Syd Solomon

The ongoing second edition of Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary (PBM+C) fair features some of the finest artworks by renowned artists across the globe. The fair includes exhibits from 65 exhibitors and participators. The artworks from over 50 premium international galleries including Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Venezuela.

Some of the artists whose works on display include Arnaldo Pomodoro, Harue Shimomoto, Serge Najjar, John Opper, Reiner Riedler, Syd Solomon, Llewellyn Xavier, and David Zimmerman, among others.

Famous Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro’s “Sfera con perforazione” is on display at the fair. Born in Morciano, Romagna, Italy, Arnaldo currently lives and works in Milan. Pomodoro designed a controversial fiberglass crucifix for the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some of the sculptor’s Sphere Within Sphere (Sfera con Sfera) can be seen in the Vatican Museums, Trinity College, Dublin, Mt. Sinai Hospital and the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the de Young Museum in San Francisco, Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

Harue Shimomoto manipulates glass into sculptural tapestries, examining the aesthetic possibilities in fusing methods and concepts from the mediums of glass and fiber. Shimomoto received her MFA in the UW-Madison’s Department of Art, where she developed a body of work that moves beyond the wall to create pathways through a complex network of glass rods, transforming any space into a meditative journey.

Serge Najjar’s approach to photography is intuitive. It derives from his passion for modern and contemporary art. The graphic approach of the Russian Avant-garde and, specifically, Alexander Rodchenko catches Najjar’s interest early in his career: deciphering the image and its construction will come to guide the structure of his future endeavors.

Academically trained like many of his contemporaries, John Opper came to New York in 1934. As a youth, he had taken Saturday art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art and later studied at the Cleveland School of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. When he arrived in New York, he was a well-trained painter, adept at rendering still-lifes and particularly landscapes depicting the American scene.

Austrian photographer Reiner Riedler focuses on human beings and their environment. His recent conceptual works deal with themes of crises, transience, and death. His work has been exhibited internationally at leading institutions such as the Leopold Museum and Vienna Künstlerhaus (Vienna), the Centre George Pompidou (Paris), Sirius Art Center (Cork, Ireland), the International Festival of Photography (Lodz, Poland), and The Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin).

An Abstract Expressionist painter, Syd Solomon, held important roles in the art communities of Sarasota, Florida, and East Hampton, New York. He began painting in high school in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, where he was an All-American football player. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1935 to 1938. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the war effort. He was assigned to the 924th Engineer Aviation Regiment of the US Army where he was able to hone his artistic skills by creating camouflage from the air, which protected the airfields being built by the battalion.

Llewellyn Xavier OBE is a Saint Lucian artist. While working as an agricultural apprentice, a friend gave him a box of watercolors which drew Xavier to art. His first exhibition was a great success, in 1968, Xavier moved to England, where he became a pioneer in the field of mail art. Xavier is also well known for his oil paintings, characterized by multicolored pearls of paint applied to the surface of the canvas using a series of special tools, a technique developed over the past few decades.