Seymour Boardman “Personal Geometries”- Part II – 1970’s-2000’s: September 10 – November 2, 2013

No. 1, December 1984, Oil on canvas, 40″ x 60″

New York City – For over 60 years, Seymour Boardman had created an oeuvre unparalleled in Contemporary Art – from colorful and vivid large-scale Abstract Expressionist paintings to minimalist and uncluttered-styled paintings.

Seymour (Sy) Boardman “Personal Geometries” Part II  will feature a comprehensive body of work spanning the 1970s’ to the 2000’s. Following part I bringing together Abstract Expressionist pieces created by the artist between the 1940’s and the 1960’s, this second part focuses more on Boardman’s evolution toward a more Minimalist style. In this work, pastel colors are progressively used over bright colors while uncluttered and square-shaped lines progressively prevail over mosaic-like paintings of the 1960’s. More than ever during the second period of his artistic career, Boardman’s work aims to define visual structure, often replying on sharply articulated geometric principles and shapes.

“I consider Sy the most intellectual of all the artists that I have ever exhibited” says gallery owner Anita Shapolsky, “His painting resonates like jazz, ever evolving, the transcendence of improvisation is content. He liked jagged, architectural phrases, and beginning a line without knowing where it would end”. This “geometric colorist” and “abstract illusionist” as he was called, contributed to the psychology of perception with the use of only one hand (the other was disabled by the war). His work has inspired many young artists by its complexities, use of oil pastels, colors and division of space.

Boardman counteracted with many artists and good friends of him such as Sam Francis, Robert Ryman, and Mark Rothko, as they all experienced crises of confidence. His work is included in many major public collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Newark Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Norton Gallery in Palm Beach, Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico and many other collections.

Untitled 1990, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 30″ x 46″

Untitled, 1976, Acrylic on canvas, 12″ x 17″

Blue No.3, 1993, Oil on canvas, 34″ x 48″

Untitled No1., 1987, Oil on canvas, 44 1/2″ x 48 1/2″

Contact information: ashapolsky@nyc.rr.com / http://anitashapolskygallery.com
CATALOG AVAILABLE 

Seymour (Sy) Boardman: “Personal Geometries” – Part I – 1940’s to 1960’s: March 23 – September 1, 2013

The Anita Shapolsky Gallery will present an exhibition of Seymour (Sy) Boardman:

“Personal Geometries”
Part I – 1940’s to 1960’s: March 23 – September 1, 2013
Part II – 1970’s to 2000’s: September 10  – November 2, 1013
All: Summer 2013 – A.S. Art Foundation

Seymour Boardman: “Personal Geometries” catalog is now available for order. Published 2013 by the Anita Shapolsky Gallery, “Personal Geometries” features a selection of Sy’s work throughout his life over 40 pages.
Price is $32 including S/H. Please call or email to order.

Seymour (Sy) Boardman’s (1921-2005) paintings were shaped by his responses to the major currents of twentieth century abstraction and the aesthetic turmoil of successive art movements of his time. Throughout his work, we observe a particular dynamic in his exploration of the potential vastness and all-inclusiveness of abstraction and his search for systematic and personal formal strategies to create definition and meaning. He established the primacy of his works’ defining visual structure, often relying on sharply articulated geometric principles and shapes, even as he affirmed the personal presence of the artist through subtle and nuanced means. Each series of works he created, indeed each work within these series, engages us in the efforts of an inquisitive visual intelligence exploring the balance between the immanence of absolute being and the artist’s personal act of bringing impersonal realities into view. The results are paintings with distinctive, frequently dramatic impact which suggest a sense of mystery and emotion, a personal statement which is often evocative rather than declarative.

Boardman majored in art at New York’s City College, but his plans were disrupted by World War II, from which he emerged without use of one arm and hand. He returned to painting, choosing to study in Paris from 1946 to 1949 at the École des Beaux Arts, the Académie de la Grand Chaumière, and the Atelier Fernand Leger. This sojourn was followed by a year in New York at the Art Students League and another year in Paris (1950), where he had his first solo exhibition at the Galérie Mai in 1951. When he returned to New York, Sy was inducted into the Martha Jackson Gallery, and remained with her until her death.

Sy worked over the years with patience and maturity, and did all the right things, and more. Sy and his good friends Sam Francis, Robert Ryman, Shirley Jaffe, and Richards Ruben, counteracted with each other as they experienced crises of confidence. Each artist took something from the other in their language of art.

Click on an image to scroll through a slideshow of selected works.

“American Renaissance Art,” Symposium

Saturday, February 23, 2013 from 3-5PM. 

Thank you to all who joined us for an afternoon symposium discussing why the show’s title, “American Renaissance Art,” is indicative of the international Abstract Expressionist movement at this point in time. One hundred years ago, the Abstractionists rewrote the rules of art. Today the legacy of the first true American art form is continually reborn. This is the American version of the Renaissance, a movement which has transformed our culture and the world. The American Renaissance man is the center of the painting-of his universe. He is Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, and others including the artists in our show.

Pictured L to R: James Dinerstein, Nancy Steinson, Charles Russell, Amaranth Ehrenhalt, Alison Weld

Moderator Charles Russell led a discussion panel of the exhibition’s artists, providing the  opportunity for the audience to encounter the exhibition’s artists, learn from them about their work, and to hear their responses to the exhibition and to the ideas suggested by Anita’s configuration of abstract expressionism as “American Renaissance Art.”

The panel was introduced by Anita Shapolsky, gallery owner and curator, who developed the concept of “American Renaissance Art,” as the title of the show. Each of the show’s artists offered a brief exposition of their own development and engaged in a discussion of common concerns or experiences. The idea of abstract expressionism as an American Renaissance spurs several associations, mainly the sense of a culture born or reborn in part by looking back to a past historical moment as model and stimulus. For the show’s artists, this was past was European modernism. The panel discussed how Abstract Expressionism was seen as an existentialist affirmation of the individual’s acknowledgment of one’s deepest experiences, whether primal and organic or spiritual. They affirmed how that humanist spirit manifests itself in their work. Finally, the panel addressed the issue of keeping abstraction “relevant” today-whether it is at all a matter of interest or concern. The audience then heard from contemporary gallerist Ed Zipco of Superchief Gallery and his take on the issue. Finally, the panel broke into a question-and-answer session with audience members.

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Charles Russell is Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Rutgers University, Newark, where he directed the graduate American Studies program and was Associate Director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. He recently published Groundwaters: A Century of Art by Self-Taught and Outsider Artists (Prestel, 2011). Among his other books are Poets, Prophets, and Revolutionaries: The Literary Avant-Garde from Rimbaud through Postmodernism (Oxford University Press, 1985), Self-Taught Art: The Culture and Aesthetics of American Vernacular Art (University Press of Mississippi, 2001), and, co-edited with Carol Crown, Sacred and Profane: Personal Voice and Vision in Southern Self-Taught Art, (University Press of Mississippi, 2007).

Click here for more information about the show.

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Click on the images to scroll through a larger-version slideshow.