Cleve Gray - Lyrical Abstraction

 

 "Cleve Gray (1918–2004) was an American painter best known for his calligraphic abstractions which melded elements of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, and traditional Chinese scroll painting. Often contrasting flat applications of colors with gestural brushstrokes, Gray’s marks appears to float above the picture plane. Born Cleve Ginsberg on September 22, 1918 in New York, NY, he went on to study at the Phillips Academy in Andover,MA and later art history at Princeton University. In 1942, he enlisted in the army, going on to serve in Britain, France, and Germany during World War II. After the war ended, he remained in Paris, falling under the influence of Cubist painters like André Lhote before returning New York in 1946. In the 1960s, Gray developed a close friendship with the artist Barnett Newman, and slowly abandoned his Cubist tendencies, developed during his time in Paris, in favor of more color-based and gestural compositions. Gray gradually thinned his oil paints and eventually switched to acrylic to create washes of pigment. Gray died on December 4, 2004 in Hartford, CT. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York among others."(artnet.com)

 

Lino Mannocci

 

 "Lino Mannocci was born in 1945 - 2021;and was predominantly influenced creatively by the 1960s growing up. Historically established in the context of the Cold War, the 1960s epitomize an extremely powerful era which engendered a significant number of disruptions and challenged the order of all things. In Europe, The Iron Curtain and the Berlin wall would eternally mark people and beliefs, while in the U.S, events such as the Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam war would forever influence generations to come. From education to gender issues and ideologies, a re-definition of social standards in Western society developed, with revolutionary philosophies and movements evolving in a cradle of inventiveness. Honesty and an emptiness of emotions were key concepts in the highly influential movement of Minimalism, represented by artists like Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Agnes Martin. Uninterested in the gestural elements of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalist artists focused on delivering artworks mainly gathering polished, clean lines and geometrical elements. The very first blossoming of Conceptualism was highly influenced by the simplicity of Minimalism but went further in denying all pre-defined conceptions inherent to art, similarly to what Pop Artists were trying to achieve by uplifting popular culture to the status of high art. Several schools of philosophy profoundly influenced creatives, Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti were artists fundamentally persuaded by the ideologies of Existentialism, who achieved worldwide success through their depiction of the human form and the anguish often associated with the human condition. globally, an important number of art movements resounded with the radical changes of the 1960s, often prone to their own regional distinctions. In Italy, Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni created Spatialism, while in Germany, the Zero group adopted similar ideas under the leadership of Günther Uecker."(artland.com)

 

Rosalie Gascoigne

 

 Rosalie Gascoigne  (1917 –1999) was a New Zealand-born Australian sculptor and assemblage artist. She showed at the Venice Biennale in 1982, becoming the first female artist to represent Australia there. In 1994 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to the arts. Rosalie Gascoigne is renowned for her sculptural assemblages of great clarity, simplicity and poetic power. Using natural or manufactured objects, sourced from collecting forays, that evoke the lyrical beauty of the Monaro region of New South Wales, her work radically reformulated the ways in which the Australian landscape is perceived. During the many lonely years spent raising her three children, Gascoigne found solace by making natural assemblages first via traditional flower arranging then later with the rigorous Japanese art form Sogetsu Ikebana. Her work in this medium was outstanding, earning praise from Japanese master and founder of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, Sofu Teshigahara. Nevertheless, by the late 1960s, she had become dissatisfied with the limitations of the medium and started experimenting first with small scrap iron sculptures and later wooden boxed assemblages, all composed of materials she found while on scavenging expeditions in the fierce, sunburnt landscape of Australia. While the Australian landscape was initially a shocking change from the damp green hills of her familiar New Zealand, by this time, she had come to love the "boundless space and solitude" of her new home. Much of her art reflects this, though some also harks back to her roots in New Zealand.