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.

American Renaissance Art

The Anita Shapolsky Gallery presents a new exhibition, “American Renaissance Art”, opening Saturday, January 26. The opening reception is Saturday, January 26, from 3-6 PM. The exhibition will run through March 16, 2013. Click to access the American Renaissance Art Press Release.

The American Abstract Art movement was the epiphany of the individual. He was the center of the painting-of his universe. The art of the Abstract Expressionists is timeless, as has been proven by the auction world since the 50’s. There are other styles and movements, but none that can compare.

James Dinerstein. A New York native, Dinerstein graduated from Harvard. He studied with art historian and critic Michael Fried. He worked at St. Martin’s Art School in London with sculptors Anthony Caro and William Tucker. Dinerstein aims to restore the resources of plasticity and mass while manifesting the spiritual potency of Greek antiquity and musical polyphony. His recent work is more organic, primal, and overtly sensuous as it emerges from a deeper and freer source.

Amaranth Ehrenhalt. After 38 years in France and Italy, Ehrenhalt returned New York in 2008. In N.Y. during the 50’s she was friendly with Al Held, Ronald Bladen, and Willem de Kooning. She has exhibited with Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Shirley Jaffe and others in Paris. Ehrenhalt’s work expands beyond the canvas to include drawings, prints, watercolors, tapestries, mosaics, murals, sculptures, poetry, prose and more. In order to experience the surprises and treasures of Ehrenhalt’s art, it must be seen and digested by the viewer.

William Manning. Manning began working in black and white before moving on to collage. His paper pieces are the foundation of his work and are based on the environment of his native Maine. The subject for his delicate line drawing and expressive collage is the cycling of nature, including the seasons, weather, and the sun’s light. After 1975, he transitioned from flat to three-dimensional standing and wall paintings that allowed for multiple viewpoints. His newer work of collage on panels uses his boldest, richest colors combined with an array of gestural and geometric elements.

Joe Overstreet. Born in Conehatta, Mississippi, Overstreet’s family migrated to San Francisco. He attended the San Francisco Art institute under the mentorship of Sargent Johnson. He moved to New York in 1958 and was incorporated into the New York School as one of its younger members alongside Norman Lewis, Hale Woodruff, and Romare Bearden. His work thematically challenges dimensional boundaries. Overstreet experimented with steel mesh and wire, combining and unraveling them with paint in a reference to the human condition. His new work is more sublime.

Nancy Steinson. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Steinson came to New York and became an abstractionist influenced by Constantin Brancusi, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson. Liberating, purely geometric structures expressing movement, direction, space and scale characterize her art. Her work is almost exclusively, except in works on paper, formed with curved planar forms and linear straight edges which suggest a more organic approach to form as opposed to the industrial purity of early minimalism.

Alison Weld. Weld’s paintings exude a passionate and visceral, yet clearly informed visual intelligence. In each mark and gestural working of the paint, she manifests a personal presence calculated to engage the viewer in a process of discovery. Each of her paintings makes an individualized statement while referencing others. The totality of artistic tension and resolution throughout her body of work points to the complexities of the world we all live in.
Click images to view full work information and enter slideshow view.

Click to view installation shots of the show.