Tag: expressionist

Sonia Gechtoff at 55 Walker

Wholly abstract yet suggesting recognizable forms, late painter Sonia Gechtoff’s canvases invite and resist interpretation simultaneously.  Successful from a young age with shows at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMoMA) and the De Young Museum, Gechtoff’s move to New York’s male-oriented abstract expressionist art scene in the late 1950s slowed her career and recognition.  Her current retrospective at 55 Walker (run by Bortolami, kaufmann Repetto and Andrew Kreps Gallery) contributes to correcting the record of her importance, showcasing work from the ‘50s to 2017, the year before her death at age 91.  It includes ‘Celestial Red,’ a composition dominated by circular forms evoking the planets and moons of a solar system, and behind them all, a powerful, glowing celestial body not fully known or seen. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 26th).

Sonia Gechtoff, Celestial Red, acrylic on canvas, 77 ¾ x 78 in, 1994.

Sarah Cain at Broadway

Sarah Cain pushes the boundaries of what painting can be, literally extending beyond the canvas onto gallery floors and walls and adopting unexpected materials like sequined backpacks and an easy chair.  Her current solo show at Broadway in Tribeca features traditional, framed 2-D artworks but also this installation, a combination of expressionist and hard-edge painting that invites the audience to step in and feel the color.  (On view through Oct 16th).

Sarah Cain, installation view at Broadway Gallery, Oct 21 featuring (back wall) Jamillah, acrylic, color copies, uv seal, and backpack on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, 2021 and (floor) Untitled (NYC), acrylic on floor, 237.5 x 262 inches, 2021.

Georg Baselitz at Gagosian Gallery

Iconic 20th century German painter Georg Baselitz pays homage to artists who’ve inspired him in a new series of portrait paintings at Gagosian Gallery.  Presented in Baselitz’s characteristic upside-down format, figures from Tracey Emin to Willem de Kooning (pictured here) hover against black backgrounds in an ethereal glow that suggests a ghostly background presence in the mind of the artist.  (On view through March 16th).

Georg Baselitz, Willem de K, oil on canvas, 64 15/16 x 39 3/8 inches, 2018.

Zach Bruder at Magenta Plains

Medieval-looking characters converse at table in Zach Bruder’s arrestingly anachronistic painting, which pictures the Middle Ages in an abstracted or folksy 20th century painting style. Substituting detail and realism for expressive forms, Bruder cloaks a familiar-seeming scene in an alien appearance. (On view at Magenta Plains on the Lower East Side through Feb 11th).

Zach Bruder, Slur A Confidence I, acrylic and flashe on canvas on panel, 14h x 11w inches, 2017.

George Condo at Skarstedt

George Condo’s Picassoid jumbling of classic Condo facial features on the left and a sketchy blond Ab Exp muse on the right make an arresting couple at the entrance to Skarstedt’s Chelsea gallery. They’re also an amusing counterpart to the current Picasso show down the block at Gagosian Gallery. (In Chelsea through Dec 20th)

George Condo, Double Heads on Blue and Silver, acrylic, charcoal, pastel on linen, 78 x 110 inches, 2014.