguous.

No one can say with assurance what a work of art is – or, more important, what is not a work of art. Where an art object is still present, as in painting, it is what I have called an anxious object ...’

H.Rosenberg, The De-Definition of Art, 1972

Anxieties aside, perhaps the fil rouge that tied up the segments of the luxuriant, exuberant map which limned the arts in the New York of the immediate post-WWII period is a musical, as dense with melodies, with cadences, as it is with interruptions, with fractures.

The diaspora of the masters of the Bauhaus, from Walter Gropius to László Moholy-Nagy, from Josef Albers to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was by then accomplished fact. The New Frontier announced by the great Armory Show of 1913, already crossed by Marcel Duchamp and by Salvador Dalí, now opened out as the great theatre in which the experiences of modernist art could find a worldwide audience and international resonance.

In 1942, Peggy Guggenheim opened her Art of This Century museum-gallery; Leo Krausz (Leo Castelli), after working in Paris side by side with René Drouin, was busy sifting through the new talents that flocked to the Big Apple and opened his gallery in 1957.

The New York School exploded into tumultuous bloom in the late Forties, bringing together devotees of the pictorial sign and gesture – the action painters – and those who instead preferred relationships between form and colour – the colour field painters. In 1950, the ‘Irascibles’ – as they were disparagingly labelled by the Herald Tribune – noisily protested the exhibition project presented by the Metropolitan Museum. Among them, together with Barnett Newman, were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, Arshile Gorky: the coal and ice of that ‘abstract impressionism’ that was looking for an original balance between the vigour of the sign and the ‘sublime’, between abstraction and inner vision.

But that’s not all. There was a whole generation of artists who had interrupted their studies with Hans Hofmann or with Barnett Newman, with Clyfford Still or with Adolph Gottlieb, artists who had seen combat and were determined to come home to ‘make art’, to confront the most surprising of the manoeuvres on the East Coast front. Sam Francis, Gandy Brody, Lawrence Calcagno, Norman Bluhm, John Hultberg: a battalion of new talents ready to enter the fray.

Yet we are wont to ask, just what are the recurring melodies, in this our musical, the links between Hultberg’s metaphysical visions and Jim Dine’s installations? Between Sam Francis’ and Paul Jenkins’ colour fields and Louise Nevelson’s ‘architectural ghosts’? Between Alex Katz’s pop

Una fotografia di 15 dei cosiddetti Irascibili, scattata da Nina Leen il 24 novembre 1950 e pubblicata su Life magazine il 15 gennaio 1951. In primo piano: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks e Mark Rothko; in secondo piano: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell e Bradley Walker Tomlin; dietro: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt e Hedda Sterne.

A photograph of 15 of the so-called Irascibles, taken by Nina Leen on November 24, 1950 and published in Life magazine on January 15, 1951. Front row: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, and Mark Rothko; middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Bradley Walker Tomlin; back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne. © photo by Nina Leen, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

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conceptualism and Claire Falkenstein’s spatial nebulae? Or, again, between the Zen spirit of the Japanese Gutai group and Antoni Tàpies informal pintura matèrica or the dramatic grace of the combustions and woods advanced by Alberto Burri? There aren’t any – or better, there is only one: Martha Jackson.

To hold together those so disparate experiences was what collector Martha Jackson set out to do; a mission which – in the years of existence of her New York gallery, from 1953 to her death in 1969 (after which it continued through her son, David Anderson) - far surpassed that mercantile calling which in any case cannot be dissociated from the life of the gallery.

Hers was an attention to art, an inclination that matured slowly and perhaps by chance. Jackson was born in Buffalo in 1907 to an influential family of chemical-sector industrialists. She studied English literature and in 1940 accepted an invitation to join the advisory council of the Albright Art Gallery. From Buffalo she moved to Baltimore, where she began studying art history; in 1949 she landed in New York, where she continued her studies at MOMA and under Hans Hofmann.

It was in this brief period, from 1949 to 1953 (when she opened her first New York gallery), that Jackson began collecting art, following her own lights, uninfluenced by doctrinal annotations, refusing to choose sides: it was her taste – or if one prefers, her intuition – that drew her to artists marked for success: Sam Francis, Karel Appel, John Hultberg, Paul Jenkins, Antoni Tàpies, Gandy Brody, Lawrence Calcagno, Larry Rivers. But these are only a few of the ‘new talents’ loved and pursued by Jackson. Her collection was much more articulated and complex, including works by innumerable artists, from Max Beckmann to Marc Chagall, from Hans Hofmann to Mark Tobey, from Arshile Gorky to Henry Moore, from Georgia O’Keeffe to Willem de Kooning.

Perhaps it was thanks to this capacity of hers to unite the most variegated traditions of modernism with the expressive rustlings of the younger generations, to her constant effort to embrace all that was happening in Europe as well as in the States, that made her decade-long gallery experience an almost unique instance on the art panorama in the Big Apple in those golden years.

That gallery was the venue for the major showing of de Kooning’s Women in 1955 ; for the first New York exhibition by the Gutai group in 1958; for the ‘seminal’ New Forms-New Media show of 1960; for Allan Kaprow’s Yard happening in 1961. And, of course, it offered solo debuts to Appel, Christo, Gottlieb, Nevelson, Tàpies, Jenkins, Dine, as well as sculptor John Chamberlain.

The experience was acclaimed by such influential critics as Harold Rosenberg, Lucy Lippard and Michel Tapié, but above all by the artists who had the good fortune to take part in the adventures of that singularly unordinary, ‘outdated’, anti-ideological and independent collector who was Martha Jackson.

Unordinary, and complex: a story open to revisitation from numerous viewpoints, through multiple filters, following different promptings, because it was from that experience that other, divergent but not unlike experiences and visual researches branched out: what emerged, always, was Jackson’s inquisitiveness as a collector, more than her interests as a gallerist.

One of these filters, inevitably, is Jackson’s love of painting and for the variations that persisted within ‘abstract expressionism’.

Beginning with the older John Ferren who, after briefly attending what is now the California Institute of the Arts in San Francisco, moved to Paris in the late 1920s and joined the Abstraction-Création group, befriending Hans Hofmann and Henri Matisse; when he returned to the U.S. he became acquainted with the Taoist and Zen Buddhist culture that propelled him toward creating an original relationship between abstract components and architectural dimensions in his canvases: a sort of spiritual writing which grew in importance for him in the Sixties following a stay in Lebanon, in 1963, that kindled his awareness of Islamic art.

The ‘collection’ is further enriched by the robust, energetic painting of Norman Bluhm, in which echoes of his art history studies in Florence and Paris and his closeness to the poetry of such authors as Frank O’Hara converge toward an image of orgiastic intensity, in which natural, physical, transeunt elements confront a spiritual universe of massed algid lights, rents in its fabric, original spatial perspectives.

And it continues with that James Brooks whose paintings, as Rosenberg noted, have a sensuous beauty, a formal control and an orchestrated colour which are not the common products of pure spontaneity or introspection. Painting that came from murals and that approached abstract expressionism in the late Forties as a reflection on the landscape; painting as capable of subtracting itself from Hofmann’s ebulliences as from the metaphysical postulates of action painting.

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comunque è indissociabile dalla vita della galleria stessa.

Un’attenzione, un’inclinazione che matura lentamente e forse in modo casuale nella vita della Jackson, nata a Buffalo nel 1907 da un’influente famiglia di industriali che opera nel settore della chimica. Studia letteratura inglese e, nel 1940, viene eletta nel consiglio della Albright Art Gallery. Da Buffalo si sposta a Baltimora per iniziare gli studi di storia dell’arte e, nel 1949, approda a New York, dove prosegue gli studi al MOMA e sotto la guida di Hans Hofmann. È in questo breve periodo, tra il 1949 e il 1953 (allorché apre la prima galleria newyorkese), che la Jackson si impegna a collezionare le opere, seguendo un suo gusto tutto particolare, non condizionato da annotazioni dottrinarie, da scelte di campo: è il suo gusto, o se si preferisce la sua intuizione, che l’avvicina ad artisti destinati al successo: Sam Francis, Karel Appel, John Hultberg, Paul Jenkins, Antoni Tàpies, Gandy Brody, Lawrence Calcagno, Larry Rivers. Se questi sono alcuni dei new Talent amati e inseguiti dalla Jackson, la sua collezione è ben più articolata e complessa: da Max Beckmann a Marc Chagall, da Hans Hofmann a Mark Tobey, da Arshile Gorky a Henry Moore, da Georgia O’Keeffe a Willem de Kooning.

Forse è per questa sua capacità di coniugare le più variegate tradizioni del modernismo con i fremiti espressi dalle generazioni più giovani, questo suo costante sforzo di aprirsi anche a quanto in Europa si stava verificando, che rendono l’esperienza decennale della sua galleria un caso pressoché unico nel panorama della “grande mela” di quegli anni dorati.

In quella galleria ha luogo un’importante esposizione delle Women di de Kooning nel 1955; la prima esposizione newyorkese del gruppo Gutai, nel 1958; la mostra “seminale” New Forms-New Media, nel 1960; l’happening Yard di Allan Kaprow, nel 1961. E, ancora, lì sono ospitate le prime personali di Appel, Christo, Gottlieb, Nevelson, Tàpies, Jenkins, Dine, nonché dello scultore John Chamberlain.

L’esperienza è apprezzata da critici influenti come Harold Rosenberg, Lucy Lippard e Michel Tapié, ma soprattutto dagli artisti che hanno avuto occasione di collaborare alle avventure di quella singolarissima “collezionista inattuale”, antiideologica e indipendente, che è stata Martha Jackson.

Singolarissima e complessa: una vicenda che può essere rivisitata attraverso molteplici punti di osservazione, filtri, suggestioni, poiché da essa si dipartono esperienze e ricerche visive divergenti, ma non difformi: è la sua curiosità di collezionista, prima che di gallerista, a emergere sempre.

Uno di questi filtri è inevitabilmente il suo amore per la pittura e per le variazioni che insistono all’interno dell’ “espressionismo astratto”.

A cominciare dal più anziano John Ferren che, formatosi all’Istituto di Belle Arti di San Francisco, alla fine degli anni Venti si trasferisce a Parigi, aderendo al gruppo di Abstraction-Création. Amico di Hofmann e di Henri Matisse, al ritorno negli USA si avvicina alla cultura Zen e Taoista per ricreare nelle sue tele una originale relazione tra componenti astratte e dimensione architettonica dell’immagine: una sorta di scrittura spirituale che negli anni Sessanta, dopo un soggiorno in Libano nel 1963, si accentua grazie al suo interesse per l’arte islamica.

La “collezione” si arricchisce poi della robusta ed energetica pittura di Norman Bluhm, dove l’eco degli studi in storia dell’arte condotti a Firenze e a Parigi, e la profonda vicinanza alla poesia di autori come Frank O’Hara, convergono verso un’immagine di intensità orgiastica in cui elementi naturali, fisici, transeunti sono messi a confronto con un universo spirituale denso di luci algide, di squarci, di originali prospettive spaziali.

Per proseguire con quel James Brooks la cui pittura, come nota Rosenberg, mostra “una bellezza sensuale, un controllo e un’orchestrazione del colore che non è puro prodotto della spontaneità o dell’introspezione”. Una pittura che proviene dal muralismo e che si avvicina all’espressionismo astratto verso la fine degli anni Quaranta, come riflessione sul paesaggio, ed è capace di sottrarsi dalle esuberanze di Hofmann, così come dai postulati metafisici dell’ action painting.

E poi Sam Francis, allievo di Clifford Still, ma parigino d’adozione, viaggiatore all’interno della cultura giapponese come risulta evidente dall’inserimento nei suoi dipinti di pratiche artistiche orientali: l’uso di sottili strati di colore e ampi spazi lasciati vuoti.

A partire dai primi anni Sessanta Francis inizia una serie di opere dove appare la forma biomorfica del colore blu, a contrassegnare la progressiva degenerazione dei corpi, la sofferenza che in essi si annida. Poi sembra prevalere un’immagine che registra le suggestioni dell’in5

Catalogo della mostra Recent Oils by Willem de Kooning, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 9 novembre – 3 dicembre 1955 Exhibition catalogue of Recent Oils by Willem de Kooning, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, November 9th – December 3rd, 1955 Courtesy of The Estate of Paul Jenkins

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Martha Jackson presso la Martha Jackson Gallery, giugno 1969 A destra: Paul Jenkins, Phenomena Mars Red 1969, acrilico su tela Martha Jackson in the Martha Jackson Gallery, June 1969 Right: Paul Jenkins, Phenomena Mars Red 1969, acrylic on canvas from Selections from The Martha Jackson Collection, an exhibition organized by Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1975

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Then there is Sam Francis, pupil of Clyfford Still but Parisian by adoption, voyager through Japanese culture as is clear from his insertion of Asian art practices into his paintings: his use of thinly layered colours and ample spaces left empty.

In the early Sixties, Francis began a series of works in which there appears a biomorphic form in blue, marking the progressive degeneration of bodies, the suffering nested within them. Later there seems to prevail an image that records reminders from the unconscious, fruit of the intensive Jungian analysis he underwent over the course of the Seventies.

And more: John Grillo, who from the figurative premises of the Bay Area movement in Richard Diebenkorn’s San Francisco, went on to geometric abstraction with strong architectural and luminist overtones; lyrical, musical, rhythmic.

Paul Jenkins defined himself ‘an abstract phenomenist’. Under the GI Bill, he studied for four years with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League in New York. Influenced by Asian philosophy, Kant and Goethe’s colour theory, at the close of the Fifties he began painting in acrylics, using an ivory knife to spread his paints: ‘I can control the flow of paint and guide it to discover forms. The ivory knife is an essential tool in this because it does not gouge the canvas, it allows me to guide the paint.’

Throughout his life, he shared his time between New York and Paris where he met Jean Dubuffet, Michel Tapié, Pierre Restany, Zoe Dusanne, Kenneth B. Sawyer as well as other American artists working there at the time.

In 1964 he visited Japan and, in Osaka, worked with members of the Gutai group. In 1966, the film entitled The Ivory Knife produced by Martha Jackson won the prestigious Golden Eagle Award at the Venice Film Festival.

It goes on, with Beverly Pepper’s sculpture. In 1950, as a painter, she moved to Italy where she came into contact with the Forma 1 group. A trip to Cambodia and a visit to the temple at Angkor changed her vocation. According to Pepper, she realised that what had been missing from her world was a physical dimension; that she enjoyed combat and that there wasn’t enough of it on canvas. So she decided to sculpt. To make sculpture with a strong monumental impact using ‘industrial’ materials like concrete and steel; sculpture which, over the course of the years, has acquired a marked verticalism veined with strong, totemic lyricism.

And more yet, with Conrad Marca-Relli’s rough-surfaced plastic images seeking a link between the Italian tradition – for which the artist harboured an abiding love – and the instances of the Irascibles, a synthesis of rigour and immediacy, of niceties of style and spontaneity. He was a supreme master of the painted collage as well, always animated by an extreme subjectivism meant to overcome any and all separation between the tangible and the abstract image.

Michael Goldberg, like many of Jackson’s authors, was a WWII veteran, a leading exponent among the second generation of New York School artists, pupil of Hofmann, intimate friend of Pollock and de Kooning. His is a complex painting style at the point of convergence of Western metaphysics and Asian philosophy.

To conclude with Fritz Bultman, who studied architecture and design, first with László Moholy-Nagy in Chicago, then with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College, and completed his training in painting with Hofmann in New York. One of the founders of the Irascibles group, his painting interweaves geometry and symbolism, strands drawn from physical space and from searched-for inner dimensions. The same tensions and integrations that manifest in his sculpture, which he studied in the Florence of the 1950s. In all these artists admired or loved or collected by Martha Jackson we feel, in some measure, that ‘anxiety’ seen by Rosenberg in the great New York art musical of the Fifties.

In the sense not only of the more or less violent break with the European tradition, of the supremacy of abstraction over narration championed by Clement Greenberg; rather, of a concerted effort to rediscover an original tie linking artistic cultures, both Western and Eastern, that could prove the plastic gesture capable of restoring ‘humanity’ to the arts, of restoring a balance between how the image was made and what it represented.

Beatrice Buscaroli

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conscio, frutto dell’intensiva analisi junghiana cui si sottopone nel corso degli anni Settanta.

Ancora: John Grillo, che dalle premesse figurative della “Bay Area” della San Francisco di Richard Diebenkorn, approda a un’astrazione geometrica dalla profonda impronta architettonica e luministica, un’astrazione lirica, musicale, ritmica.

“An abstract Phenomenist”, si definisce Paul Jenkins. Grazie al G.I. Bill, studia per 4 anni con Yasuo Kuniyoshi presso l’Art Student League di New York. Influenzato dalla filosofia orientale, da Kant e dalla teoria del colore di Goethe, a partire dalla fine degli anni Cinquanta inizia a dipingere con i colori acrilici utilizzando un coltello d’osso per distendere le porzioni di colore e controllare il fluire diretto della pittura: “I can control the flow of paint and guide it to discover forms. The ivory knife is an essential tool in this because it does not gouge the canvas, it allows me to guide the paint”.

Durante la sua vita si divide tra New York e Parigi, città dove entra in contatto con Jean Dubuffet, Michel Tapié, Pierre Restany, Zoe Dusanne, Kenneth B. Sawyer ed altri artisti americani che, come lui, lavorano nella capitale francese.

Nel 1964 visita il Giappone e, a Osaka, collabora con i membri del gruppo Gutai. Nel 1966 Martha Jackson produce il film The Ivory Knife, che viene premiato al Festival del Cinema di Venezia con il prestigioso Golden Eagle Award.

Per proseguire con la scultura di Beverly Pepper. Nel 1950, ancora pittrice, si trasferisce in Italia dove entra in contatto con il gruppo di Forma 1.

Un viaggio in Cambogia e la visita al tempio di Angkor mutano la sua vocazione artistica: “Sentivo – ricorda – che c’era qualcosa che mancava nel mio mondo ed era la dimensione fisica. A me piace il combattimento e nei quadri non c’era abbastanza”. Decide allora di dedicarsi alla scultura. Una scultura che si caratterizza per il forte impatto monumentale, che utilizza materiali “industriali”, come il cemento e l’acciaio e che, nel corso degli anni, ha acquisito un verticalismo venato di un forte lirismo totemico.

E, ancora, con le ruvide immagini plastiche di Conrad Marca-Relli, che cerca un legame tra la tradizione italiana – nei confronti della quale nutre un amore profondo – e le istanze degli “irascibili”, una sintesi tra rigore e immediatezza, raffinatezza e spontaneità. Maestro supremo anche nel collage-painting, sempre animato da un soggettivismo estremo volto a superare ogni separazione tra tangibile e immagine astratta.

Michael Goldberg, come tanti degli autori della Jackson, è reduce della guerra mondiale, esponente di spicco della seconda generazione della “Scuola di New York”, allievo di Hofmann, amico intimo di Pollock e di de Kooning. Elabora una pittura complessa nella quale convergono metafisica occidentale e filosofia orientale.

Per finire con Fritz Bultman, la cui formazione si avvale degli studi in architettura e design, prima con László Moholy-Nagy a Chicago, poi con Josef Albers al Black Mountain College, e completarsi con la pittura di Hofmann a New York.

Tra i fondatori del gruppo degli “irascibili”, la sua pittura condensa geometria e simbolismo, trame dello spazio fisico e ricerca di dimensioni interiori. Tensioni e integrazioni che si manifestano anche nella sua scultura, che elabora e approfondisce a Firenze negli anni Cinquanta.

In un certo senso allora in questi autori che Martha Jackson ha amato o collezionato mostrano, almeno in parte, il senso di “ansietà” che Rosenberg individuava nel grande musical newyorchese.

Non solo la rottura più o meno violenta nei confronti della tradizione europea, il primato dell’astrazione sulla narrazione caro a Clement Greenberg; ma piuttosto lo sforzo di riscoprire un legame originale tra le culture artistiche, sia occidentali che orientali, dove il gesto plastico sia in grado di restituire “umanità” alle arti, dove il come si realizza l’immagine e il che cosa essa rappresenti siano capaci di ritrovare un equilibrio.

Beatrice Buscaroli

P. 10 Norman Bluhm Ingot 1960 Oil on canvas 63 x 92 cm. (detail)

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PLATES

NORMAN BLUHM ( 1921 - 1999 )

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Norman Bluhm nasce nel 1921.

Studia architettura con Ludwig Mies van der Rohe a Chicago. Arruolato durante la Seconda guerra mondiale, dopo il congedo decide di iniziare gli studi artistici, all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze e poi all’ École des Beaux Arts di Parigi, dove vive dal 1948 al 1956, frequentando Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis e Jean-Claude Riopelle.

La sua pittura vitalistica, orgiastica, alterna le delicatezze e i profumi di un’astrazione lirica di impianto quasi naturalistico ai rigori spirituali, algidi, che innervano le sue originali prospettive spaziali. Una pittura “appassionata” che per l’amico poeta Frank O’Hara è paragonabile solo a quella di Cézanne.

Muore nel 1999.

Norman Bluhm was born in 1921.

He studied architecture with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Chicago before serving in World War II; after his discharge, he decided to study art, enrolling at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence and then at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he lived from 1948 to 1956 and frequented such artists as Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis and Jean-Claude Riopelle.

His vitalistic, orgiastic painting alternates the delicacy of a lyrical abstractionism of almost naturalistic structure with the frozen spiritual rigour that innervates his original spatial perspectives. For his friend and collaborator, poet Frank O’Hara, his was ‘impassioned’ painting comparable only to Cézanne’s.

Bluhm died in 1999.

Norman Bluhm nel suo atelier, 333 Park Avenue South, New York, 1959 Norman Bluhm in his studio, 333 Park Avenue South, New York, 1959 photo by George Moffett-Lensgroup, New York © Estate Norman Bluhm

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NORMAN BLUHM Ingot 1960 Oil on canvas 63 x 92 cm.

Provenance Collection the Artist Galleria Peccolo, Livorno Private Collection, Italia Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature “Norman Bluhm - Opere 1959-1967”, texts by R. Ferdani, N.Bluhm, Ed. Roberto Peccolo, Livorno, oct. 1998, p. 9 (ill. in colors) “Norman Bluhm” texts by J. Harithas, R. Rubinstein, L. Sansone, Mazzotta ed., Milan, 2000, no page, (ill. in colors) Exhibited Galleria Peccolo, Livorno, 1998

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Norman Bluhm e Barnett Newman, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 24 marzo 1959 Norman Bluhm and Barnett Newman, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, March 24 1959 Š photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images

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NORMAN BLUHM Untitled 1961 Oil on paper 76,2 x 57 cm.

Provenance Collection Marc Moyens, Washington D. C. Gallery Marc, Washington D. C. Galerie K, Washington D. C. Osuna Art Gallery, Kensington

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NORMAN BLUHM Untitled (for John Ashbery) 1964 Oil on canvas 116 x 73 cm.

Provenance The Artist A gift from the artist to John Ashberry 1965 Manny Silverman Gallery Los Angeles,CA Private Collection Los Angeles,CA David Klein Gallery Birmingham,MI Galleria Open Art, Prato

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The choise of art in the life of man is, without a doubt, the choise of loneliness in the motion of time, in so far as loneliness or remoteness is but the effort of man to touch that which is beyond the reach of his fingers (…) Nevertheless, there are no tears: even though one lives on the edge of the glass, joy is forever the unknown.

NORMAN BLUHM

L’artista al lavoro nel suo studio, 1970 The artist at work in his studio, 1970s photo Kerby Smith © Estate Norman Bluhm

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Copertine del catalogo della mostra Norman Bluhm, Galleria Rinaldo Rotta, Genova + Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1974 Covers of the exhibition catalogue Norman Bluhm, Galleria Rinaldo Rotta, Genova + Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1974

NORMAN BLUHM Orthys 1973 Oil on paper laid down on canvas 80,5 x 107 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Literature P. Schjeldhal: Norman Bluhm, Galleria Rinaldo Rotta, Genova + Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1974 Exhibited Galleria Rinaldo Rotta, Genova, 1974

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NORMAN BLUHM Hypsipyle 1973 Oil on paper laid down on canvas 91,7 x 107 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Literature P. Schjeldhal: Norman Bluhm, Galleria Rinaldo Rotta, Genova + Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1974 Exhibited Galleria Rinaldo Rotta, Genova, 1974

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NORMAN BLUHM Capella 1974 Oil on canvas 16 x 68 cm.

Provenance Galerie Stadler, Parigi Galerie Michel Vidal, Parigi Galleria Open Art, Prato

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Norman Bluhm e Pierre Soulages alla Galerie Stadler, Parigi, 1968 Norman Bluhm and Pierre Soulages at the Galerie Stadler, Paris, 1968 Š 2000 Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta, Foro Buonaparte 52 - 20121 Milano

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JAMES BROOKS ( 1906 - 1992 )

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James Brooks nasce nel 1906.

Dopo un’iniziale fase realista, testimoniata dal murale Flight, eseguito per l’aeroporto LaGuardia di New York nel 1942, comincia a sperimentare un tipo di pittura automatica che impiega utilizza colori molto diluiti che vengono lasciati essiccare in modo incontrollato sulla tela. Nella seconda metà degli anni Quaranta utilizza anche pittura industriale, che gli consente di creare superfici dense e profonde. Amico di Jackson Pollock e di Lee Krasner, è considerato uno dei precursori dell’espressionismo astratto. Negli anni successivi la sua esplorazione pura del colore e della forma si presenta sovente corredata da interventi calligrafici.

Muore nel 1992.

James Brooks was born in 1906.

Following an initial foray into Realism, as witnessed by the mural Flight, painted for New York’s LaGuardia airport in 1942, Brooks began experimenting with a type of ‘automatic’ painting using very diluted oil paints, leaving them to dry as they would on the canvas as ‘painterly accidents’. In the late 1940s he also made use of industrial paints, which permitted him to create dense, fathomless surfaces. A friend of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Brooks is considered a precursor of abstract expressionism. In later years, his explorations of pure colour and form were often accompanied by use of calligraphy.

Brooks died in 1992.

James Brooks, anni ‘50 James Brooks, 1950s © photo Hans Namuth

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JAMES BROOKS Quod 1961 Oil on canvas 122 x 170 cm.

Provenance Kootz Gallery, New York Rudolf and Leonore Blum, Zumikon Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature Plane/Figure: Amerikanische Kunst aus Schweizer Sammlungen. Winterthur: Kunstmuseum (2006) Exhibited Winterthur, Kunstmuseum, 2006

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Painting remains for me the process of starting a canvas with as little memory, or even intention, as is possible – so that it represents at that beginning stage a thing foreign to my habits and clichés. The painting of it from then on is a dialogue, an argument, a conflict at times – which in the end changes both the painting and the painter.

JAMES BROOKS 21 August 1967

Jackson Pollock e James Brooks nello studio di Brooks a Montauk, 1950 Jackson Pollock and James Brooks, 1950, in Brooks’ studio, Montauk © photo Hans Namuth, New York

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Copertina del catalogo della mostra Recent Paintings by James Brooks, Martha Jackson Gallery, 1968 Cover of the exhibition catalogue Recent Paintings by James Brooks, Martha Jackson Gallery, 1968

JAMES BROOKS Dorc 1968 Oil on canvas 32,9 x 48,6 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato Private Collection, Lugano

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JAMES BROOKS Untitled E 1968 Acrylic, ink and oil on paper 61 x 45 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York The Museum of Modern Art, New York Collection Dr. and Mrs. Henry and Mary Ann Gans, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature E. H. Varian: James Brooks, Finch College Museum of Art and Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1975, ill. p. 34, n. 48 Exhibited Finch College Museum of Art, April 30 – June 8, 1975 Guild Hall Museum, E. Hampton, June 18 – July 7, 1975 Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan, July 15, Aug. 10, 1975 Grand Rapids Art Museum, August 15 – Sept. 4, 1975 Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Sept. 21 – Oct 26, 1975 University of Connecticut in Storrs, Nov. 19 – Dec. 13, 1975 Summit Art Center, Summit, NJ, Jan 11 – Febr 8, 1976

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FRITZ BULTMAN ( 1919 - 1985 )

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Fritz Bultman nasce nel 1919.

Erede di una ricca famiglia di New Orleans, i suoi interessi inizialmente si rivolgono all’architettura e al design. Studia a Chicago con László Moholy-Nagy e al Black Mountain College con Josef Albers. A New York è allievo di Hans Hofmann. La sua pittura è all’inizio un amalgama originale di geometria e di simbolismo. Verso la fine degli anni Quaranta entra nel gruppo degli “Irascibili”, il nucleo fondativo dell’espressionismo astratto americano. Studia scultura a Firenze, ma, ritornato negli States, attraversa un profondo periodo di depressione.

Impegnato sul fronte dell’integrazione e dei diritti civili, Bultman si dedica a costruire la collezione d’arte al Tougaloo College, istituto per studenti afroamericani a Jackson. A metà degli anni Sessanta è a Parigi, dove, influenzato dalle opere di Matisse, realizza collage di grande formato.

Secondo Robert Motherwell, Bultman è “uno dei più ispirati e radiosi pittori della mia generazione”.

Muore nel 1985.

Fritz Bultman was born in 1919. Scion of a rich New Orleans family, early on his interests lay in the fields of architecture and design. He studied in Chicago with László Moholy-Nagy and at Black Mountain College with Josef Albers. In New York, he was a pupil of Hans Hofmann. His early paintings are original amalgams of geometry and symbolism. By the late 1940s he had joined the group known as the ‘Irascibles’, the founding nucleus of American abstract expressionism. Bultman studied sculpture in Florence. On his return stateside, he suffered a period of deep depression.

Committed to the movement for integration and civil rights, Bultman led an effort to create a collection of modern art for Tougaloo College, an nstitution of higher learning for African-American students in Jackson, Mississippi. Halfway through the Sixties he was in Paris where, influenced

by Matisse’s work, he produced large-scale collages.

Robert Motherwell said of Bultman, ‘[He] is one of the most splendid, radiant and inspired painters of my generation.’

Bultman died in 1985.

Fritz Bultman nel suo studio, anni ‘50 Fritz Bultman in his studio, 1950s photo by Maurice Berezov © Estate of Fritz Bultman

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FRITZ BULTMAN Top Mist 1957 Oil and pencil on gesso panel 50 x 50 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Gallery Schlesinger, New York Private Collection, Acqui Terme Galleria Open Art, Prato Exhibited Abstract Expressionism: Paintings of the Fifties, Gallery Schlesinger, New York

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After forty years of acquaintanceship with Fritz Bultman and his work, I am still convinced that he is one of the most splendid, radiant and inspired painters of my generation, and of them all, the one drastically and shockingly underrated. I do not know why this is so. Perhaps, with his explosive temperament, he was not very adept at playing the New York gallery game. But whatever the reason for the neglect of his work, I still find it as radiant as ever, after all these years (…).

His work represents a standard of sensibility, a background of the best of Modernism and a painting instinct that, if anything, is too good for the present day public.

ROBERT MOTHERWELL 19 October 1988

Fritz Bultman, Firenze, anni ‘60 Fritz Bultman, Florence, 1960s photo by Emerick Bronson © Estate of Fritz Bultman

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JOHN FERREN ( 1905 - 1970 )

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John Ferren nasce nel 1905.

Negli anni Venti lavora a San Francisco come intagliatore di marmo. Nel decennio successivo è a Parigi, dove studia all’ Académie Ranson e alla Grande Chaumière della Sorbona, e ha modo di conoscere Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hans Hofmann, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso e Joan Miró. Si interessa soprattutto della “natura morta” e scrive molti articoli dedicati all’arte astratta.

Ritorna negli USA nel 1938 e si stabilisce a New York; qui è uno dei fondatori di The Club, il vero e proprio cuore pulsante della nascente scuola degli espressionisti astratti.

Interessato alle filosofie orientali e alla psicanalisi, collabora con Alfred Hitchcock alle sequenze di Vertigo e di La congiura degli innocenti.

Muore nel 1970.

John Ferren was born in 1905.

In the 1920s, he worked in San Francisco as a marble cutter; during the next decade he was in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Ranson and at the Sorbonne and met Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hans Hofmann, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. He favoured ‘still life’ above all; he wrote many published articles on abstract art.

Grillo returned to the U.S. in 1938 to live in New York; here, he was one of the founders of The Club, a group of artists at the heart of the thenemerging New York School of abstract expressionism.

Among his interests were the Oriental philosophies and psychoanalysis; he collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on sequences for Vertigo and The Trouble with Harry.

Ferren died in 1970.

John Ferren © photo by Daniel Frasnay, Presses de Draeger Frères, Paris

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JOHN FERREN Untitled 1963 Oil on canvas 113 x 100 cm.

Provenance Private Collection, Beirut Galerie De Beyrie, Parigi Galleria Open Art, Prato

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SAM FRANCIS ( 1923 - 1994 )

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Sam Francis nasce nel 1923.

Arruolato durante la Seconda guerra mondiale, viene ferito gravemente e passa diversi mesi all’ospedale. Uscito dall’ospedale fa ritorno a Berkeley dove studia botanica, medicina e psicologia e inizia a dipingere. Inizialmente è influenzato dalla pittura di Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko e Clyfford Still. Nel 1950 si reca a Parigi, dove, nel 1952, tiene la sua prima personale molto apprezzata dal critico Michel Tapié. Interessato al buddismo e alla cultura Zen, comincia a usare il colore in modo espressivo, impiegato su superficie ampie e, da un iniziale monocromatismo, sviluppa un’astrazione ricca di colori primari disposti al centro di ampie zone bianche. Nel 1956 la mostra al MOMA Twelve Artists lo consacra a livello internazionale. Ritornato in California, Francis realizza opere di grande scala, dove l’attenzione per il sogno e l’inconscio diventa decisiva.

Muore nel 1994.

Sam Francis was born in 1923.

Daring his service in World War II, Francis was seriously injured and spent several years in hospital. Upon his release he returned to his native California, to Berkeley, where he studied botany, medicine and psychology – and began painting. His early work was influenced by the work of Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. In 1950 he went to Paris, where, in 1952, he held his first solo exhibition to critical acclaim from Michel Tapié. His interest in Buddhism and Zen culture sparked an evolution that led to a highly expressive use of colour on broad surfaces; from an initial monochromatism, he developed an abstract style rich in primary colours within large areas of white. The 1956 MoMA Twelve Artists exhibition brought him to international prominence. On his return to California, Francis painted large-scale works in which his attention to dreams and the unconscious were decisive elements.

Francis died in 1994.

Sam Francis nel suo Studio di Parigi, 1958 Sam Francis’s Paris Studio, 1958 © Sam Francis Foundation, Pasadena

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SAM FRANCIS Untitled 1975 Acrylic on paper 58 x 73 cm.

Provenance The Sam Francis Estate Galleria Il Gabbiano, Roma/New York Galleria Open Art, Prato

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Melancholia is a cosmic system. Perfect chaos in the only perfection. Colors are stellar messengers.

SAM FRANCIS

Sam Francis nel suo studio di Venice, Los Angeles, 1977 Sam Francis at his Venice studio, Los Angeles, 1977 Š Sam Francis Foundation, Pasadena

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SAM FRANCIS Untitled 1975 Acrylic on paper 73 x 57,6 cm.

Provenance Private Collection, Boca Raton, Florida Private Collection, Roslyn, Long Island, NY Galleria Eidos Immagini Contemporanee, Asti Galleria Open Art, Prato Exhibited “Sam Francis”, Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 3 - 28 June 1975

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MICHAEL GOLDBERG ( 1924 - 2007 )

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Michael Goldberg nasce nel 1924.

Reduce della Seconda guerra mondiale, è stato uno degli esponenti di spicco della seconda generazione della “Scuola di New York” assieme a Norman Bluhm, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Francis e Joan Mitchell. Allievo di Hans Hofmann, amico di Jackson Pollock, di Willem de Kooning e del poeta Frank O’Hara, all’inizio degli anni Cinquanta Goldberg elabora una pittura estremamente complessa, dove convergono metafisica occidentale e filosofia orientale. Una pittura gestuale e dinamica che impiega sovente una griglia minimalista sulla quale convergono pattern o immagini calligrafiche. La sua ricerca lo porta anche a sperimentare il collage. Fondamentale è altresì la sua attività d’insegnante: da Berkeley in California, all’Università del Minnesota, alla School of Visual Arts di New York.

Muore nel 2007.

Michael Goldberg was born in 1924.

A World War II veteran, Goldberg was one of the leading exponents of the ‘second generation’ of New York School abstract expressionist artists, along with Norman Bluhm, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell. Pupil of Hans Hofmann, friend of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and poet Frank O’Hara, at the start of the Fifties Goldberg developed a highly complex painting style merging Western metaphysics and Eastern philosophy; gestural, dynamic painting often making use of a minimalist grid on which patterns and calligraphic images converge.

His research also led him to experiment with collage. As important as his art was his work as teacher: he taught at Berkeley (California), the University of Minnesota, and the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Goldberg died in 2007.

Michael Golberg e Norman Bluhm nello studio di Bluhm, New York, 1960 Michael Golberg and Norman Bluhm in Bluhm’s Studio, New York, 1960 photo by Rudolph Burckhardt © Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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MICHAEL GOLDBERG Roland 1960 Oil on canvas 128 x 115 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York B. C. Holland Gallery, Chicago Mark Borghi Fine Art, New York Private Collection, Italia

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The things that deeply concern me are of a quasi religious nature – salvation, heaven and hell, order and chaos, sin and redemption; but how to translate these concerns into a pictorial statement is a ball-breaker.

MICHAEL GOLDBERG

Michael Goldberg, 1992 From Michael Goldberg, Galleria Peccolo, Livorno, June 2007

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JOHN GRILLO ( 1917 - 2010 )

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Nato nel 1917, John Grillo entra nel 1937 all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Hartford, dove ha modo di collaborare con Alexander Calder alla realizzazione delle scenografie per il Festival del teatro. Prende parte alla Seconda guerra mondiale, arruolato in Marina. Una volta congedato, nel 1946 ottiene una borsa di studio presso l’Institut of the Arts di San Francisco, dove studia sotto la guida di Richard Diebenkorn. Nel 1948 si trasferisce a New York, già apprezzato come uno dei più interessanti “espressionisti astratti californiani”. Qui frequenta Hans Hofmann, studia Rubens e gli impressionisti francesi, e la sua astrazione matura verso un colorismo musicale di forte impronta architettonica. Muore nel 2010.

Born in 1917, in 1937 John Grillo enrolled in the Hartford School of Fine Arts, where he had occasion to work with Alexander Calder on sets for a Hartford Arts Festival production. He served in the navy in World War II; after his discharge, in 1946, he began studying on the G.I. Bill under Richard Diebenkorn at San Francisco’s California Institute of the Arts. He was already considered one of the most interesting of the ‘Californian Abstract Expressionists’ when he moved to New York in 1948. Here, he frequented Hans Hofmann, studied Rubens and the French Impressionists and his abstraction turned toward a musical use of colour showing strong architectural influences. Grillo died in 2010.

John Grillo Courtesy Robert Green Fine Arts, Mill Valley, CA

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JOHN GRILLO Untitled 1950 Gouache on paper 50 x 65 cm.

Provenance Collection the Artist The Olsen Foundation Fred Olsen, Connecticut Vincent Vallarino Fine Arts, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato

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PAUL JENKINS ( 1923 - 2012 )

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Simbolicamente, Paul Jenkins nasce a Kansas City nel Missouri, durante un violento temporale, nel 1923. Studia al Kansas City Art Institute e dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale, alla Art Students League a New York dove lavora soprattutto con inchiostro su carta e olio su tela.

Durante il 1953 viaggia in Italia, lavorando a Taormina, in Sicilia, visitando poi la Spagna e Parigi. La sua prima esposizione personale ha luogo a Parigi presso lo studio Paul Facchetti nel 1954; l’anno dopo organizza la prima mostra personale negli Stati Uniti a Seattle e, nel 1956, tiene la prima mostra newyorkese presso la Martha Jackson Gallery.

Inizialmente vicino all’espressionismo astratto – con cui condivide alcune tecniche, quali il dripping –, la pittura si Jenkins si stende sulla tela in enormi campiture luminose che esprimono un vitalismo e un’energia unici anche nel panorama di allora. Approfondisce la sua visione con una serie continua di viaggi e letture e talvolta si definisce “abstract phenomenist”. A partire dal 1960 i titoli delle sue tele sono preceduti dalla parola Phenomena, seguita da una frase o una parola chiave.

Paul Jenkins ha esposto in mostre pubbliche e private a partire dal 1953 fino alla sua scomparsa a New York nel 2012, e la sua opera continua ad essere esposta internazionalmente.

Emblematically, Paul Jenkins was born during a lightning storm in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1923. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and after World War II, at the Art Students League of New York, where he worked above all in ink on paper and oil on canvas. In 1953 he travelled to Italy, working in Taormina in Sicily before visiting Spain and then Paris. His first solo exhibition took place in Paris in 1954, at the Studio Paul Facchetti; a year later he had his first U.S. solo show in Seattle and, in 1956 at the Martha Jackson Gallery, his first New York solo exhibition.

His initial works approached abstract expressionism, sharing some of the techniques such as drip painting. Jenkins poured his paints onto primed canvases to create enormous luminous expanses that express a unique vitality and energy, unusual even in the art panorama of the time.

He developed his vision through travel and extensive reading and sometimes called himself an ‘abstract phenomenist’; from 1960, the titles of his canvases were prefaced with the word ‘Phenomena’, followed by a phrase or key word.

Paul Jenkins exhibited in public and private exhibitions from 1953 until his death in New York in 2012, and his work continues to be exhibited internationally.

Paul Jenkins, Parigi, 1963 Paul Jenkins, Paris, 1963 photo by Marianne Adelmann © The Estate of Paul Jenkins

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PAUL JENKINS Etienne de Silhouette 1957 Oil and enamel on canvas 130 x 80 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Esther Robles Gallery, Los Angeles Private Collection, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato

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PAUL JENKINS Fire Hoop 1957 Oil and enamel on canvas Ø 86 cm.

Provenance Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd, London Galerie Stadler, Paris Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature “Paul Jenkins” Galerie Stadler, Paris, mars-avril 1957 “Paul Jenkins” Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd, London, 15 March - 2 April 1960, no. 22 “Paul Jenkins - The Spectrum of Light” text by B. Buscaroli, Carlo Cambi ed., 2014, p. 27 Exhibited Galerie Stadler, Paris, mars-avril 1957 Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd, London, 1960 Museo di Pittura Murale in S. Domenico, Prato, 2014

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PAUL JENKINS Sphinx (also known as Western Sphinx) 1958 Oil and enamel on canvas 163,7 x 169 cm.

Provenance Dr. Robert Sager, Taos, New Mexico Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature “Paul Jenkins” Text by A. Elsen, 1972, Harry N. Abrams, New York, fig. 42, illustrated in color ”Paul Jenkins - Cosmogonie Interiori” curated by B. Corà, 2005, Pacini ed., Pisa, p. 14 “Paul Jenkins - The Spectrum of Light” testo a cura di B. Buscaroli, Carlo Cambi Ed., 2014, p. 31 and cover Exhibited Museo di Pittura Murale in S. Domenico, Prato, 2014

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PAUL JENKINS Eyes of the Dove: For Mantic Medium 1959 Oil and enamel on canvas 99 x 74 cm.

Provenance Private Collection, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato

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PAUL JENKINS Phenomena With Nitrogen Before Phenomena High Octane 1959 Oil and enamel on canvas 178 x 127 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

Collection David Anderson, New York.

Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature “Paul Jenkins - Retrospective” The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, San Francisco Museum of Art (Oct-Dec 1971) - (Jan-Feb 1972), text and catalogue by Gerald Nordland, p. 10 plate 03, cat. no. 9 “Paul Jenkins” Text by A. Elsen, 1972, Harry N. Abrams, New York, fig. 55 “Paul Jenkins - Anatomy of a Cloud” text by Paul Jenkins with Suzanne Donnelly Jenkins, 1985, Harry N. Abrams, New York, p. 232 ”Paul Jenkins - Cosmogonie Interiori” curated by B. Corà, 2005, Pacini ed., Pisa, pp. 1 e 22 “Paul Jenkins - La Coscienza del Tempo” text by Beatrice Buscaroli - Ed. Gli Ori, Pistoia (PT), 2010, p. 29 “Paul Jenkins - The Spectrum of Light” testo a cura di B. Buscaroli, Carlo Cambi Ed., 2014, p. 36-37 Exhibited The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, 1971 San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1972 Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2005 Palazzo Pacchiani, Prato, 2010 Museo di Pittura Murale in S. Domenico, Prato, 2014

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What I want is the co-existence of opposing forces.

It is the conjunction of an energy revealed and incommensurable with the still center of the storm.

That is what is most important to me.

PAUL JENKINS

Paul Jenkins con Karl Flinker e Martha Jackson Paul Jenkins with Karl Flinker and Martha Jackson Courtesy The Estate of Paul Jenkins

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PAUL JENKINS Phenomena Yellow Strike 1964 Acrylic on canvas 152,6 x 101,3 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Mr. and Mrs. David Kluger, New York The Museum of Modern Art, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature “Paul Jenkins” Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, March 1964, no. 2 “Paul Jenkins” Text by A. Elsen, 1972, Harry N. Abrams, New York, fig. 113 (ill. in color) “Paul Jenkins - Retrospective” text and catalogue by Gerald Nordland, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, San Francisco Museum of Art (Oct-Dec 1971) - (Jan-Feb 1972), p. 34, 48 fig. 11 “Painting and Sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art”, Alfred H. Barr Jr., New York, 1977, p. 342, illustrated “Paul Jenkins in the 1960s and 1970s - Space, Color and Light” D. Wigmore Fine Art Inc., 2009, New York, p. 41 “Paul Jenkins - The Spectrum of Light” testo a cura di B. Buscaroli, Carlo Cambi Ed., 2014, p. 38 Exhibited Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1964 The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, 1971 San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1972 Museo di Pittura Murale in S. Domenico, Prato, 2014

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PAUL JENKINS Phenomena Red Intention 1965 Acrylic on canvas 148 x 72 cm.

Provenance Galerie Daniel Gervis, Paris Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. Collection, Pittsburgh Private Collection, Bruxelles Galleria Open Art, Prato Cantiere ‘900, Banca Intesa, Milano Literature Pittsburgh Corporations Collect, Inaugural Exhibition of the Heinz Galleries, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, October 25 1975 - January 4 1976, no. 55.

Exhibited Pittsburgh Corporations Collect, Inaugural Exhibition of the Heinz Galleries, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, October 25 1975 - January 4 1976 (label on verso) L’Art au Musée de Lyon, Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon (no date, André Chenue label on verso)

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PAUL JENKINS Phenomena Shelter Fire 1968 Acrylic on canvas 93 x 53 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato Private Collection, Treviso

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PAUL JENKINS Phenomena Mephisto Stance 1969 Acrylic on canvas 188 x 125 cm.

Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Private Collection, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature “Paul Jenkins - The Spectrum of Light” testo a cura di B. Buscaroli, Carlo Cambi Ed., 2014, p. 81 Exhibited Museo di Pittura Murale in S. Domenico, Prato, 2014

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CONRAD MARCA-RELLI ( 1913 - 2000 )

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Conrad Marca-Relli nasce nel 1913 a Boston, da genitori italiani. È uno dei fondatori della cosiddetta “Scuola di New York”, assieme a Pollock, Kline, Gorky, de Kooning e Rothko. Alla fine degli anni Quaranta è tra gli animatori del Ninth Street Show, il primo evento finalizzato a promuovere i nuovi talenti dell’ espressionismo astratto. Affascinato dall’arte italiana – per questo trascorre lunghi periodi nel nostro paese –, è riuscito a creare un connubio singolare tra quella tradizione e le nuove istanze espresse dagli “irascibili” americani, una sintesi tra immediatezza e rigore, spontaneità e raffinatezza, innovazione e tradizione Maestro del collage-painting, il suo soggettivismo esasperato cerca di superare ogni distanza tra figurativo e astratto, tra tangibilità e immagine mentale.

Muore a Parma nel 2000.

Conrad Marca-Relli was born in 1913 in Boston to Italian parents. After World War II he was one of the founders of the New York School along with Pollock, Kline, Gorky, de Kooning and Rothko and was selected to exhibit at the historic Ninth Street Show in 1951, the first event to promote the new talents in abstract expressionism. Fascinated by Italian art – for which reason he spent extensive periods of time in the country – he succeeded in creating a singular union between the Italian tradition and the new instances expressed by the American ‘Irascibles’, a synthesis of immediacy and rigour, spontaneity and sophistication, innovation and tradition.

A master of collage-painting, with his exasperated subjectivism he narrowed the gap between figurative and abstract and between tangibility and the conceived image.

Marca-Relli died in Parma in 2000.

Conrad Marca-Relli nella sua casa/studio (East Hampton, 1954) Conrad Marca-Relli in his studio/house (East Hampton, 1954) © Archivio Marca-Relli, Parma

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CONRAD MARCA-RELLI Untitled 1950 Oil on canvas 98,6 x 140,5 cm.

Provenance Private Collection, United States Galleria Open Art Prato Literature B. CorĂ : Tensioni composte, Galleria Open Art, Prato, Pacini Ed., Pisa, 2004, p. 29 D. Anfam, M. Dabrowski, M. Vallora, E. Villa: Conrad Marca-Relli, Rotonda della Besana, Milano, Bruno Alfieri Editore, Milano, 2008, p. 203 M. Scotti: Conrad Marca-Relli. Tra figura e astrazione, Galleria Open Art, Prato, Carlo Cambi Ed., Poggibonsi (SI) 2016, p. 25-26 Exhibited Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2004 Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2016

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CONRAD MARCA-RELLI Silos “9� 1955 Oil and collage on canvas laid down on board 22 x 30,3 cm.

Provenance Galleria Niccoli, Parma Private Collection, Treviso Galleria Open Art Prato Literature D. Anfam, M. Dabrowski, M. Vallora, E. Villa: Conrad Marca-Relli, Rotonda della Besana, Milano, Bruno Alfieri Editore, Milano, 2008, p. 220

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CONRAD MARCA-RELLI Untitled 1956 Collage and mixed media on paper laid down on canvas 45 x 58 cm.

Provenance Galleria La Tartaruga, Roma Dutry Fine Arts, New York Private Collection, Roma Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature D. Anfam, M. Dabrowski, M. Vallora, E. Villa: Conrad Marca-Relli, Rotonda della Besana, Milano, Bruno Alfieri Editore, Milano, 2008, p. 212 B. CorĂ : Tensioni composte, Galleria Open Art, Prato, Pacini Ed., Pisa, 2004, p. 34.

M. Scotti: Conrad Marca-Relli. Tra figura e astrazione, Galleria Open Art, Prato, Carlo Cambi Ed., Poggibonsi (SI) 2016, p. 84 Exhibited Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2004

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CONRAD MARCA-RELLI S - 3 - 58 1958 Collage and mixed media on canvas 57 x 70,5 cm.

Provenance The Lester Dana Collection, Boston.

Makler Gallery, Philadelphia (label on verso) Marlborough Gallery, New York (label on verso) Kootz Gallery, New York City (label on verso) Galleria Open Art, Prato Private Collection, Roma Literature “Marca-Relli - New Paintings” 3-20 February 1959, Kootz Gallery, New York H.H. Arnason: Marca-Relli, Monografie, New York. Harry N. Abrams, 1961, New York, fig. 70 “Selections from the Dana Collection”, Oct. 1962, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston D. Anfam, M. Dabrowski, M. Vallora, E. Villa: Marca-Relli, Rotonda della Besana, Milano, Bruno Alfieri Ed., Milano, 2008, p. 215 M. Scotti: Conrad Marca-Relli. Tra figura e astrazione, Galleria Open Art, Prato, Carlo Cambi Ed., Poggibonsi (SI) 2016, p. 33 Exhibited Kootz Gallery, New York, 1959 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1962 Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2016

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CONRAD MARCA-RELLI F - S - 15 - 59 1959 Collage and mixed media on canvas 66,3 x 86,5 cm.

Provenance Kootz Gallery,New York.

Hokin gallery,Palm Beach Private Collection, Italia Galleria Open Art Prato Literature M. Scotti: Conrad Marca-Relli. Tra figura e astrazione, Galleria Open Art, Prato, Carlo Cambi Ed., Poggibonsi (SI) 2016, ill. on cover, p. 34 Exhibited Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2016

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Collage forces you to think and clarify ideas, with regard to both space and volumes. This discipline obliges me to think in terms of forms, outlines, real and imaginated spaces, so as not to fall into the temptation of thinking that nature is reality.

CONRAD MARCA-RELLI

Da sinistra: James Brooks, Balcomb Greene, Conrad Marca-Relli e Syd Solomon (East Hampton, 1970) From left: James Brooks, Balcomb Greene, Conrad Marca-Relli and Syd Solomon (East Hampton, 1970) Photo Hans Namuth Š Archivio Marca-Relli, Parma

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CONRAD MARCA-RELLI Untitled 1967 Painted aluminum 84,5 x 77,5 x 6,5 cm.

Provenance Galleria Niccoli, Parma Galleria Open Art Prato Literature D. Anfam, M. Dabrowski, M. Vallora, E. Villa: Marca-Relli, Rotonda della Besana, Milano, Bruno Alfieri Ed., Milano, 2008, p. 246

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BEVERLY PEPPER ( 1922 )

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Beverly Pepper, Brooklyn, 1922.

Pittrice figurativa, visita l’Italia e, con una borsa di studio, si trasferisce a Roma nel 1951. Carlo Levi la presenta nel 1952 alla Galleria dello Zodiaco. A Roma conosce i protagonisti del gruppo astrattista Forma 1: Giulio Turcato, Achille Perilli, Pietro Consagra e Toti Scialoja. Comincia a realizzare le prime sculture nella seconda metà degli anni Cinquanta. Viene invitata, nel 1962, a esporre le sue sculture al Festival dei due Mondi di Spoleto, assieme a David Smith e Alexander Calder.

La sua ricerca plastica si esprime attraverso una relazione costante tra qualità dei materiali e struttura formale che ogni materiale è in grado di supportare: opere che nascono per lo spazio pubblico, progettate per interagire con esso. Come accade per i lavori presentati alla Biennale veneziana del 1972 e a Documenta 6 a Kassel, nel 1977.

Beverly Pepper was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922.

As a figurative painter, she visited Italy on a scholarship and moved to Rome in 1951. Carlo Levi presented her works at the Galleria dello Zodiaco in 1952. In Rome, she met the premier exponents of the Forma I group of abstract artists: Giulio Turcato, Achille Perilli, Pietro Consagra and Toti Scialoja. She began sculpting in the second half of the 1950s and in 1962 was invited to show her works at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, alongside those of with David Smith and Alexander Calder.

Her plastic research finds expression in a constant tension between the qualities of her materials and the formal structure that each material can support. Hers are works conceived for public spaces, designed to interact with space, as is the case of the works presented at the 1972 Venice Biennale and at Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977.

Beverly Pepper presso la Steel & Alloy Tank Company, Connecticut Beverly Pepper at The Steel & Alloy Tank Company, Connecticut © 1998 by Electa, Milano - Elemond Editori Associati © Beverly Pepper

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BEVERLY PEPPER Untitled 1960 Carved wood 70 x 45 x 25 cm.

Provenance Galleria Pogliani , Roma Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature B. Buscaroli: “Utopia e Progetto, Sguardi sulla Scultura del Novecento�, Carlo Cambi ed., Poggibonsi (SI), 2017, pp. 146, 188 Exhibited Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2017

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BEVERLY PEPPER Untitled 1961 Carved wood 71,2 x 48 x 51 cm.

Provenance Dutry Fine Arts, New York Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature B. Buscaroli: “Utopia e Progetto, Sguardi sulla Scultura del Novecento”, Carlo Cambi ed., Poggibonsi (SI), 2017, pp. 147, 188 Exhibited Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2017

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BEVERLY PEPPER Three Panel Screen 1992 Steel and aluminum (2/8) 200 x 147 x 5,5 cm.

Provenance Edition de la Société des amis du Musée national d’Art Moderne, Paris Galleria Open Art, Prato Literature B. Buscaroli: “Utopia e Progetto, Sguardi sulla Scultura del Novecento”, Carlo Cambi ed., Poggibonsi (SI), 2017, pp. 149, 189 Exhibited Galleria Open Art, Prato, 2017

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RINGRAZIAMENTI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Suzanne Donnelly Jenkins Robert Green Vittorio Lattanzi Manuel Menegaldo Marco e Roberto Niccoli Roberto Peccolo Fabio Pisani Andrea Ricci Mario Soria Ilaria e Martina Stefanini Cristina e Mario Zanobini e a tutti coloro che hanno voluto mantenere l’anonimato and all the others who wish to remain anonymous

Un particolare ringraziamento a A special thanks to Archivio Marca-Relli, Parma Estate of Paul Jenkins, New York

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Finito di stampare nel mese di novembre 2017 presso Printing completed in November 2017 by Tap Grafiche - Poggibonsi (SI)