Abstract art Milton Resnick

Milton Resnick (1917-2004) was an American artist noted for abstract paintings that coupled scale with density of incident. It was not uncommon for some of the largest paintings to weigh in excess three hundred pounds, almost all of it pigment.He had a long and varied career, lasting about sixty-five years. He produced at least eight hundred canvases and eight thousand works on paper and board.
He also wrote poetry on a nearly daily basis for the last thirty years of his life. He was an inveterate reader, riveting speaker and gifted teller of tales, capable of conversing with college audiences in sessions that might last three hours.
During his lifetime he was represented by the following galleries: Poindexter Gallery, Howard Wise Gallery, Max Hutchinson, and Robert Miller.

Paintings held in public collections include: New Bride, 1963 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Mound, 1961 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Saturn, 1976 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario], Elephant, 1977 Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York, Earth, 1976 Museum of Modern Art, NYC, Wedding, 1962 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Pink Fire, 1971 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and Untitled, 1982 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, along with many pictures of comparable quality in smaller collections — public and private — make for some, an effective case for Resnick as an exponent of the sublime.

His remaining estate is held in trust by the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation. Beginning in 2017, the centenary of his birth, the Foundation plans to open his former residence and studio, at 87 Eldridge Street in Manhattan as a public exhibition space to showcase his work, that of his wife Pat Passlof, and other Abstract Expressionist painters.Milton Resnick’s estate is represented by Cheim & Read, New York.
With the rise of Pop Art and optical painting, not to mention Neo-Dada and Conceptualism, Resnick withdrew somewhat from the art world. Increasingly tending his own garden, he turned inward and began to produce—in complete disregard and perhaps defiance—the dense and rigorous all-over abstractions that would make his reputation. An indefatigable worker, these paintings often took months to accomplish before they were realized to his satisfaction.

In 1971 he was awarded a large scale exhibition featuring paintings from 1958 to 1970 at the Fort Worth Art Center Museum in Texas. It traveled to the Milwaukee Art Center later that year. In 1985 the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston mounted a retrospective exhibition. He also taught during these years, serving in a visiting capacity at several universities, but never joined any faculty.
In 1976 he bought a synagogue on the lower East Side of Manhattan—an earlier one being turned over to his wife—and lived and worked in it until his death in 2004.Wikipedia

Hidden Impressions Gershon Edelstein

I am a professional archaeologist, after retiring I started a new profession artist. I discovered a way to create digital art which I print on canvas. I call my art hidden Impressions. I have created a few hundreds of pictures that you can see in my site and in facebook hidden impressions.
My love of artistic activity has led me to discover digital art. For a few years I have been experimenting, creating pictures digitally; cutting out sections of images and restructuring them to create surprising new shapes. I search for the right balance between the various parts. Actually the images create themselves. What I do is “capture” the shapes and link them in a manner that creates a new texture.
Looking at the images evokes a personal impression, everyone sees them differently. There are people who may be indifferent and there are those who ask for an explanation. Perhaps it is best to let the image enter the heart directly and allow it to nourish the soul. 

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Abstract Photography Vladimir Stevanović

Mixed-Media

Abdul Rahim Nagori

Prof. Abdul Rahim Nagori (1939 – January 14, 2011) was a Pakistani painter known for his socio-political themes. He has held one-man exhibitions since 1958. He taught at the University of Sindh in Jamshoro, Pakistan where he founded and headed the department of Fine Arts. He was honoured with President’s Pride of Performance Award announced on August 14, 2010. Nagori’s paintings were never intended to please or to decorate the walls, yet the beauty of sensual textures and adept simplification of form were an inherent factor in his work, as were his uncompromising statements, rich with meanings. His exhibition mounted at the Indus Gallery, Karachi, in the ’80s when his scheduled exhibition in Islamabad was cancelled, made history.(paintersofpakistan.wordpress.com)

 

Lucien Clergue

Lucien Clergue (August 14, 1934 – November 15, 2014) was a French photographer. He was Chairman of the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris for 2013.Lucien Clergue was born in Arles, France. At the age of 7 he began learning to play the violin, and after several years of study his teacher admitted that he had nothing more to teach him. Clergue was from a family of shopkeepers and could not afford to pursue further studies in a college or university school of music, such as a conservatory. In 1949, he learned the basics of photography. Four years later, at a corrida in Arles, he showed his photographs to Spanish painter Pablo Picasso who, though subdued, asked to see more of his work. Within a year and a half, young Clergue worked on his photography with the goal of sending more images to Picasso. During this period, he worked on a series of photographs of traveling entertainers, acrobats and harlequins, the « Saltimbanques ». He also worked on a series whose subject was carrion.

In 1968, and with his friend Michel Tournier, Clergue founded the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival which is held annually in July in Arles. He exhibited his work at the festival during the years 1971–1973, 1975, 1979, 1982–1986, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994, 2000, 2003 and 2007.
Clergue also illustrated books, among them a book by writer Yves Navarre.
Clergue took many photographs of the gypsies of southern France, and was instrumental in propelling the guitarist Manitas de Plata to fame.

Clergue’s photographs are in the collections of numerous well-known museums and private collectors. His photographs have been exhibited in over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide, with noted exhibitions such as in 1961, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, the last exhibition organized by Edward Steichen with Lucien Clergue, Bill Brandt and Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Museums with large collections of his work include The Fogg Museum at Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work, Fontaines du Grand Palais (Fountains of the Grand Palais), is in Museo cantonale d'arte of Lugano. His photographs of Jean Cocteau are on permanent display at the Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton, France. In the U.S., an exhibition of the Cocteau photographs was premiered at Westwood Gallery, New York City.
In 2007, the city of Arles honored Lucien Clergue and dedicated a retrospective collection of 360 of his photographs dating from 1953 to 2007. He also received the 2007 Lucie Award.Wikipedia

Roberto Matta

Chilean Surrealist painter and sculptor. Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren, often known simply as Matta. Born in Santiago, Chile, of mixed Spanish and French descent. Studied architecture at the Catholic university in Santiago, then lived from 1933 in Paris, also travelling in Germany, Austria, Spain, etc. Worked in Le Corbusier's Paris office 1934-7. Was introduced by Lorca to Dali in 1937, and by Dali to Breton. Joined the Surrealist movement, and made his first coloured drawings in 1937, his first oil paintings in 1938. Scenes of continuous metamorphosis evoking fantastic subjective landscapes. Moved in late 1939 to New York, where he had his first one-man exhibition in 1940 at the Julien Levy Gallery. Became friendly with Gorky, Motherwell, Pollock, Baziotes and encouraged them to experiment with automatic techniques. From 1944-5 began to create spatial tensions in deep space and to introduce fantastic anthropomorphic personages into his work. Thenceforth made many paintings, some very large, on the theme of man's precarious existence in a world dominated by machines and hidden forces. Returned to Europe 1948; lived in Rome 1950-4, then mainly in Paris. Made his first sculpture in 1957. Awarded the Marzotto Prize in 1962 for 'La Question Djamila', a picture inspired by allegations of torture in Algeria. Lives in Paris.(tate.org.uk)

 

Landscape Theo Clement Verhage

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Antonio Saura

Antonio Saura (September 22, 1930, Huesca – July 22, 1998, Cuenca) was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-war painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is often remembered.
He began painting and writing in 1947 in Madrid while suffering from tuberculosis, having already been confined to his bed for five years. In his beginnings he created numerous drawings and paintings with a dreamlike surrealist character that most often represented imaginary landscapes, employing a flat smooth treatment that offers a rich palette of colors. He claimed Hans Arp and Yves Tanguy as his artistic influences.

 He stayed in Paris in 1952 and in 1954–1955 during which he met Benjamin Péret and associated with the Surrealists, although he soon parted with the group, joining instead the company of his friend the painter Simon Hantaï. Using the technique of scraping, he adopted a gestural style and created an abstract type of painting, still very colorful with an organic, aleatory design.
The first appearances in his work of forms that will soon become archetypes of the female body or the human figure occur in the mid-1950s. Starting in 1956 Saura tackled the register of what will prove to be his greatest works: women, nudes, self-portraits, shrouds and crucifixions, which he painted on both canvas and paper. In 1957 in Madrid he founded the El Paso Group and served as its director until it broke up in 1960. During this period Saura met Michel Tapié.

 During the 1950s he had his first solo exhibition at the Rodolphe Stadler Gallery in Paris, where he regularly exhibited throughout his life. Stadler introduced him to Otto van de Loo in Munich and Pierre Matisse in New York City, both of whom exhibited his work and represented him, and eventually his paintings were collected by major museums.Limiting his palette to blacks, grays and browns, Saura asserted a personal style that was independent of the movements and trends of his generation. His work followed in the tradition of Velasquez and Goya. Starting in 1959 he began creating a prolific body of works in print, illustrating numerous books including Cervantes’s Don Quijote, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Nöstlinger’s adaptation of Pinocchio, Kafka’s Tagebücher, Quevedo’s Three Visions, and many others.

In 1960 Saura began creating sculptures made of welded metal elements which represented the human figure, characters and crucifixions. In 1967 he settled permanently in Paris, and joined the opposition to the Franco dictatorship. In France he participated in numerous debates and controversies in the fields of politics, aesthetics and artistic creation. He also broadened his thematic and pictorial register. Along with his Femmefauteuil (literally "Womanarmchair"), he also worked on the series "Imaginary Portraits",and Goya’s Dog and Imaginary Portraits of Goya begin to take shape.
In 1971 he temporarily abandoned painting on canvas to devote himself to writing, drawing and painting on paper. In 1977 he began publishing his writings, and he created several stage designs for the theatre, ballet and opera, thanks to the collaboration with his brother, the film director Carlos Saura. From 1983 to his death in 1998, he revisited all of his themes and figures.Wikipedia