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Even before entering the Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea, one can see through the broad window paintings that glow with amazing use of color. They are the works of important artist Albert Stadler (1923-2000), honored with the current show that runs through December 22 at the gallery owned by Christine A. Berry and Martha Campbell. The exhibit is appropriately called “Albert Stadler—Studies in Color.”

Some have called it the “Paris of the Prairies.” It’s a nickname that now seems even more apt for the fast-growing city of Saskatoon, which last month celebrated the opening of Canada’s newest modern and contemporary art museum. The Remai Modern houses works by renowned Canadian and international artists as well as the largest collection of Picasso linocuts, and it aspires to be a world-class attraction that draws tourists to this urban center of Saskatchewan.

Berry Campbell Gallery is pleased to announce a special exhibition of paintings by Albert Stadler (1923-2000) from November 16 through December 22, 2017. Albert Stadler was a leading figure in the rise of color abstraction in the mid-1960s, addressing the nature of the optical experience in art. This exhibition at Berry Campbell will highlight these developments in Stadler’s career focusing on paintings from the 1970s and 1980s. The opening reception for Albert Stadler: Studies in Color is Thursday, November 16 from 6 to 8 pm. In the catalogue for Albert Stadler’s first solo exhibition held at Bennington College in 1962, he stated that he saw his canvases as invitations “for the viewer to participate in events, in the activity of color and the relativity of space.” For Stadler, “space . . . and the “to illuminate and elucidate all parts of a painting,” while allowing viewers the opportunity to find their own way through an image. Creating both hard-edge and more ethereal paintings, Stadler united directions in Color Field and Minimalist art, often bridging the gap between the intellectual and sensual and the conceptual and spiritual.

In this exhibition's museum-quality catalogue, Gail Levin makes a plausible case that we don't know Syd Solomon better only because he enlisted. The mildly infirm and the conscientious objectors were able to form their art in the modernist heyday of early-1940s New York City while Solomon was off earning Bronze Stars and contracting frostbite in the Battle of the Bulge.

When 99-year-old Annie Solomon attends an opening at an art gallery, she’s as much of a focal point as the paintings on the walls. Artists, art lovers, students and retirees all want to hang out with her.

Some admire her because she’s a vibrant link to Sarasota’s days as an arts colony in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. The widow of abstract expressionist painter Syd Solomon, she has clear memories of those bohemian times, when she and Syd hosted parties for local artists, writers and musicians, as well as famous visitors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Elia Kazan and Betty Friedan.

Glenn Glissler designed a space at the Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse with pieces of artwork by Judith Godwin, Dan Christensen, Larry Zox, and Walter Darby Bannard from Berry Campbell gallery.

Jon Schueler was part of the second wave of Abstract Expressionists in the mid-20th century. He did not begin painting until later in life, writing briefly for the New Haven Evening Register and then joining the U.S. Army Air Corps in September 1941. As a B-17 navigator stationed in England, he flew missions over France and Germany. Schueler was hospitalized and discharged in 1944, and following the war taught English at the University of San Francisco. He became increasingly interested in painting and at age 31 enrolled under the G.I. Bill at the California School of Fine Arts (San Francisco Art Institute.)

There is a natural tendency among art historians, critics, curators, and even in human nature to place people, places, and things in categories, eras, styles, periods. It helps make sense of how ideas and objects fit into a continuum, or where they fall along the timeline. At the centenary of Syd Solomon’s birth, it is time to free the artist from these constraints and celebrate him for his unique contributions, which is what “Syd Solomon: Time and Tide,” a show at the Berry Campbell Gallery in New York City, does eloquently.

The exhibition contrasts the lives of two women painters, one working in New York and the other across the Atlantic in Paris, who lived and were active for the same period of time, existing in the parallel art worlds of abstract painters and modernist Paris. Louppe lived from 1902-1988 and Fine from 1905-1988. The exhibition will place emphasis on the artists’ work; their style, use of material and aesthetic inspirations, accompanied by a consideration of the art scenes they emerged from and contributed to so vibrantly.

Welcome to our first Spotlight post. We will be conducting a series of interviews with art world leaders who inspire us, by going beyond the white walls to get their thoughts on everything from the future of the art market, to their go-to neighborhood eateries.

First up is Martha Campbell, an art world veteran who began her career at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and then worked for several years in the gallery world at Spanierman Modern in New York City before founding her own gallery with Christine Berry.