Abstract Expressionism & the New York School Charles Seliger

Charles Seliger (June 3, 1926 – October 1, 2009) was an American abstract expressionist painter. He was born in Manhattan June 3, 1926, and he died on 1 October 2009, in Westchester County, New York. Seliger was one of the original generation of Abstract expressionist painters connected with the New York School
He began his career in 1945 as one of the youngest artists to exhibit at The Art of This Century Gallery, and as the youngest artist associated with the Abstract expressionist movement. The Art of This Century gallery was opened in New York City during World War II in 1942 by Peggy Guggenheim who was then married to the surrealist painter Max Ernst. In 1943, Seliger met and befriended Jimmy Ernst the son of Max Ernst, and who at the age of 23 years was just a few years older than Seliger. Seliger was drawn into the circle of the avant-garde through his friendship with Ernst. His paintings attracted the attention of Howard Putzel who worked with Peggy Guggenheim. At 19, Seliger was included in Putzel’s groundbreaking exhibition A Problem for Critics at the 67 Gallery, (which was located at 67 E.57th Street in Manhattan).Also in 1945 he had his first solo show at the Art of This Century Gallery. Seliger showed his paintings there until 1947 when Guggenheim closed the gallery and returned to Europe. At 20 the Museum of Modern Art acquired his painting Natural History: Form within Rock (1946), for their permanent collection.

 

Known for creating small jewel-like paintings (unlike most painters from the NY School who worked in large-scale formats). He was a veteran of more than 45 solo exhibitions at important contemporary galleries and museums. In 1950 he joined the Willard Gallery, in New York who represented important contemporary artists of the time including David Smith, Morris Graves and several others. He formed close friendships with many of the Willard Gallery artists, including Mark Tobey, Lyonel Feininger, and Norman Lewis. Seliger had his first museum exhibition, at the de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco in 1949. In 1986, he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He currently is represented by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York, and had an exhibition there in 2003 that was reviewed in Art in America.Wikipedia

 

Julius Hatofsky

According to the celebrated New York art critic Hilton Kramer:
’’The American artist Julius Hatofsky, (1922–2006) was one of the most accomplished painters of his generation…he remained an independent spirit whose art resembled that of no other living artist. The greatest influence on the work of his maturity was that of the Old Masters—among them Tintoretto, Turner, Blake, Goya, Ryder and Delacroix.’
Julius Hatofsky was born in Ellenville, in upstate New York, in 1922, and first studied art as a teenager in the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) art classes. Later he studied at the Art Students League of New York (1946–1950) and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1950–1951), returning to New York to study at the Hans Hofmann School in 1952. At the League he studied with Morris Kantor and Robert Beverly Hale.

 Hatofsky had a varied experience beyond the art world. While still a young man he worked as a New York City police officer. Later, in 1942 in World War II, he was drafted into the 82nd Airborne Division, landing by glider in crucial battles. A foot soldier later promoted to sergeant, he served in the Battle of the Bulge and the invasions of the Netherlands and Normandy; later in 1945 he participated in the liberation of a concentration camp.Julius Hatofsky began painting in New York during the 1950s and moved to San Francisco in 1961 to teach at the San Francisco Art Institute, eventually retiring in 1995. According to the critic from Art in America magazine,
 ”During the 1960s, he worked in a Bay Area Abstract Expressionst mode, creating sumptuous, almost iridescent surfaces animated by streams of sinuous energy.”
after 1973, his paintings gradually moved toward American Figurative Expressionism.
”These works often feature obscure, scurrying phantoms painted in a frothy multihued and multilayered oil impasto…Hatofsky’s paintings are sensually generous and richly nuanced.”

 Julius Hatofsky
”for 33 years taught painting and figure drawing to generations of aspiring artists at the San Francisco Art Institute. He befriended many, treating them to a round of drinks and a good cigar at the pub, and inviting hundreds at a time to standing-room-only parties at his 5,600-square-foot SoMa loft. He rented the loft for decades, until the dot-com boom of the mid-1990s pushed him and his wife to a Victorian house in remote Vallejo, the nearest town to San Francisco where he could afford to buy a house.”

 Close to his death Hatofsky wrote:
 ”..Inventing imagery is the basis of my painting. Once involved, I concentrate on scale, inner light, drawing, surface, rhythm, color. Developing these painting concerns has helped to focus my emotional intensity and release my imagination.At age 83, I have a range and variety of expression and imagery and feel a command over the work that has taken over sixty years to acquire. I constantly try to reach deeper, to move beyond my limitations, to challenge myself and to learn.
I feel I’ve made considerable progress in the last 25 years.”
Julius Hatofsky died on January 1, 2006 in Vallejo, California.Wikipedia