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NEW YORK, NY.- Berry Campbell is presenting an exhibition of recent paintings by James Walsh (b. 1954). An abstract painter who has been an active member of the New York art scene since the early 1980s. Following in the Modernist tradition, Walsh relentlessly explores the properties and limits of paint and the results of his inquiry are spectacularly wide ranging. Experimenting with innovative acrylic formulas, Walsh produces large masses of pigment that project outward from the surface of the canvas, creating unusual forms in high relief. In some works, the paint is sculptural and three-dimensional, while in others, it rises from richly treated surfaces. Although Walsh makes specific compositional choices, the spontaneous appearance gives his paintings a feeling of the accidental. 

Eric Dever: A Thousand Nows, an exhibit of 22 new oil paintings inspired mostly by the East End of Long Island, will be exhibited at Suffolk County Community College’s Eastern Campus Lyceum Gallery from February 1 through March 11. An artist’s reception will be held on February 5th from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Layering veils of exuberant color, Dever creates the illusion of depth while describing atmosphere that falls over views of Montauk Point, Sag Harbor’s Clam Island, and Southampton’s Flying Point Beach. Forms appear weightless and at times dematerialize reversing figure and ground. Similarly, Dever paints his experience of plants that he cultivates in his Water Mill studio garden. Agapanthus, Bird of Paradise, and roses that are past their prime become metaphors for the past, evocative of places and characters from literature.

Dever’s work harkens from experiences deep within his sensory memory of growing up in California.  “Los Angeles is subtropical, the sun is more intense and sets over the Pacific, my paint selection, when working with a full palette has remained consistent, especially a love of Cadmium Orange; but the blue hues I am mixing echo the long late spring and summer twilight of the Northeast,” Dever said.

These sensations inform Dever’s work today here on the East End becoming examples of a type of compressed time.

Syd Solomon (1917–2004), who described himself as an ‘Abstract Impressionist’, made the city of Sarasota in Florida his home from 1946 until his death, establishing the Institute of Fine Art at New College, which brought artists such as Philip Guston and Larry Rivers to teach in Sarasota. He was also the first living artist to have work in the collection of the Ringling Museum. Find out more from the Ringling’s website.

The retrospective of the longtime Sarasota artist’s work opens this weekend.

Prior to the public opening of the exhibition Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed, at the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art this Sunday, Dec. 15, events open to museum members provided a preview of this retrospective of the work of the longtime Sarasota artist.

Solomon lived and created here for many years, including a long stint at the home and studio on Midnight Pass Road he shared with his wife Annie. He’s famed for his abstract paintings, often involving nature, the beach, wind, the shoreline and more. But the exhibit also allows museumgoers the chance to see earlier works, some figurative, some portraits, and to learn more about Solomon’s background. Both his time spent as a camouflage artist during World War II (concealing Allied planes and troops to prevent enemy attack) and as a commercial artist (creating sign lettering and graphic design) are on view here, along with personal photos and items from the vast Solomon family archive.

Navigating the complex paths presented to visitors at Art Miami is no small feat. Faced with the mountain of galleries on view, we’ve pulled together a handy reference guide for must-see presentations at this year’s Art Miami. Located at One Herald Plaza in Miami (NE 14th Street and Biscayne Bay,) the fair shares the grounds with its sister fair, Context.

From secondary market prospects to mid-career artists, Art Miami marks a diverse cross-section of modern and contemporary art reflecting a wide assembly of tastes. From the merging of digital and material to the large-scale mid-century modernists, no other fair holds quite the range of gems on display at Art Miami.

Make sure to survey the show, and keep an eye out for the following art galleries.

Berry Campbell (AM122) – Frank Wimberley and Syd Solomon steal the show at Berry Campbell gallery’s presentation, while stunning pieces by Nancy Graves, Elaine de Kooning and others round out an impressive survey of painters and mixed-media artists spanning from the post-war period to the present day. Wimberley’s ruminations on texture and minimalism alone feel shockingly contemporary. Syd Solomon’s work will be featured in an upcoming solo show at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, so take a peek at his works on view here to familiarize yourself with his style and deft mastery of color tones.

What do Elaine de Kooning, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, and Faith Ringgold have in common? They all studied at the Art Students League of New York—and they are all featured in a new show at the school highlighting the accomplishments of its many women students.

Titled “Postwar Women,” the exhibition, curated by Will Corwin, features more than 40 women who studied at the school between 1945 and 1965. “It seemed like the obvious choice because before the war, most of the women students here were wealthy or had family who supported them as artists,” Corwin told Artnet News at the exhibition’s opening. “During this period, you actually get working-class women becoming artists. And of course, you get the Abstract Expressionists.”

Corwin has put together an impressive selection of works by well-known alumna—Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Louise Nevelson are also among the big names—alongside examples by an intriguing array of artists who haven’t yet been widely recognized for their talents.

“The league’s list of famous graduates is like everybody you’ve ever heard of,” Corwin said. For him, the curatorial challenge was balancing expectations: ensuring that all the major names were in place while still creating opportunities for viewers to discover new artists.

By the mid-1970s, critic Thomas Hess acknowledged the critical favoritism shown to postwar male artists when he singled out the women of the Ninth Street Show as “sparkling Amazons.”

KATONAH, New York — The Ninth Street Show in 1951 is among the more enduring of the origin stories about New York’s postwar art scene, uniting the theme of artist solidarity to the ideal that art can be a vocation unsullied by money and fame.

As the story goes, painter Jean Steubing, working on behalf of her obscure New York artist-peers, secured gallery space in a vacated storefront on East Ninth Street near Broadway. The resulting exhibition was curated by Leo Castelli with substantial input from artists, around 60 of whom were included in the hastily assembled roster. History — or legend — holds that the show was a breakthrough. Museum curators and uptown collectors attended and began to acquire this brave new art. Art reviewers noticed, too. And as the 1950s progressed, New York surpassed Paris as the art-making capital of the world.

In reality, the tale of the Ninth Street Show did not end quite happily ever after. Only a handful of the Ninth Street artists gained increased recognition from it. Even fewer saw any sales. Still, postwar New York accommodated these artists who, for the most part, operated without institutional affiliations. In the 1950s, a downtown loft could be rented for about $30 a month — the equivalent of about $400 in today’s money. So most Ninth Street artists soldiered on in obscurity, getting by through shitty day jobs or family money while finding morale boosts and genuine recognition through their own cooperative galleries. Many finally left the city. Some, like Steubing herself, abandoned art-making entirely.

The essay for Joan Marter’s exhibition at Guild Hall, “Abstract Expressionism Revisited: Selections From the Guild Hall Permanent Collection,” is notable for reminding us about the people behind the pictures and sculptures. For her, the artists’ relationship to this environment and other factors affecting the work that ended up here are essential to understanding its relevance.

This makes sense in the context of the museum’s permanent collection, which exists only because so many of these artists lived and worked here and left some of their legacy behind as they rocketed to international recognition and acclaim.

Guild Hall, which has recently fully archived and digitized its collection, is celebrating just some of what it has with this exhibition. The show’s unfussy title takes us back to a simpler time, before stratospheric auction results in the tens and hundreds of millions, to when these artists might have been famous and well to do on a more modest scale, if at all.

"Painter, camouflage artist, and cultural connector Syd Solomon is emerging as an important figure in Abstract Expressionism." 

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