A bespoke service to help you sell or acquire

the best art on the market.

Ugo_Scalia-HomeShooting-170425-par-_adrienthibault-HD-9.jpg

About us

Who we are

US Advisory is a consulting service based in Paris, specializing in the post-war and contemporary art market. The company’s headquarters are located at 10 Avenue Percier, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.

Our goal is to assist collectors in navigating the art market and making savvy investments—both from aesthetic and financial standpoints.

Relying on a network of international collectors and professionals, US Advisory provides its clients with privileged access to the best opportunities on the market, both to acquire artworks for their collection and to resell them. This leads us to travel around the world to cover major art events (fairs, auctions, major exhibitions) in order to best represent our clients’ interests.

Among our recent placements in prestigious collections are major works by Georg Baselitz, Pierre Soulages, George Condo, Yayoi Kusama, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lee Ufan, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Yoshitomo Nara, Lucas Arruda and many others.

Ugo Scalia, Art Advisor

Ugo Scalia graduated from European Business School (Master in Finance). After taking part in several entrepreneurial projects dedicated to online marketplaces for artworks, he decided to found his own art advisory service.

"Art has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. Over the years, I have developed an appreciation and an experience that enable me to find artworks matching your own aesthetic inclinations. To source them, I am in contact with a rich diversity of artworks through collectors and galleries as well as international fairs and exhibitions.

I also love to share my knowledge of the most recent dynamics at play on the art market and my watch over established—as well as emerging—artists to provide qualified insights. I’ve always been fascinated to understand how aesthetic values and art market dynamics are correlated."

4.-Print_approx_21_x_14_cm_ABP24__Public_Interactions__PR__General_I_HiRes-13.jpg

Services

Our Services
What we provide

Buying or selling art is a complex task as the market is extremely vast and hard to navigate. Within your budget, we simplify the acquisition or sale process by offering you:

Independent advice: based upon historical and aesthetic importance, as well as thorough knowledge of the art market, we give you the necessary insights to acquire the best artworks.

A broad network of international collectors & galleries: we offer access to a variety of works from internationally acclaimed and emerging artists, both on the primary and secondary markets for Post-War & Contemporary Art. We also provide the appropriate channels to resell pieces from your collection.

Guidance: we help you navigate every step of an acquisition or sale process.

Collection management: storage, conservation, fiscal matters, transportation, insurance
and museum loans.

Services

The Acquisition Process
We assist you every step of the way

Sourcing & Investment strategy : Using our international network, we find an artwork which corresponds to several criteria of ours, and caters to your own personal taste. Our criteria include aesthetic elements as well as valuable market insights to assure the piece will gain value over the duration of detention and will always find a buyer.

Due dilligence: We make sure every aspect of the deal is to be trusted. This includes verifying the authenticity of the artwork, as well as detailed provenance and condition reports. We also make sure the arwork is under the control of the seller (in his possession, in which storage etc.).

Transportation & Installation: Once a transaction is secured, we provide you with the appropriate transporters and storage facilities at the best prices. In case of delivery directly at the client’s address, we can provide our preferred services for the installation of the artwork.

The Sale Process
Providing you with the best sale channels

Finding the appropriate channel: This aspect of our council goes hand-in-hand with the investment strategy that was elaborated during the acquisition process. Depending on the state and evolution of an artist’s market, different channels of sale—auctions, galleries, private transactions—will be more or less appropriate. We help you determine which channel makes the most sense to ensure the best price for your artwork.

Private sales: These channels are particularly tough to access, as contact with numerous other art advisors is often required to find the right buyer at the right price and within the appropriate time frame. We thus provide access to our international network of collectors and advisors to make this possible.

Gallery sales: We provide swift and efficient access to the relevant galleries to sell your piece on the secondary market. We can also negociate on your behalf the best consignor agreements with those galleries. In addition, we will always favor deals where your piece is included in major events of the art world calendar—be it exhibitions or art fairs—to ensure selling it at the best price.

Auction sales: On your behalf, we negociate the best consignor agreements (including price guarantees) with auction houses, and help you understand and navigate the international auction system.

Follow us on Instagram

@usadvisory

Since April 4, 2025, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is presenting “Love, Queen” in the interior galleries on the second floor, an exhibition of 22 new works by Adam Pendleton—both commissioned (such as Composition and Movement) and from previous series (Black Dada, Days, WE ARE NOT). This is the artist's first institutional exhibition in Washington. Coinciding with the museum's 50th anniversary, the exhibition celebrates the museum's commitment to abstract and conceptual art, of which Adam Pendleton may well be the 21st century's avant-garde representative.

Indeed, the artist is known for his conceptual works, which he begins with splashes, geometric shapes and, above all, words and phrases. For the artist, language is used to deconstruct and reconstruct from scratch the meanings that are imbued in various structural concepts throughout history, whether in art movements such as Dada, Minimalism and Conceptualism, or in social constructs such as racial inequality in the USA. Adam Pendleton then photographs these compositions and superimposes them using a silkscreen process, deliberately blurring the distinction between painting, drawing and photography.

Adam Pendleton is also known for his multimedia work: at the Hirshhorn Museum, he is presenting “Resurrection City Revisited (Who Owns Geometry Anyway?)”, a video work projected from floor to ceiling. The video uses images of Resurrection City, the encampment considered to be the high point of Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign for Civil Rights. Love, Queen” will end on January 3, 2027.
@pendleton.adam @hirshhorn #painting🎨 #wearenot #adampendleton #hirshhornmuseum

Tune in @phillipsauction tomorrow at 5pm to see this beautiful portrait by @danielle_mckinney_ on the auction block during the evening sale! Link in bio for a preview of the sale.

#daniellemckinney #contemporaryart #acryliconcanvas #maxhetzler #marianneboesky #portraitpainting #phillipsauction #phillips

Considered one of the most important painters of the 20th century, Clyfford Still belonged to the first generation of Abstract Expressionist artists. He was one of the leading Color Field painters, whose canvases devoid of recognizable figures juxtaposed different colors and surfaces in a variety of compositions. Unlike Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman, who organized their colors in a fairly simple way—Rothko as rectangles and Newman as fine lines over vast fields of color—Still's compositions are less regular. He is best known for his “lifelines”, in which a thick impasto of paint is applied directly to the canvas with a palette knife (whereas Rothko and Newman use relatively thin paint), producing irregular shapes pushed to the edges of the canvas. These sawtooth-like bursts of color give the impression that a layer of color has been “ripped” away from the painting.

Clyfford Still remained however relatively unknown compared to his peers, and he retired from the art world in the 1950s. In 1978, he drew up a will in which he entrusted almost all his work to his wife Patricia: “I give and bequeath all the remaining works of art executed by me in my collection to an American city that will agree to build or assign and maintain permanent quarters exclusively for these works of art”. The artist wanted his works to be brought together in one place, so that visitors could understand his work in its full context. Nineteen American suitors competed for the Still collection, including the Whitney Museum, MASS MoCA and the Denver Art Museum, as well as the cities of Baltimore and Atlanta. In 2004, the mayor of Denver promised Patricia Still a museum devoted entirely to the artist's 3,125 works (unseen for twenty years). However, four paintings from Still's estate were sold by Sotheby's to raise funds for the museum's endowment ($114 million), before being incorporated into the museum. Opening in November 2011, the Clyfford Still Museum hence features over 93% of the artist's lifetime output.
@still_museum #clyffordstill #contemporaryart #painting🎨 #art

Bridget Riley is a British painter born in 1931. She is known for her colorful optical works, producing complex visual experiences that engage the sensations and perceptions of the viewer.

The artist spent part of her childhood in Cornwall. Living by the sea, she developed an enduring sensitivity to the changing effects of light on the surrounding landscape. After a brief period of figuration, she “abstracted” nature away in drawings, as she sought to create works that directly challenged the viewer's perceptions and emotions without the intermediary of a recognizable subject. At the time, she was fascinated by the work of the Pointillists and the illusions of Victor Vasarely: her first abstract works are a tribute to their discoveries about the interaction of colors and the role of the eye in blending nuances.

In 1961, Bridget Riley presented a variety of geometric shapes (lines, circles, curves and squares) in black and white, then later in gray. The perception of these a priori stable elements is disrupted by different compositional processes which, superimposed, cancel each other out and dissolve. The artist gives her compositions a sense of movement, light and space, voluntarily disorienting the viewer's eye. In 1965, she exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during a group show that drew worldwide attention to “Op Art”. From 1967, she produced her first paintings in stripes, before adopting curves for much of the 1970s. Inspired by a trip to Cairo in 1979, she returned to stripes and even introduced color to her work, adopting a distinctive group of hues she called her “Egyptian palette” (turquoise, blue, red, yellow, green, black and white). By doing so, Bridget Riley expanded the perceptive and optical possibilities of her compositions.

Later, she would do the same by widening the spectrum of form as well, as she started to explore rhomboidal shapes in her work. For six decades, the artist has thus conducted an in-depth investigation into the interactions of color and form, offering profound insights into the workings of human perception.
#bridgetriley #opart #contemporaryart

Mamma Andersson is a Swedish painter born in 1962. She graduated from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, and continues to live and work in the city.

The artist is known for her large figurative canvases, depicting melancholy landscapes or dreamlike interiors, sometimes populated by ghostly figures. Her canvases are devoid of spatial or temporal reference points: the emphasis is on expressing subjective moods and atmospheres. Drawing inspiration from personal photographs, film images, theater sets and period interiors, as well as landscapes from her native Sweden, Andersson thus create scenes which seem to be in limbo somewhere between past, present and future.

The artist is influenced by Nordic figurative painting of the early 20th century, and her austere graphic lines and loose washes are also reminiscent of late 19th-century Romanticism. However, Andersson’s practice remains unique and avant-garde in its own way. Indeed, many of her subjects have a psychological quality that is unmistakably contemporary. And even when the artist’s subject matters evade all temporality, the way she handles colours and paint is distinctively from our day and age. From a formal standpoint, Andersson is known for her juxtaposition of textured brushstrokes suggesting volume and blocked-in areas (in both oil and acrylic) on canvas or thin wooden panels. She also sometimes covers these canvases and panels with spray paint, the foamy aspect of which contrasts strikingly with her very defined lines and shapes, further disrupting the flatness of the support in brilliant fashion.

The artist took on the Swedish Pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 2003. She is currently represented by Galerie Magnus Karlsson, and has been on the David Zwirner roster since 2004—where she is currently exhibited in a group show in the Parisian quarters of the gallery. Her paintings are included in the collections of institutions such as MoMA, New York, MoCA, Los Angeles, the National Museum of Oslo, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
#mammaandersson #contemporaryart #painting🎨

From 2004 to 2007, German photographer Candida Hofer travelled the world to photograph the iconic Date Paintings by Japanese artist On Kawara, in the homes of private collectors. On Kawara is one of the greatest international figures of twentieth-century conceptual art. Fascinated by the passage of time and our ability to measure it, he began his landmark Date Paintings series in 1966. In these works, he paints a specific date (always corresponding to the date on which the work was executed) in white capital letters on a darker monochrome background. Kawara is said to have produced some 3,000 Date Paintings over a period of 48 years. These works illustrate his metaphysical obsession with the passage of time, and his vision of art, which he wished to be as devoid of personal emotion as possible.

Through the lens of Candida Hofer—also known for her photographs of empty spaces in which she tries to find psychological residues—“Date paintings in Private Collections” is an opportunity to discover the often very sober interiors of collectors of Date Paintings, where only a few decorative elements and these dates allow us to penetrate their intimacy. Some interiors are less uncluttered: in Basel, a collector presents “Oct.16,1986” with a society portrait by Andy Warhol, an Arazzi by Alighiero Boetti, and a work by John Baldessari. In more stripped-down interiors, the significance of these works (chosen probably for their date) to their owners is to be discovered and interpreted. Some collectors choose a date for a sentimental reason (like a birthday) or an important day in history. For example, a collector in Cologne owns a dozen Date Paintings, all from the 1990s, with different dates and shades. In Zurich, a Date Painting ("May 29, 1972”) fits into a bookcase: during the Moscow summit that took place at the time, Kissinger obtained from the Soviets the idea of a phased global settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another collector owns a work dated November 30, 1975, the date of the proclamation of the People's Republic of Benin.
#onkawara #candidahöfer #interiordecorator #contemporaryart #datepaintings #interiordesign

From the 19th of March, the French capital’s Centre Pompidou will present Paris Noir, an evocative exploration of the contributions of Black artists, writers, and intellectuals to French cultural life.

Spanning the second half of the 20th century, the exhibition will celebrate 150 Afro-descendant artists from Africa to the Americas such as James Baldwin, Josephine Baker and Romare Bearden, alongside contemporary voices inspired by their legacy. Indeed, “Paris Noir” is complemented by four contemporary installations produced especially for the exhibition.

Through paintings, photographs, manuscripts and performances, the exhibition will capture the dynamic intersection of art, politics, and identity in Paris, a unique multicultural city that served as a refuge and muse for many creators. Indeed, the post-war period in Paris inspired these artists, giving rise to new practices and experiments that remind us of the enduring impact of Black culture on art: international and Afro-Atlantic abstractions, as well as surrealism and figuration libre.

“Paris Noir” also promises to offer a powerful narrative of resilience and creativity: struggles from all over the world—apartheid, decolonizations, the fight for civil rights in the United States—find their echo on the Parisian art scene. The exhibition will run until June 30, 2025.
@centrepompidou #contemporaryartwork #art #edclark #exhibitions

Three years after his death, several works by Hermann Nitsch will join the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou. They will be exhibited in the museum's collection until the renovations begin on March 10, then in the exhibition dedicated to the collector Jean Chatelus (running from March 26 to June 30, 2025), and at the Grand Palais at the end of the year.

The Nitsch Foundation and private collectors have donated a relic painting created during Nitsch's 50th action in 1975 at Prinzendorf Castle, a splashed painting created during the 66th action in Istanbul in 2013, twelve pencil drawings on paper (created between 1960 and 2017), 36 lithographs and prints (produced between 1984 and 1991), a copy of the book Levitikus (published in 16 copies, it contains 12 illustrations), an action painting with paint folder from 1994 from his “Peintures de bœufs” series.

The Centre Pompidou began acquiring works by Nitsch in the early 1990s. Although internationally recognized, the founder of Viennese Actionism has remained relatively unknown in France. He was exhibited just after his death at the Musée de l'Orangerie in winter 2023. Galerie RX has announced a busy 2025 for the artist’s estate.
#hermannnitsch #contemporaryart @centrepompidou #vienneseactionism @nitschfoundation

Since 13 February 2025, Skarstedt’s Parisian gallery has been presenting a series of self-portraits by some of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. These works invite viewers to explore the fluid terrain of representation.

The exhibition opens with a cardboard portrait of David Hammons made with an imprint of his face in grease, the materiality of which is reminiscent of the artist’s iconic tyre sculptures. On the first floor, Martin Kippenberger's first self-portrait takes on the Creation of Adam, with Kippenberger's art dealer in lieu of God. Here, the artist's identity is a performative construction modulated by the art market. Not far, portraying himself in a jester's hat, Eric Fischl also underlines the absurdity inherent in the artist's role—exposing himself to an audience. In an adjacent room, Francis Bacon depicts himself in a more serious manner : wrinkles and bruises dot a face traumatised by life. Next to it, Frank Auerbach's self-portrait is also marked by the passage of time.

Further down, a beautiful late self-portrait as a faun by Picasso, eyes wide open, await us. Juan Gris's rare cubist, fractured portrait, evokes the multiplicity of the self. A few of the pieces on display are quite rare: Dubuffet's self-portrait, for instance, is one of only six ever made by the artist. Close by hangs a rare double-artwork by André Masson: ‘Le Voyant’ is a surrealist synthesis evoking the spiritual nature of identity, and ‘Ville Crânienne’ can be found on the back of the same work.

In the penultimate room, two photographs face each other: Robert Mapplethorpe's self-portrait, reflecting his commitment to themes of gender expression, and Cindy Sherman—in a work from an early series. Using costumes and cinematic mise-en-scene, both artists play with the archetypes demanded by society to paradoxically assert the fluidity. Same thing with Basquiat's self-portrait in the next room: in a pared-down drawing, the artist refuses to depict his true face, in favour of a masked figure. Next to it, Georg Baselitz inverts his deliberately flayed body, reflecting his psychological disorientation.
@skarstedtgallery @maria.cifuentes.mc #contemporaryart

A striking two-gallery exhibition of works on paper by George Condo is currently on view in New York City until March 1, 2025 at Sprüth Magers and April 12th, 2025 at Hauser & Wirth. Simply entitled ’Pastels’, it brings together a remarkable selection of 20 of the painter’s most recent pastel works, with prices ranging from $600,000 to $1.5 million.

Long recognized for his ability to merge art historical references with a uniquely contemporary vision, Condo once more demonstrates the depth of his abilities on paper. Known for bridging the gap between figuration and abstraction, as well as humour and melancholy in his images, the acclaimed painter has also been found of blurring the line between drawing and painting for quite a while now. The current show is no exception, and perhaps Condo’s greatest statement to date on how works on paper should be considered equal to paintings.

Spanning both galleries, the huge compositions delve deep into the complexities of the human psyche, presenting for the most part Condo’s characteristic fractured, geometric portraits with bright planes of colour intersecting jaggedly across faces. The way in which they are done this time, however, is highly different from anything we’ve seen before by the painter. In these recent works, Condo pushes the limits of improvisation—employing gesso, metallic paints, acrylics and gestural pastel without any preparatory sketches. At Hauser & Wirth, large-scale pastels push the boundaries of the medium, with gestural dynamism in a wide array of colours. Meanwhile, Sprüth Magers presents a more intimate selection alongside a few completely abstract black and white compositions, with the occasional splatter of colour here and there. Overall, the joint show definitely reasserts Condo’s status as one of the most inventive and incisive painters of our time.

#georgecondo #pastel @hauserwirth @spruethmagers #worksonpaper

Until 29 March 2025, Hauser & Wirth St Moritz is presenting a dozen previously unseen works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, inspired by his stay in Switzerland. The artist exhibited his works at the Bruno Bischofberger gallery in Männedorf for the first time in September 1982. He would return to Switzerland more than a dozen times thereafter. The Engadine region in particular fascinated the artist: as curator Dieter Buchhart puts it, the Engadine for Basquiat meant “work, inspiration, friendship, and rest and relaxation” According to the specialist, “the contrast between the pulsating life, the clubs, the street noise, and the breakneck speed of the metropolis New York” on one hand and the ‘discovery of slowness’ on the other, was probably at the root of Basquiat's predilection for this region. Basquiat would produce a series of works combining the natural and cultural landscape of the Engadine with the metropolis of New York.

In ‘Engadin’, for example, Hauser & Wirth presents works that take up the theme of skiing with ‘Skifahrer’ and ‘See’, both painted during a stay in Saint-Moritz for a dinner at Bischofberger's house. The exhibition also highlights more complex works that interweave motifs referring to race, such as ‘Big Snow’, which refers to Jesse Owens—the American athletics champion whose gold medal was refused because of the colour of his skin. ‘Engadin’ also presents a monumental work made up of nine panels, combining motifs referring to the African diaspora and slavery with fir trees, a mountain road and an ibex.

The combination of elements referring to Switzerland was not the only contribution to Basquiat’s work that stemmed out of his Engadine trips. Indeed, it was also during a visit at the end of 1983 that the idea of an artistic collaboration between Andy Warhol, Basquiat and Francesco Clemente emerged. The three artists would subsequently each create four paintings and a drawing, which were then exchanged between them for completion: ‘In Bianco' is also on show at Hauser & Wirth. This exhibition highlights one of Basquiat's lesser-known periods—on a par with his Los Angeles and Modena works.
#jeanmichelbasquiat @hauserwirth #contemporaryart

A very special exhibition just closed its doors at the Parisian Musée Picasso: “Jackson Pollock: The Early Years (1934—1947)”. We were fortunate enough to have a chance to witness this show a few times, right until the last day, on the 19th of January. It focused on a lesser known period of the giant of 20th century American painting: his “beginnings”, as he was searching for the style for which he would eventually become widely acclaimed. Although the show, spread across a total of 5 small rooms, did not comprise that many works, those that were on display were exceptional. As a result, it provided a powerful glimpse into the aesthetics of a young Jackson Pollock, and some of the key influences on his early work.

The first two rooms were full of works from the late 1930s to 1941. One could see the strong impact of several art movements had on the painter during the Great Depression (1929-1939): American Regionalism, Mexican muralists, Surrealism and Picasso. Indeed, the impact on Pollock of the 1939 MoMA exhibition, which had brought Picasso’s work to the United States, cannot be overstated. The Musée Picasso’s scenography gave a strong account of this by displaying Picasso and Pollock’s coloured drawings side by side: it almost seemed at times as if Pollock was emulating his own Picasso drawings. As for the paintings, Pollock essentially produced very composed images at the time, full of coloured areas delimited by darker outlines.

Throughout most of the show, the presence of the aforementioned influences was thus definitely felt. But one could also feel Pollock was a genius in his own right from the very beginning, with his own style of mark-making seeping through everything he did. For instance, he was already not one to hold back on laying paint down, and some of the canvases from the first two rooms are heavily textured. And in the next two, with works from 1941 to 1946, one could gaze at Pollock’s dripping techniques amidst paintings still imbued with the style of his early influences. Comprising four dripping paintings from 1947, the last room then signified the transition to the Pollock we all know.

#jacksonpollock #exhibition #museepicasso

Four years after the publication of ‘For Art's Sake: Inside the Homes of Art Dealers’, Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian and photographer Jean-François Jaussaud take us on a tour of the private residences of some of the world's greatest artists: Julie Mehretu, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Johan Creten, Claire Tabouret, Guillermo Kuitca, Cristina Iglesias, William Kentridge, Suboh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Jac Leirner, Raqib Shaw, Carlos Garaicoa, Rashid Johnson, Sheree Hovsepian, Bernar Venet, David Rodriguez Caballero, Ernesto Neto, Yan Pei-Ming, Miquel Barceló, Glenn Brown, Francesco Vezzoli, David Salle, Not Vital, Tracey Emin and Maurizio Cattelan.

After art collectors and art dealers, Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian continues her series by focusing on the very heart of the art world: artists. By offering a taste of their intimacy, this new book gives us a glimpse of their creative vision from another angle, perhaps even providing us with new keys to interpret their art. Across five continents, 22 private residences are presented, showing the dynamic between art and environment. There is no typical lifestyle: the book examines the many ways in which artists' daily lives, habits and aesthetics intersect with or diverge from their art. Tracey Emin's Georgian house in Fitzroria, for example—stripped bare and dotted with velvet furniture—is the polar opposite of the raw themes she evokes in her art. On the other hand, the book also features more lush interiors such as those of Julie Mehretu (a renovated former rectory in Harlem) and Miquel Barcelo (a medieval hunting lodge in Majorca), which seem to be extensions of their creative spirit.

Some artists combine their studios with their living spaces, while others completely separate their personal lives from any creative practice. Claire Tabouret exhibits her own work, and others, such as Bernar Venet and Not Vital, transform parts of their homes into galleries or foundations. “Inside the Homes of Artists” also includes interviews with the artists themselves.

Photos by Jean-François Jaussaud for Art's Sake
#clairetabouret #traceyemin #mauriziocattelan #juliemehretu #contemporaryart

Huang Rui is a Chinese artist born in Beijing in 1952. Like many young city dwellers of his generation, Huang Rui was forced to interrupt his education during the Cultural Revolution to work in the countryside. He returned to Beijing and made a name for himself as one of the founders of the Xing Xing group (1979-1984), along with Wang Keping, Ai Weiwei, Mao Lizi, Ma Desheng and Li Shuang. The Xing Xing group is one of the first Chinese art movements to challenge the Cultural Revolution. In 1979, at a time when abstraction was still banned and excluded from museums in China, this group exhibited 150 artworks—most of which were abstract—on the railings and outside spaces of the National Art Museum of China.

Huang Rui's early works were more figurative, influenced by Western figuratism: expressionism, abstract expressionism, fauvism and cubism. Huang Rui also worked on the relationship between language and colour, using proverbs and slogans to evoke the propaganda posters that were dominant. The artist then gradually drifted towards abstraction as he painted Chinese places and architecture, before making a complete shift in 1984. From then on, his abstract works depicted a personal sense of chaos, but also what China was going through at the time. In a manner not unlike that of Mondrian, Huang painted geometric shapes such as squares and rectangles. In these abstractions, which became known as Space Structures, he sought to represent a space that could not be painted. For Huang, abstraction was a means of representing spiritual essence; it was the purest form of expression, opposite to realistic figuration.

In Japan, he met Kazuo Shiraga, one of the most radical members of the Gutai movement, which was interested in involving the body in the creative process. His hard edges and rectangular shapes disappeared to make way for abstractions composed of thick brush strokes rapidly executed in a reduced palette - producing an effect of momentum. A precursor of several types of abstraction in China, Huang Rui paved the way for the 1985 New Wave, the first Chinese contemporary art movement.
#huangrui #contemporaryart

Cecily Brown was born in London in 1969, daughter of the famous art critic David Sylvester. From the age of 3 she manifested her wish to become an artist. Between 1985 and 1993, she studied drawing and painting, as well as screen printing and industrial design.

Moving to New York in 1994, she made a name for herself a few years later in 1997 with a series of paintings depicting rabbits—often mating—alongside elements reminiscent of the still life tradition. Some of these works were acquired by Charles Saatchi, and she soon rose to stardom. Brown then became the protégé of the famous art dealer Larry Gagosian, and gradually one of the spearheads of the revival of figurative painting, a movement that gained momentum in the early 2000s with a new generation of figurative painters such as Jenny Saville, George Condo, Peter Doig, Elizabeth Peyton and John Currin.

Brown’s large canvases are loaded with references to art history, from Paolo Veronese, Peter Paul Rubens, and Edgar Degas to Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, and Joan Mitchell. But they also deal with eminently contemporary themes such as current social and political events, or sulphurous subjects such as sex and pornography. These inputs all merge together in a wide maelstrom of bright colours.

Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, her dense, fused and yet fragmented compositions are regularly compared to the emotionally charged expressionist style of Willem de Kooning. Another point in common with the abstract expressionist is the spontaneity of her practice, since the artist has no preconceived idea of the subject of a canvas before starting, and relies on gesture—often going as far as painting with her fingers—to give shape to her images. Working with oils and their long drying time, Cecily Brown often paints up to 20 works simultaneously, enabling her to build up several layers of paint in each image to generate a certain level of pictorial intensity.
#cecilybrown #contemporaryart

Born in 1945, Joseph Kosuth is an American conceptual artist. Alongside Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler and Lawrence Weiner, he is now considered one of the pioneers of conceptual art and, as such, one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century. Through his practice and theoretical writings, he initiated a crucial paradigm shift in the field of art by questioning traditional art forms and practices. He was interested in the formation of ideas in relation to language and context, and for him art was "not a question of shapes and colours, but a question of the production of meaning". Kosuth's aim is to question the way in which the artist and the viewer produce meaning.

To this end, the artist was among the first to use strategies of appropriation, diverting texts, photographs, installations and even public media in order to build up various networks of meaning. In 1965, Kosuth exhibited the installation "One and Three Chairs". It consisted of three representations of the concept of the chair: a photograph, a dictionary-type definition and a physical chair. Following on from this work, he introduced a series of "definition-pictures": he enlarged a definition (photostat) from a dictionary. With this series, Joseph Kosuth aims to produce a reference to a meaning in itself, a purely conceptual abstraction, rather than to constitute a plastic work whose materiality and formalism are of any importance.

Seeing art as an expression of the absolute or divine spirit, Hegel's Aesthetic Lessons (1918-1929) prophesied as early as the beginning of the 19th century that the exhaustion of material forms would necessarily lead to an art that was increasingly dematerialised, abstract and focused on pure meaning. In similar fashion, Joseph Kosuth believes that all traces of artistic skill should be eliminated from art so that ideas could be transmitted in the most direct, immediate and pure way possible. Aesthetic formal elements are thus seen as an obstacle to the transmission of these pure ideas, and must therefore be eliminated by the artist.
#josephkosuth #conceptualart #contemporaryart

“Homage to the Square” is a series of geometric abstractions by Josef Albers, begun in 1949 and continued until his death in 1976. The works in this series represent three or four squares of plain colours, nested within one another. The series consists of around 2000 works on different media: paper, canvas, tapestry and engraving. Each work follows an invariable formula: a square format (ranging from 40.6 cm to 122 cm) comprising three or four squares of a single colour. A central square takes up a large part of the surface, with the following squares occupying a smaller area.

With this series, the colour theorist wanted to study the chromatic interactions between neighbouring colours in his paintings. For him, colour is a subjective experience: changes in placement, shape and light produce changes when processed by the human eye: ‘in visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is—as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art’.

To illustrate this fact, the artist has chosen a form that is stripped down and codified to the extreme, the square: a perfect mathematical size for superimposition, a shape that never exists in nature, guaranteeing a man-made quality. Reduced to its most neutral and fundamental form, the square does not distract the viewer's gaze, allowing them to concentrate on the experience of differences in hue, size and layout. With their interplay of colours, the squares seem to support or oppose each other depending on the adjacent shades, ‘therefore, [letting] the colours react in the prison in which I put them’. The effect is different in each work in the series. In ‘Homage to the Square: With Rays’, for example, the dull grey inner square seems to float in the three neighbouring yellow squares.

Another amazing characteristic of this series: the artist uses colour to create space and volume, subverting the limits of two-dimensional space, not unlike how painters of the Dutch Golden Age and the Italian Renaissance used atmospheric perspective, but applied in this case to abstraction. As such, Josef Albers was truly one of the precursors of Op art.
#josefalbers #homagetothesquare #contemporaryart

Last night, René Magritte’s painting "L’Empire des lumières" soared past expectations at Christie’s, achieving a staggering $121,16 million during the sale of the Mica Ertegun Collection. The late interior designer and art collector—who died at the age of 97 in December 2023—had acquired the artwork in 1968, adding it to a collection that spanned many of the great names in modern and contemporary art, including Joan Miró, David Hockney, and Ed Ruscha.

Created between 1949 and 1964, the series “L’Empire des Lumières”—comprising 17 variations in oil and gouache—presents a poetic paradox: a quiet nighttime street illuminated by a single streetlamp, crowned with a bright daytime sky filled with fluffy clouds. The setting grounds this fantastical work in the real world while simultaneously making it timelessly enigmatic. This duality lies at the heart of Magritte’s genius: by combining the impossible with the familiar, he challenges our understanding of the world, blending serenity with unease. As such, the series “L’Empire des Lumières” reflects Magritte’s lifelong fascination with opposites: light and shadow, real and surreal, ordinary and extraordinary. As regards the inspiration for it, it might have come from André Breton's surrealist poetry, particularly lines like “If only the sun were to come out tonight” (from the poem “L’aigrette” in his 1923 book Clair de Terre), which capture the same dreamlike contradictions.

It is nothing new that Magritte's influence extends into popular culture. The 1999 movie “The Thomas Crown Affair” had for instance heavily made use of Magritte’s painting “The Son of Man” (1964) to string together themes of art collecting, prestige and anonymity. As for “L’Empire des Lumières”, its hauntingly cinematic qualities had inspired an iconic scene in the 1973 film The Exorcist (1973), which even served as the movie’s poster. With this record-setting sale, the art of René Magritte once more cements its place in the broader cultural imagination. Last night’s sale also confirms the excellent state of the artist’s market, with 4 out of the top 5 historical records for Magritte paintings set since 2023.

#auctions #modernart #magritte

Rita Ackermann is an American artist of Hungarian origin, and a prolific painter: her work, which oscillates between figurative and abstract expressionism, spans several periods. The artist moved to the United States in 1992 to study painting. Beginning her career as an artist during that time, she quickly found success with her figurative canvases featuring characters with childlike or adolescent features. Her inspiration was mostly drawn from urban culture, street art and the world of nightlife. But, however figurative her paintings from this period were, her taste for gestural, colourful painting was already evident in the almost abstract backgrounds of her canvases, over which the figures seemed to float.

In the 1990s, Ackermann was represented by Andrea Rosen gallery, having met the gallerist thanks to a succession of new series in which she explored other techniques and materials such as collage and Plexiglas. During the early 2010s, the artist returned to her abstract-expressionist roots with her Chalkboard paintings—large compositions on canvas primed with chalkboard paint, to which washes of white chalk and green and blue pigments were applied—, which are very reminiscent of Cy Twombly's Board series. But it was in the late 2010s that she began her most sought-after series to date: the Mama paintings, in which figurative forms both reappear and disappear. These works, which will be the subject of three successive exhibitions at the prestigious Hauser & Wirth gallery, combine figurative drawing with large, gestural and colourful brushstrokes. They are influenced by Twombly, Joan Mitchell and Willem de Kooning.

Her latest solo exhibition, Splits, has just ended at Hauser & Wirth's New York headquarters. In the paintings from this exhibition, Rita Ackermann's human forms cascade down and up, sometimes merging into one another. The artist also took an original formal approach to these works: the canvases are fragmented into three contrasting parts, some significantly more colourful than others, thus generating an impression of various spaces intertwined together.
#ritaackermann #contemporaryart

Niele Toroni is a Swiss artist born in 1937. He belongs to the first generation of European minimalist artists. After moving to Paris in 1959, he would soon find himself by beginning a practice he called "Travail-Peinture" in 1966. It consists of brush marks made with impressions of a 5 cm wide flat brush (no. 50)—soaked in a monochrome colour—repeated at perpendicular intervals of 30 centimeters on paper, canvas, glass or a white wall. As the bristles are not rigid, each print is unique, different from the one next to it, and the gesture remains essential.

Toroni first exhibited his work in Paris in 1967 at a historic performance exhibition at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. That same year he founded the avant-garde group BMPT alongside fellow artists Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset and Michel Parmentier. During their brief period of existence, the group had 5 "manifestations". In the paintings they exhibited, the members of the group asserted their desire to produce art that refrains from conveying any emotion or message whatsoever. Each member of the group identifies himself by repeating a chosen motif. Vertical stripes for Buren, a black circle for Mosset, horizontal stripes for Parmentier, and the aforementioned brushstrokes applied at regular intervals for Toroni. The four artists are looking for the "zero degree of painting": « Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni, it is the deliberate abandonment of the sensibility that has always been the driving force and the attraction of the work of art (...) the viewer is left alone with himself. » (Michel Claura)

Through an austere practice of minimalism and repetition, Toroni and the other members of BMPT radically opposed the principles on which painting had always been based. By producing a minimal, unchanging process in a variety of unsigned, interchangeable works, they questioned the notion of authenticity and the importance of the figure of the artist, thus deliberately emphasising the anonymity of their work. Among his acolytes, Toroni is the only one to have continued this exploration throughout his fifty-year career.
#nieletoroni #bmpt #contemporaryart

Larry Bell is an American sculptor born in 1939. He is renowned for his refined treatment of the surface of glass and his explorations of light, reflection and shadow through different materials. Along with Robert Irwin and John McCracken, he is the leading exponent of the Light and Space movement from the 1960s, which focused on the perceptual experience arising from the viewer's interaction with works of art and their environments. Thanks to his astonishing ability to exploit the inherent properties of the materials he chooses, Bell challenges common notions of perception.

The artist began with oil paintings influenced by abstract expressionism. At the Chouinard Institute in Los Angeles, he met Robert Irwin, who had a profound influence on Bell's conception of vision and the effects of lighting and staging on the nature of perception. From 1960 to 1962, Larry Bell abandoned abstraction and created a series of canvases with the corners cut off, on which he painted simple geometric shapes. He later incorporated reflective glass and transparent glass into a number of collages. The artist then turned his attention to dimension, working on shallow glass boxes on which he painted geometric shapes: stripes, checkerboards, ellipses. Then, Larry Bell went on to create his series of 'ghost boxes’: cubic sculptures in vacuum-coated glass with chrome frames, resting on transparent pedestals. In these signature works of his, he explores the properties of glass, proposing subtle gradations of transparency, reflectivity and colour.

He declared : « glass (...) is a solid liquid that has at once three distinctive qualities: it reflects light, it absorbs light, and it transmits light all at the same time ». In 1968, the artist abandoned the chrome frame and created larger cubes in which the effects of the glass planes only interacted with each other. A decade later at the end of the 1970s, the artist continued his research into perception, this time on flat planes. Even later in his career, Bell also engaged in practices as diverse as furniture design and bronze sculptures, as well as large-scale glass sculptures and installations.
#larrybell

Willem de Kooning is best known for his “Women” paintings. This series of 6 works marked the artist's return to figuration when the whole world was turning its eyes to the new American abstraction. It was thus strongly criticized at the time by the artist's abstract peers as a step backwards. On top of that, the paintings and their distorted representations of women provoked a wide array of reactions from the public. Willem de Kooning was decades ahead of his peers in his understanding of the false divide between abstraction and figuration. When faced with art critic Clement Greenberg’s rejection of figurative painting, asserting that “in today's world, it's impossible to paint a face”, de Kooning famously answered: “That’s right, and it’s impossible not to.”

De Kooning had taken an early interest in the human figure—particularly the female one. In the early 1940s, he began producing highly figurative yet expressionist works depicting women. Then, strongly inspired by Picasso, the artist gradually fragmented his figures more and more. Between 1950 and 1953, he produced a third set, with vivid colors and violent brushstrokes. In these pictures, representation itself seems to be imploding. The inspiration behind these figures is plural: Titian's Madonnas, Mesopotamian Venuses, as well as post-war pin-ups. But with their exploded extremities, these women correspond more to the nightmare than the fantasy of the modern man.

De Kooning also incorporated granular materials and collages, which he scratched away: according to Elaine de Kooning, it took over two hundred images to arrive at the final state of Woman I.

Four “Woman” were exhibited at the 1954 Venice Biennale, cementing de Kooning’s reputation as one of the best painters of the century. Later in his career, de Kooning would produce a final set of Women blended even further into the landscape. More recently, the return of ’Woman Ochre’, an extension of the series which had been stolen from a museum in 1985, has brought it back into the public eye (see our article : https://www.ugoscalia.com/post/the-incredible-story-behind-a-de-kooning-theft).
#dekooningwoman #dekooning #contemporaryart

Marina Rheingantz is a Brazilian artist who lives and works in São Paulo. She is known for her semi-abstract landscapes in oil. She grew up in the Araraquara region, where her family owns lands, including a farm. Her father was an engineer, her mother a sociologist and her grandfather an architect. As a result, she frequently visited construction sites. Both urban and rural, the vast landscapes of her childhood were to have a considerable influence on her work. Rheingantz began her studies in 2003 at Sao Paulo's Faap. In 2008, she presented her first solo show at Galeria Fortes Vilaça.

She first showcased geometric reductions of landscapes she saw when she was younger: seas, forests, fields. But in the mid-2010s, her painting became more fluid: the geometric aspect of her landscapes disappeared, giving way to dense works composed of misty backgrounds contrasting with sparse touches that almost resemble "tapping" (or lines overlaid via another medium, such as felt-tip pens) and large impastos of thick paint. In these works, Rheingantz thus suggests imaginary spaces, in compositions not only suspended between abstraction and figuration, but also between heaven and earth. Because they are unpopulated, her landscapes often seem timeless: some of them have been compared to wastelands and ruins, evoking an indeterminate epoch.

However, the artist’s vast spaces often contain elements that enable the viewer to navigate the multiple temporalities that actually make up her work. Indeed, her paintings combine childhood memories with references to Brazil's changing infrastructure. Figurative elements, such as forests or bridges she observed as a child during visits to construction sites, coexist with muddy fountains evoking the corruption of the Bolsonaro government. So although Rheingantz's work is part of a longstanding tradition of landscape painting, it is also marked by traces of modernity and industrialization. The artist's work hence draws on the prevalent dichotomy between the natural world and industrialization in Latin America.
#marinarheingantz #contemporaryart #painting #abstractart

Issy Wood is a British figurative artist born in 1993, and currently working in London. At just 31 years of age, she has already succeeded in creating a new figurative aesthetic that blends classical technique with representations of contemporary objects that are often provocative. Fascinated by materials such as leather, the artist has a number of favourite subjects, such as car interiors and jackets, which she depicts with great precision. The characteristic element of her painting lies in her choice of medium: she paints on velvet, which gives a shimmering appearance to her works as their surface interacts with light.

The artist's fascination with materials such as leather and velvet, as well as her attraction to rare and luxurious objects, evoke the world of fantasy and implicit eroticism. In doing so, she panders to the viewer's taste for the unmentionable. Issy Wood's paintings are resolutely pop, but they renew the genre through a dark, surrealistic universe: black is omnipresent in her canvases, and often coexists with brighter, more sensual colours such as vermeil, dark green or royal blue.

Apart from cars and clothes, the artist also depicts parts of the human body, such as a manicured hand, and more recently teeth and portraits. With her depictions of Joan Rivers—a famous American presenter known for her abuse of cosmetic surgery—for instance, the artist describes a world of opulence and luxury often tinged with nostalgia and tragedy. Issy Wood also depicts animals, porcelain services and metal tureens—strange obsessions that tell of her neurotic relationship with the passing of time, family heirlooms and the body.

Despite her young age, the artist is already coveted by some of the biggest names in contemporary art. Wood's work has recently been shown at the ICA Miami, the Hayward Gallery, LACMA, and more recently at the Ilmin Museum in Seoul and Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. She is currently represented by Michael Werner and the London gallery Carlos/Ishikawa. On top of that, Issy Wood is also an accomplished musical artist, and released her first album in 2022.

Born in 1937, Robert Mangold is an American minimalist artist. After studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Yale University, from the 1960s onwards he explored line and colour on media of various shapes, sizes and dimensions.

Throughout his career, Mangold developed an artistic vocabulary derived from the idea of geometry and asymmetry in form. He also constantly experimented with new ways of applying paint. He first became known around 1964 for his monochrome multi-panel constructions, in which a pastel colour is applied to plywood and Masonite using an airbrush. With no discernible traces of paint application, there are no outward signs of the artist's intervention in these works, in contrast to the action painting that was all the rage in the United States during the same period.

Then, from 1968 onwards, Mangold worked with acrylic paint that he applied with a roller brush onto a stretched canvas, moving away from industrial supports. Straying even further away from the conventions of painting, he introduced shaped canvases into his work in 1970. But he also began to apply paint with a traditional brush the same year. In the mid-1970s, the artist produced symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes—rings, columns, crosses, trapezoids—which overlapped in the same composition, and whose contours were formed by curvilinear edges. Traced with a pencil, the lines curve over the coloured planes.

With his works composed of simple elements assembled by complex means, Robert Mangold challenges the typical connotations of what a painting is or could be, and his works often appear as objects rather than images. Like those of minimalist painters such as Robert Ryman, Elsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland, his works tend to simplify gestures, forms and colours—mainly monochromatic—to the maximum, to bring out the conceptual component of artistic creation. His work has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Guggenheim (1971), the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego (1974), the Stedelijk Museum (1982), the Hallen für Neue Kunst (1993) and the Musée d'Orsay (2006).
#robertmangold #contemporaryart #minimalism #art #shapedcanvases #painting

Mark Bradford is an American artist born in 1961, who currently lives and works in Los Angeles. After working as a hairdresser in his mother's beauty salon, he studied art at the California Institute of the Arts, from which he graduated at the age of 30.

He became known in the 2000s for his fragmented abstract paintings, combining collage of found paper and paint. At first he used small translucent silk papers used in hairdressing salons (« papier mèches »). He later used maps, billboards, film posters, comic strips and 'merchant posters'. The latter are printed sheets advertising—often predatory—services for people in deprived neighbourhoods: they advertise cheap transitional housing, food aid, debt relief, jobs, fast money, legal advice. Mark Bradford first superimposes these layers of paper, creating a delineated pattern with strings. He then sculpts these textured surfaces using a variety of techniques, including gouging, tearing, shredding, gluing, high-pressure washing and sanding.

For Bradford, the materials and tools he uses carry a meaning that precedes their artistic utility. As a consequence, his compositions are often described as 'social abstraction'. Indeed, characterised by their formal and material complexity, Bradford's abstractions explore the social and political structures that objectify disadvantaged communities and the bodies of vulnerable populations.

The artist participated in the 2006 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he won the Bucksbaum Award, enabling him to present his first major solo exhibition the following year at the same museum. In 2017, he represented the United States at the 57th Venice Biennale, showcasing several beautiful sculptures. Mark Bradford is represented by Hauser & Wirth and Mnuchin Gallery.
#markbradford #contemporaryart #socialabstraction #abstraction #art

Born in 1921, Anne Truitt was an American sculptor. After studies in psychology, she turned to art in the late 1940s. Initially producing figurative sculptures, she discovered abstraction after visiting the ‘American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists’ exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1961. Greatly inspired by the Abstract Expressionists (including Ad Reinhardt and Kenneth Noland), she adopted a style often compared to Minimalism that became her trademark during her 50 years of career.

The core of her aesthetic quest is geometry and colour. Explaining her work in April 1965 she declared: ‘what is important to me is not geometrical shape per se, or color per se, but to make a relationship between shape and color which feels to me like my experience. To make what feels to me like reality.’

Truitt is most famous for her 3D works, in particular her rectangular, up to 2-meters high, wooden columns that are often hollow and covered in layers of bright or pastel acrylic paint. Alternating between horizontal and vertical brushstrokes—sometimes applying up to 40 coats of paint—, she sands her works between each application of paint to remove all traces of her brush, thus creating planes of smooth colour. Unlike her contemporaries (Donald Judd, John McCracken, Larry Bell, Robert Morris), she produces her geometric works by hand, abandoning industrial processes (although the result seems devoid of human intervention).

From a formal point of view, her wooden columns are inspired by Mayan and Mexican art. Imbued with nostalgia, they represent for the artist syntheses of encounters, memories, ideas, events and landscapes (often from the American West Coast) accumulated over the course of her life. This emotionally rich referential character contrasts sharply with the literalness of Minimalism, which her work is sometimes associated with. But, regardless of how her work may be labeled, it is safe to say that Truitt was one of the leading figures of female abstraction: in 1966, she was one of three women (along with Judy Chicago and Tina Matkovic) to take part in Primary Structure, the first major exhibition devoted to Minimalism.
#annetruitt #contemporaryart

On September 27, 2024, Florence's Palazzo Strozzi Foundation will present “Painting Without Rules”, one of Helen Frankenthaler's largest exhibitions to date in Italy. Bringing together 30 of the artist's paintings produced between 1953 and 2002 and works by her contemporaries (Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko), the exhibition will examine Frankenthaler's artistic affinities, influences and friendships. In “Mediterranean Thoughts” (1960), for example, we see the influence of Jackson Pollock, with abstract elements linked to surrealism that also made up Number 14 (1951).

Part of the second generation of post-war American abstract painters, Helen Frankenthaler played a key role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. She first made a name for herself in 1952 with her work “Mountains and Sea”. In this work, she used her innovative “soak-stain” technique–sometimes seens as an expansion of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings–in which oil paint diluted with turpentine is poured onto an untreated raw canvas on the ground: the paint thus stains the canvas rather than caressing it. The result is a luminous, translucent composition, with overlapping fields of color that stand out from the surface while being absorbed by it. In contrast to the strict, formal or energetic painting of other Abstract Expressionists, her characteristic style is light and lyrical. Elaine de Kooning called her style “abstract impressionism”. Initially criticized by some (Times magazine went as far as describing her painting as “sweet and unambitious”), the artist's innovations were soon adopted by her peers, including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.

In chronological order, the exhibition will trace the artist's six-decade career, in which her constant breaking of the rules made it possible to envision a different kind of future not only for women artists, but also for abstraction itself. “Painting Without Rules”, which closes on January 26, 2025, will benefit from loans from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, international museums and private collections, as well as works by her peers from her personal collection.
@palazzostrozzi #helenfrankenthaler #contemporyart

In March and April 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held one of its most famous foundational exhibitions: “Cubism and Abstract Art”. Brought forth by the budding museum’s first director Alfred H. Barr Jr.—the institution was founded in 1929—, the groundbreaking exhibition aimed to give an account of the modernist impulse toward abstraction of the early 20th century. As Barr put it in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, great artists “had grown bored with painting facts. By a common and powerful impulse they were driven to abandon the imitation of natural appearance.”

To illustrate this impulse, the show garnered a total of nearly 400 works of art: from paintings, drawings and sculptures to photography, furniture, architecture, posters, typography and even films. The artists on display were the likes of Arp, Brancusi, Braque, Calder, Cézanne, Derain, Duchamp, Ernst, Gauguin, Giacometti, Van Gogh, Le Corbusier, Kandinsky, Klee, Kupka, Léger, Malevich, Masson, Matisse, Miró, Mondrian and Picasso, to name a few… The works occupied all four floors of the Museum’s gallery space, which was at the time a five-story town house leased by John D. Rockefeller, the husband of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—one of the main founders of the Museum.

The curation and the exhibition catalogue mostly stemmed from a course that Alfred H. Barr Jr. had given during his time as an art history teacher at Wellesley College. At the time, this innovative series of lectures on modern art was the first of its kind in an institution of higher education. And for the cover of the catalogue, Barr provided a comprehensive diagram of the links between the main modern art movements.

The impact of this exhibition cannot be overstated. Not only did it help establish the young institution’s reputation, but it also marked a new era in the historiography of modern art. Before then, there was no cohesive interpretation of the movement of modern art, and art critics were almost lost when faced with the plurality of modern artworks. “Cubism and Abstract Art” changed things, by giving a lineage to abstraction through cubism and its descendency.
@themuseumofmodernart #abstraction

Born in Vienna in 1940, Martha Jungwirth is an Austrian artist known for her abstract paintings. Over the course of her 6-decade career, she has developed a singular approach to abstraction that is rooted in the body and in close observation of the world around her.

She produces compositions that only reveal themselves to her during the creative process. This process, which she describes as an “adventure”, involves working with damaged materials. The supports she uses are usually timeworn as well: rolls of paper found in Nepal, cardboard backgrounds taken from old frames, etc. Martha Jungwirth's elegant works owe their existence to accident as much as to calculated gesture.

In contrast to the rational, objectifying principles of Minimalism and Conceptual art that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, Jungwirth's work expresses a palpable subjectivity. As she explains herself: “My art is like a diary: seismographic”. The artist uses any “pretext” from her daily life to draw: personal encounters, international travel, a discovery of art history or Greek mythology, or various political events. These “triggers” provoke internal impulses that the artist then records in the form of paintings and watercolors.

Hence, Jungwirth’s process is a kind of rhythm associated with the body, where fingerprints, scratches and even shoe prints constitute recordings of her physical presence. However, her brushstrokes, splashes, stains and constellations of material never completely invade the support. As for her vivid color palette, it evokes a very corporeal register, combining meaty pinks, bloody reds and bruise-like magentas. But while the artist's subjects can sometimes seem almost figurative, they always exist in a realm beyond the identifiable, capturing instead the energy of a primordial image through the artist's body and her movements.
#marthajungwirth #contemporaryart #painting #abstractpainting

In the Belgian seaside resort of Knokke le Zoute, interior designer Olivier Dwek took charge of the 4th and 5th floors of a modern penthouse designed by Marc Corbiau in the 1980s. Facing the sea, the penthouse hosts an extensive art and design collection. In one of the rooms, a neon work by British artist Tracey Emin entitled "It Doesn't Matter My Friend, It Does Not Matter, To Cry is Beautiful", produced in 2004 (also reproduced and translated into Turkish in 2011 to mark the opening of Istanbul'74), is displayed above a flat copper sculpture by American artist Carl Andre. A rare "Stag" stool by fashion designer Rick Owen—made from deer antler—completes the ensemble.

In the living room of the penthouse, a "head" by Jean-Michel Basquiat, created in 1981, sits above the inlaid fireplace. The interior decorator also added a hide armchair by Charlotte Perriand. Made in 1946, this armchair is a hairy variation of the Doron Hotel armchair designed for the eponymous winter sports resort, which was one of the first chalet-hotels. A coffee table by Jean Royere has also been added to the lounge. Not far, an horizontal rectangle by minimalist artist Donald Judd adds a sense of depth to the already bright room. Next to it, the refined lines of a Tokyo" bench by Charlotte Perriand—originally created for her husband's Tokyo home and a testament to the designer's fascination with the country—complete the room.

In another room, a work from conceptual artist On Kawara's Date Paintings series—March 11, 1990, corresponding to Lithuania's Independence Day date—overlooks a 1982 sculpture by Franz West. Inspired by Chinese calligraphy and Taoist philosophy, two "Zen Prints" (from an edition of 15) by a leading figure in abstraction—Brice Marden—, contrast with two dark design elements whose materials have been left almost raw: a bronze chandelier by French artist Richard Texier and two high wooden stools by Pierre Jeanneret.

Photos by Philippe Garcia for « Olivier Dwek in the light of modernity », Philip Jodidio, 2021.
Artworks from #traceyemin #carlandré #basquiat #donaldjudd #onkawara #franzwest #bricemarden
Design from #richardtexier #jeanneret #rickowens @olivierdwek

In 1927, Templeton Crocker, heir to the Union Pacific Railroad, bought a 550m2 penthouse in San Francisco's Russian Hill district. In 1928, he travelled to Paris in search of artists and designers to renovate his new apartment. He soon entrusted the renovation to Jean-Michel Frank and Jean Dunand, with commissions also from Pierre Legrain and Sarah Lipska. At the time, French art deco was rare in the United States, especially in a San Francisco still bathed in Victorian style. The fruit of this collaboration saw the light of day a year later.

The chief decorator was Jean-Michel Frank. The decorator's characteristically uncluttered style was to be found in many of the apartment's rooms, with neutral colors (ranging from ivory to brown) and the use of a wide variety of mediums. The walls and ceiling of the living room were made of sheepskin parchment, the fireplace was decorated with mica leaves, the furniture was made of parchment and straw, the tables out of shagreen (shark skin), and the lamps from rose quartz and obsidian iron... The master bathroom was described by Vogue as "probably the most beautiful room of all". Jean-Michel Frank also created a vast panoramic salon that also served as a music room. In this solarium, twenty picture windows framed afforded spectacular views of the city and the bay. Also of note were a sculpture by Lovet Lorski and a three-panel screen of harlequins by Picasso.

As for Jean Dunand, he was responsible for the dining room, breakfast room and master bedroom of the American patron. Dunand was one of the most important brassworkers of the 20th century. He decorated the penthouse with bold, colorful lacquered panels. In the dining room, the walls were lacquered black, and tropical fish, coral and seaweed were engraved in pink, orange and silver. In the master bedroom, the brassworker engraved deer.

The apartment was dismantled in 1959 and its contents stored until the collection was purchased by New York publishers Peter M. and Sandra Brant in 1972. Over the years, various pieces were sold at auction and became part of museum collections.

#jeanmichelfrank #design #jeandunand #art #contemporyart

Lenz Geerk is a Swiss artist who studied art at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where he still lives today. He made a name for himself in the late 2010s with his enigmatic portraits, painted on woollen canvases.

His works feature somewhat disembodied figures whose faces are reminiscent of the African masks that Picasso used as models for some of his proto-cubist masterpieces of the 1900s (such as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon). But Lenz Geerk’s portrait style may also evoke the ghostly figures of Modigliani, as his solitary individuals appear to be absorbed in their own state of mind. Lost in theirs thoughts, they are depicted in languid poses, often slumped or reclining.

The impression of reverie that emerges is also reinforced by his masterful use of acrylic paint. Geerk’s technique enables him to simplify shapes and achieve an economy of detail, whilst playing with light and volume to the utmost. The result is a very "cottony”, textural impression that perfectly serves the purpose of his works. The painter’s rather minimalist style also relies on a reduction of the color palette to a few essential, often earthy tones, chosen to illustrate the inner life of his characters. This use of color allows him to convey a form of diffuse emotional tension.

Lenz Geerk is currently represented by Roberts Projects and MASSIMODECARLO.

#contemporyart #lenzgeerk #painting #art #figurativepainting

Jeffrey Gibson is an American painter and sculptor born in 1972, who currently lives and works in the state of New York. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious McArthur Fellowship. He is known for his sculptures inspired by Native American objects and his graphic canvases in kaleidoscopic colors. He draws inspiration from his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, as well as from his life experiences in Europe, Asia and the United States.

His work also contains numerous cultural references—be they political, literary or taken from art history and pop culture. At the 60th Venice Biennale, where he was the first indigenous artist to represent the United States at the American pavilion, he exhibited large canvases reminiscent of Boetti's Arazzi. Indeed, in his show “The space in which to place me", brightly colored geometric canvases in fluorescent hues bore messages of resistance, slogans and song lyrics.

Whether in his sculptures or his canvases, the artist incorporates complex indigenous crafts (such as Native American beadwork, leatherwork and quilting), the materials of which he sees as symbols of contemporary globalization. The nails that originally came from the Spanish are taken up by today's punk and DIY culture, for instance, and the beads that originally came from Italy now come from India or China. Gibson's art thus deals with questions of identity, exploring the ways in which the contemporary world is the fruit of cultural hybridity. He is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery.

#contemporaryart #jeffreygibson #biennalevenezia #painting #sculpture

In 2019, a New York couple bought an entire floor of a Robert A.M. Stern-designed skyscraper overlooking Central Park. They went on to commission the Ries/Hayes duo to decorate the 400m2 apartment. And in 2023, they opened its doors to Galerie magazine. It was an opportunity to discover the couple's impressive art collection, acquired over 15 years.

Their first purchase was "Cascades Perpendiculaire XX", a Louise Nevelson piece, which they installed in the living room. At the other end of the room, a large abstract painting by Helen Frankenthaler dominates the wall. "Gypsy" was created in the 1970s, the artist's highly acclaimed production period. Indeed, this monumental canvas features the artist's revolutionary "soak-stain" technique, in which diluted paint is poured onto an untreated raw canvas. "Gypsy" was seen in 2019 at Christie's, where it garnered $1,755,000. Also in the salon is a swirling cast-iron sculpture by Tony Cragg, made in 2011. Known for his accumulations of strata and volutes, the artist exhibited "It is, it isn't" at San Cristofero church in Lucca, Tuscany.

The entrance to the apartment features a late work by Fernand Léger. Painted in 1949, "Deux figures et une fleur" stands out from the widespread abstraction of the post-war period. With the monumental dimensions of its figures, this canvas illustrates the artist's commitment to neoclassical figuration, and his fascination with the expressive potential of color. It sold at Sotheby's for $6,325,000 in 2014.

In a bookcase is "Sherry Speeth", a 1964 portrait by Alice Neel, recently exhibited at David Zwirner. Finally, the couple's collection also includes a portrait of a woman on paper by Matisse and "Site à la Source", a work given by Dubuffet to Guggenheim director Thomas Messer. The collage sold for 1 million in 2013 at Sotheby's. The couple's collection also includes works by Picasso and Willem de Kooning.

Photos by Stephen Kent Johnson
Artworks from #fernandleger #helenfrankenthaler #tonycragg #aliceneel #jeandubuffet #louisenevelson #henrimatisse

Nathanaëlle Herbelin is a figurative painter born in 1989. Raised in Israel, she would spend her holidays in France. Supported by her parents, she decided to learn painting alongside Russian and Ukrainian artists. In 2017, she joined the Jousse Entreprise gallery, which presented her first solo exhibition. She first made a name for herself with portraits of people close to her—more recently of strangers she met in the street—and still lifes in oils.

The artist begins to paint directly, without prior drawings. Few layers are applied, and the final result is frequently scraped. With a colour palette reminiscent of certain frescoes—powdery, neutral tones brightened up by areas of pure, bright colour—she then goes on to recount more intimate stories and memories. Certain elements of her canvases are softened to illustrate the impact of time on memory. Nathanaëlle Herbelin's work is also characterised by a constant clash of dualities: intimacy and universality, tension and gentleness.

The dreamy canvases of Nathanaëlle Herbelin are also imbued with many references to art history: we find the simple forms and flatness of the Italian Primitives, the impression of pictorial emptiness that emanates from some paintings of the Quattrocento, as well as fluid brushstrokes that are reminiscent of Post-Impressionist techniques. She does in fact cite “Les Nabis”—a group of young Parisian painters from the late 19th century (Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard)—as a central influence in her practice.

Fittingly, Herbelin was exhibiting her own works in two rooms dedicated to the Nabis at the Musée d’Orsay until today, June 30. She brought their favourite subject matters up to date: everyday life, intimacy and nature. As part of the "polyphony of Orsay", the museum has planned several exhibitions of works by contemporary painters (including Peter Doig during winter 2023) in dialogue with works in the permanent collections. For her show, Nathanaëlle Herbelin updated genre scenes with contemporary features (such as mobile phones).
@museeorsay @nathanaelleherbelin #contemporaryart

In 2013, American sportsman Alex Rodriguez bought a 1100m2 property in Coral Gables, Florida. After having it renovated by architects from CLF Architects and interior designers from Briggs Edward Solomon, he opened the doors of his home to AD Magazine in 2016. This was an opportunity for the public to discover the impressive collection of contemporary art acquired over the years by the baseball player, combining emerging artists and 20th-century masters.

In the entrance hall, for instance, visitors are greeted by a painting by versatile contemporary artist Joe Bradley, and a sculptural work by Nate Lowman. We can also guess in this hall a Society Portrait by Andy Warhol, as well as his 1978 Self-Portrait. Also on display is Richard Prince's Ford Mustang painting. The artist is known for using some of the most quintessentially American symbols and objects (such as cowboys, nurses and cars) to explore the fetichism which underlies the American dream. This canvas is no exception: it draws inspiration from the idealized visions of macho cinema, but also from the qualities associated with the act of driving exploited by the Beat Generation (speed and escapism).

In the living room, we find Keith Haring's “Untitled” and Jean-Michel Basquiat's “M.T.”, painted in 1984. Created in the same year as the latter, Andy Warhol's “Reel Basquiat” (also hung in the living room and last sold at auction in 2015) is based on photographs of Jean-Michel Basquiat taken in the summer of 1983. With a pose evoking the classical heroism of Michelangelo's David, Andy Warhol attempts to mythologize the young artist, as if to capture his influence and posterity. However, precariously balanced building blocks make up this silkscreen: like the crumbling bricks of an ancient ruin, as in his Marilyn, celebrity too is fallible. Another canvas by Joe Bradley stands alongside these three major 20th-century works.

Until 2019, Alex Rodriguez's collection also included Basquiat's Pink Elephant with Fire Engine, before he sold it at auction for £2,655,000.

Photos by Bjorn Wallander and Jerry Rabinowitz
Artworks from #keithharing #basquiat #andywarhol #richardprince #joebradley #natelowman

1968 saw the fourth edition of Documenta, an exhibition of contemporary art held in Kassel, Germany every five years. Invented in 1955 by Professor Arnold Bode, Documenta was intended to put West Germany—then rising from the ashes—back on the international art map.

Thirteen years later, Documenta 4 in 1968 was marked by controversy and debate. First of all, the opening speeches were disrupted by slogans and red flags, as the politicization of society in the late 1960s also reached Kassel. Documenta 4 was also marked by a generational conflict in its organization. Entrusted to a 24-member council divided into working commissions (painting, sculpture), the council found it difficult to reach consensus on aesthetic judgments, given the council's democracy, often resulting in deadlock. Jean Leering, the young director of the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, who had just been appointed head of the painting committee, played a decisive role.

In contrast to its previous editions, Documenta 4 thus presented itself as the “youngest Documenta ever”. The exhibition purposefully eschewed any form of retrospective, concentrating instead on the artistic trends of its time, particularly American. To bridge the gap between the young modern art production (with which the public was unfamiliar at the time) and its reception, Documenta 4 introduced a “visitors' school”, offering explanations on these new art forms.

Attracting a wide audience, Documenta 4 was the first edition to be profitable. What made this edition so exceptional was also the fact that the exhibition showcased, for the first time together, an outstanding selection of artists from Pop Art (Andy Warhol), Minimal Art (Carl Andre, Josef Albers), Conceptual Art (Joseph Beuys), Color Field works (Ellsworth Kelly), Land Art (Christo), Post-Painterly Abstraction (Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland), Op Art (Bridget Riley) and Kinetic Art (Takis). If these aesthetic choices sometimes generated criticism—some going as far as calling it a “modern house of horrors”—, Documenta went on to become the most important exhibition of avant-garde contemporary art in Germany, and probably the world.
#documenta4 #contemporaryart

The latest exhibition of the Pinault Collection at Bourse de Commerce in Paris is open until September 2024. Entitled “Le monde comme il va“ after the eponymous philosophical tale of 1748 by Voltaire (which could loosely be translated by “The state of the world”), the show aims to give an account of the state of affairs in our contemporary world. To do so, it brings together a wide array of artists from different generations and levels of recognition (worldwide recognized artists alongside emerging artists with budding careers). And this is truly where the Bourse de Commerce shines on the Parisian art scene: in the freedom it has to showcase things that don’t get a chance to be seen in more conventional museum settings.

The mission statement of the exhibition is this: facing the paradoxes and the excesses of current affairs, artists take on the role of poetically and philosophically agitating our minds. However diverse the pieces on display are, a common trait they all have is their ability to question and reflect the uncertainties of today’s world. Some of them conjure up the ghosts of history which come back to haunt us, such as Damien Hirst’s cold cabinets full of medicine boxes, which shine the light on our contemporary obsession with health and the fear of death closely related to it.

As such, the major themes of the Pinault collection once more transpire, and the fear of death is only one of the many expressions of the stark awareness of eminent change which is ubiquitous in the exhibition. As for the treatment of these themes, it is also quite standard of what the French magnate has us used to: humor is prevalent, as the exhibition seeks to express the collector’s desire to step back and see the problems of today in a lighthearted fashion.

Conceptual art fits the part as a means to this end in various parts of the exhibition. But the show is also full of more standard expressions of artistry, with a number of impressive paintings by various emerging or more recognized artists.
@boursedecommerce #pinaultcollection #contemporaryart

Frank Stella just passed away at the age of 87. The American painter and sculptor was regarded as the precursor of Minimalism, and the leading exponent of Op art and the shaped canvas—works on stretchers of various shapes that become a site for formal exploration. He will also be remembered for his famous reframing of abstract art, discouraging the interpretation of his works outside of their simple and immediate objective qualities: "what you see is what you see".

In his work, Frank Stella concentrated on the formal elements of art: line, form and colour. He made a name for himself at the age of 23, when he exhibited his "Black Paintings" series, works composed of black bands separated by narrow lines of unpainted canvas. In doing so, he famously closed the door on the abstract expressionism that had been in vogue up to then and ushered in an era of minimalism.

In the 1960s, he expanded his work to include metallic hues and then bright colours in geometric compositions. He presented his first shaped canvases in 1960, during his first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli. His "Protractors" series—around a hundred paintings composed of superimposed semi-circles of brilliant, sometimes fluorescent colours—evokes the great compositions of architectural vaults. The artist’s affinity with architecture was also expressed in the size chosen for his works, which became increasingly monumental. In the mid-1970s, Frank Stella's painting once again underwent a turning point: the artist stopped producing exclusively hard-edge paintings. This gradually led him to three-dimensional art, foreshadowing his work in sculpture and architecture in the decades that followed, as Stella would design public works.

Frank Stella constantly reinvented himself throughout his career, and even became one of the pioneers in the use of new technologies in art. The artist was truly a leading figure in post-war American art and recognized as such: in 1970, at the age of 33, Frank Stella became the youngest artist to have a retrospective at MoMA (he was also one of the few artists to ever have two retrospectives at the New York Museum).
#frankstella #contemporaryart

Stephen Sills is an American interior designer listed in the AD100—a list compiled by Architectural Digest magazine of the 100 greatest designers, decorators and architects. In his work, Stephen Sills seeks to create bridges between past and present: luxurious fabrics and centuries-old furniture interact with interiors full of muted colours, providing the perfect backdrop for works of art. And for good reason as the decorator's clients include celebrities and corporations, as well as major art collectors.

In the North Shore region of Massachusetts, Stephen Sills can count one of the world's leading private collectors of contemporary art among his clients, the home of whom was renovated by Sills. Over the years, this collector has brought together exceptional pieces by artists who have shaped the history of 20th-century art.

In one of his salons, for example, we find a work by one of the first abstract expressionist artists: Clyfford Still. Produced in the mid-1950s, this work is typical of the American artist's work: with paint applied directly to an untreated canvas using a palette knife, it presents the irregular shapes that the artist famously called "lines of life”. In the same room, "Arch of Hysteria" hangs from the ceiling. This bronze sculpture created by Louise Bourgeois in 1993 exists in six copies, and depicts a contorted male figure in the throes of hysteria, a neurosis historically assigned to women. Also exposed, a large blue work on canvas by one of the most important female artists of the second generation of Abstract Expressionism: Joan Mitchell. In the hall, Stephen Sills has brought together a seated woman by Giacometti, « Light, earth and blue » by Mark Rohtko (auctioned at Christie's in 1986), and a bullfighter painted by Picasso in the 1970s. In a second salon, the designer combined 18th-century furniture, Picasso's "Painter and Model in a Landscape" (also already auctioned), and a drawing by George Condo.

Photos by Francois Halard for AD Magazine
Artworks from #clyffordstill #joanmitchell #louisebourgeois #albertogiacometti #pablopicasso #georgecondo

On the occasion of Frieze Los Angeles, David Zwirner presented John McCracken's first solo exhibition in twenty years, to mark what would have been the artist’s 90th birthday.

Born in 1934, John McCracken studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, initially producing abstract geometric paintings. But his canvases became increasingly three-dimensional, and from the 1960s onwards, the artist turned to minimalist sculpture. Along with Larry Bell, he would soon become one of the figureheads of West Coast Minimalism.

McCracken first made a name for himself with his simple geometric forms made from industrial materials: using plywood covered in fibreglass and layers of pigmented polyester resin, the artist sanded and polished these forms until they became smooth and reflective. But unlike what can be seen in many works from the minimal art movement, which often favoured industrial production, these works were handmade.

From 1966, he developed his narrow wooden planks in bright, often monochrome colours, leaning at an angle against the wall—the traditional space devoted to painting. Composed of at least 20 layers of material, these planks thus operate in both the physical realms of sculpture and painting. John McCracken also started producing two-metre-high columns that reflect and transform the surrounding environment in various manners, depending on the viewpoint, effectively allowing spectators to see each other. These two emblematic ensembles in the artist's career illustrate the ability of minimalist abstraction to project multiple realities simultaneously, giving rise to a myriad of different readings. David Zwirner's exhibition highlighted the nuanced modulation of colour, form and surface of these two sculptural forms.
@davidzwirner #johnmccracken #contemporaryart #sculpture

Since February 28, 2024, Hauser & Wirth is presenting Pat Steir's first solo exhibition in thirty years at their West Hollywood gallery. Renowned for her pioneering approach to painting, which synthesizes conceptual art, figuration and abstraction, Pat Steir became best known in the late 1980s / early 1990s for her large scale Waterfall" series. Mounted on a ladder, the artist spilled diluted paint onto a canvas previously covered with an undercoat of Verdaccio (a technique dating back to the Italian Renaissance).

Acting as a "collaborator", the artist lets gravity direct the flow and splash of paint. Manipulating color and form in this way, controlled hazard plays a key role. In her textured works (the artist has intentionally distanced herself from the flattened gestures of the Abstract Expressionists), Pat Steir expresses a state of mind more than she seeks to represent the beauty of a waterfall or seascape figuratively.

On the occasion of Frieze Los Angeles, Hauser & Wirth presented "Painted Rain", comprising works from the "Waterfall" series, all created from 2022 onwards, whose common thread is the exploration of blue. Pat Steir has also teamed up with musician Trina Basu to create the soundscape for the show. The exhibition was inspired by the artist's time in California in the 1970s, when she taught at the California Institute of the Arts. After living in New York, the artist had been struck by the sheer number of cars and endless roads in Los Angeles, as well as how incredibly bright everything was in contrast with New York’s muted tones.

At the time, CalArts University had lent her a painting studio bathed in dazzling light: « The light was so bright and saturated I couldn’t see the paint colors I mixed. To counteract this light, I made black paintings with rainbows and color scales outside the picture field.». Fifty years later, paradoxically, the painter mainly recalls luminous visions of the sky and the ocean from her time in LA. Paying tribute to the West Coast and the shades of blue that have left a lasting impression on her, "Painted Rain" is on view until May 4, 2024.
#patsteir @hauserwirth #contemporaryart

Richard and Jane Lang acquired together one of the most aesthetically impressive collections of works by the first and second generations of American abstract expressionists, as well as works by leading contemporary figurative artists.

The couple began their art collection in 1970. Their first purchase was an abstraction by Franz Kline: a linear structure of black brushstrokes defining five blocks of white paint. They subsequently purchased several major works of American abstract expressionism, including a work by Mark Rothko (reputed to be the last canvas sold by the Marlborough Gallery), a work by Robert Motherwell, and a Burst by Adolph Gottlieb. In 1973, the chromatic austerity of their early collection changed with the acquisition of two more colorful works: an incandescent red by Clyfford Still, which they hung in their living room, and a transparent and opaque acrylic by Helen Frankenthaler, which they hung in their bedroom.

In the mid-1970s, the Lang couple added two figurative works by Francis Bacon and a cast of Alberto Giacometti's Femme de Venise II to their collection, thus enriching the experience of contemplating the more expressionist works in the collection. Richard Lang also offered his wife an Andy Warhol portrait of her. In turn, he would join his wife on the walls when artist Alice Neel painted Richard's portrait in 1978.

Their collection also includes a monochromatic painting by Willem de Kooning (created in 1948, it prefigures the powerful gestural paintings of American abstraction), as well as works by Joan Mitchell (Jane Lang was interested in the contributions of women artists to Action Painting), Lee Krasner, and a self-portrait by Philip Guston—one of the last works purchased by the couple together, before Richard's death in 1982. The same year, this exceptional collection was visited by the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2020, the Seattle Art Museum received a gift of nineteen works from this collection.

Photos by Spike Mafford for Friday Foundation
Artworks by #andywarhol #franzkline #clyffordstill #adreinhardt #joanmitchell #helenfrankthaler #philipguston #albertogiacometti

Born in 1938 and deceased on March 26, 2024, Richard Serra has left an indelible mark on the history of contemporary art. The artist is known for his monumental sculptures made from industrial materials and characterized by the exploration of space and perception. These works aim at transforming and engaging with their surrounding environment; in doing so, they challenge the viewers, inviting them to reconsider their perceptions of space and form.

Serra’s artistic career began in the 1960s when he emerged as a prominent figure in the Minimalist movement. His early works consisted of sculptures made from industrial materials such as steel plates and sheets. Throughout the years, Serra continued to experiment with materials and forms, pushing the boundaries of sculpture. He soon became particularly known for his large-scale, site-specific installations, which are designed to interact with the architectural and natural elements of their surroundings. Serra’s sculptures often create immersive experiences for viewers, as they navigate and engage with the gigantic structures.

A lesser known part of his work consists of drawings on paper where the artist experiments with both forms and textures. These pieces often served as sketches, studies, and conceptual explorations for Serra’s sculptural projects. They allowed him to investigate the textural and tonal qualities of the surfaces, as well as experiment with various compositions and spatial arrangements before translating them into three-dimensional works. However, if these works enabled the late artist to expand the scope of his vision of sculpture, they simultaneously stand their ground as unique works in and of themselves.

Serra’s work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the Tate Modern in London. His contributions to the field of contemporary art have earned him numerous awards and great critical acclaim, including the prestigious Golden Lion for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
#sculpture #drawing #contemporaryart #richardserra #minimalism #venicebiennale #guggenheim #moma

Until 3 March 2024, the Musée Rodin has presented « Critical Mass », an exhibition of works by British sculptor Antony Gormley. Born in 1950, Antony Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994. The artist is best known for his human-scale sculptures, made from simple materials such as cast iron, which explore the human body and its relationship with space and the environment. Blending abstraction and realism, his often figurative sculptures explore the duality of the human experience, at the intersection between the emotional and the spatial.

In dialogue with the works of Auguste Rodin, "Critical Mass" was spread throughout the museum: 12 different "fundamental" positions from Critical Mass II (an emblematic series from 1995) could be found in the garden. These human sculptures, initially crouching and curled up on the ground, gradually straightened up until they reached a standing, frozen position. The progression of this line could have evoked the perfectibility of the human being or Darwinism.

In the temporary exhibition room, 48 other 'fundamental' positions were presented—some of them stacked and knotted together, in a way reminiscent of a mass graves. For the artist, this magma of flesh is a testimony to "the genocide, the sixty million dead of the Second World War and the many victims who have fallen since then". This room gave us another possible interpretation of the same figures on display in the garden: Critical Mass II is an "anti-monument to the victims of the twentieth century". Bowing in shame, the fundamental positions pointed towards Rodin's "Gates of Hell", the realm of eternal punishment inflicted on mankind for their crimes.

The exhibition also continued in the museum's Marble Gallery, which showcased six of Gormley’s Insiders. Five of the artist's sculptures were also on display at the Hôtel Biron. On top of giving visitors the chance to explore the artist's emblematic sculptures, the exhibition allowed them to reflect on the two sculptors and their shared desire to use the body not only as an artistic subject matter, but also as an object and a tool for questioning.
@museerodinparis #antonygormley #sculpture #contemporyart

Hernan Bas is an American artist born in 1978 in Miami, who still lives and works there. Known for his refined compositions, which reflect on queer identity amongst other subjects, the painter is influenced by decadent 19th-century writers and poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde and Joris Karl Huysman. And it shows: Bas paints images that are both dark and colourful, nihilistic and mystical, humorous and sombre.

In terms of subject matter, Hernan Bas fuses influences as diverse as classical and children's literature, poetry and mythology, or religious stories. His ample brushstrokes often depict young men discovering their emotions and desires. As a result, his canvases are populated by thin, androgynous young men evoking the figure of the dandy. These characters embody the questions of identity that run through Bas's work. They are often depicted alone, seemingly trapped in blurred situations and landscapes, somewhere between reality and fantasy, dreams and nightmares.

Even when the artist paints groups of people, a general sense of solitude emanates from the paintings, and the flourishing nature that surrounds his figures only deepens this feeling. The landscapes in which they find themselves is often threatening, but it never seems to cause the slightest sense of anxiety in the protagonists, whose faces remain impassive and enigmatic. This paradoxical aspect helps to create a feeling of melancholy in Bas’s canvases.

Hernan Bas is currently represented internationally by the galleries Perrotin, Lehmann Maupin, Victoria Miro, Peter Kilchmann and Fredric Snitzer. His latest solo show, “The Conceptualists”, was presented at the Bass Museum of Art in 2023 in Miami.
@hernanbas #contemporaryart #bassmuseumart #figurativepainting

Today we wanted to go back to one of the best gallery exhibition of last year, ’SCORE’ at Petzel, by Derek Fordjour. He is an American multimedia artist known for his paintings made from a profusion of materials and colours. He usually works by covering his canvases with several layers of cheap materials (bits of cardboard, aluminium foil, items found in the street, etc.), which form the basis of his paintings. He then covers them with successive layers of paint (acrylic spray and oil), pastel and charcoal, which are applied or retrieved with various techniques. This process gives his paintings an instantly recognisable texture.

From 10 November 2023 to 22 December 2023, Fordjour presented his second exhibition at Petzel: ‘SCORE'. Its title can be understood on several levels. Evoking the actions of cutting and scraping inherent to Fordjour's excavation process, it can also refer to the action of winning points in a competition (the artist is fascinated by the world of sport). Finally, the title of the exhibition refers to the action of composing—something which was ubiquitous in this exhibition, notably with the presentation of a choreographic performance.

The first section featured a multi-level architectural installation. Called 'Wunderkammer', a luxurious corridor was lined with a series of wall inserts featuring new sculptures by Fordjour. Its name is a reference to the cabinets of curiosities used to display treasures and exotic objects, but also to a trip the artist made to Tanzania, where activists are still lobbying for the return of the remains of their ancestors killed in the resistance against German colonial rule. An interior room featured two kinetic dioramas. This section then extended into a damp basement—similar to a warehouse.

Another section presented a series of new paintings and sculptures mixing 2D and 3D, as well as static and mobile elements. The sculpture 'Flock', for example, represented a series of legs inverted on moving wheels of different sizes. Lastly, the exhibition presented ‘Arena' twice a day—a 30-minute performance piece.
@petzelgallery @fordjourstudio #contemporaryart

We would like to congratulate the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and its curators -Charlotte Barat-Mabille and Pierre Wat- on the success of the Nicolas de Staël retrospective, which attracted 409 162 visitors this winter. Born in 1914 in a Russia in the throes of political upheaval, the painter became a key figure of the French post-war art scene. Constantly varying his tools, techniques and formats, Nicolas de Staël never ceased to renew himself and explore new paths.

Organised chronologically, this retrospective retraced the artist's successive developments, bringing together a selection of around 200 paintings, drawings, prints and notebooks. Starting his career with abstract canvases in a geometric style with pure colours applied to the canvas (the artist was affiliated to the new emerging “School of Paris” at the time), De Staël made a name for himself with his landscapes in highly textured dark tones, composed of thick, impastoed blocks applied with a knife.

After witnessing a football match at the stadium Parc des Princes, Nicolas de Staël began a series of twenty-five canvases in 1952. Finding new inspiration in a more direct link with reality, Nicolas de Staël returned to motif and colour. He wanted to reconcile the power of abstract painting with the visible world. Rather than abandoning abstraction and returning to figuration, de Staël's paintings evolved in a unique direction, opening up a third avenue for art. He also extended his figurative repertoire to include landscapes (of Île-de-France, Normandy and Southern France), nudes and still lives. The highlight is perhaps his series of landscapes of Agrigento, one of whose works features on the cover of the exhibition.

In his last years, Nicolas de Staël depicted his subjective relationship with the world, his lived reality, using what he had learnt through a career of abstraction to figuratively express the visual riches of the world. Light, space and emotion take precedence over everything else.
@museedartmodernedeparis #nicolasdestaël #contemporaryart

Sasha Gordon is an American figurative artist born in 1998. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2021, and quickly made a name for herself in the art world. She is known for her colourful works, populated by characters with childlike features and round faces. With her electric, fluorescent, vivid palette, Sasha Gordon creates vibrant worlds brimming with naturalistic detail. For the young painter, colour is used to express the feelings of her characters, which their facial expressions alone cannot always convey.

Gordon's surreal and introspective paintings address mental illness, the male gaze, discomfort with intimacy and the female body, but also self-image and racial prejudice. Sasha Gordon, a young biracial Asian woman who grew up in a predominantly white environment, questions her identity, her image and her sexuality. She populates her canvases with characters created in her own image, look-alikes embodying different facets of her personality; men are mostly absent. Somewhere between fever dreams and hyper-consciousness, her scenes are a realm where the artist can express the pressures to conform to society. As for her characters, even if they are engaged in an activity (such as camping or archery), they often seem rather uncomfortable.

For the artist, this malaise is the characters' realisation that society is constantly watching them: they have internalised the pressure to conform to it, and in particular to the upper-middle-class white suburbs in which the artist grew up. The characters' unease can also be linked to the scrutiny they receive from an inner force: self-awareness. Indeed, Sasha Gordon's paintings also address her internal conflicts: in an exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch in June 2022, the artist explored her past with OCD (and in particular trichotillomania).

Formally, Gordon draws inspiration from artists such as Wei Dong and Lisa Yuskavage in her use of colour. The artist has exhibited in numerous galleries, including Matthew Brown, Clearing, and Stephen Friedman in summer 2023. In December 2023, she presented her first solo exhibition in a museum, “Surrogate Self”, at the ICA in Miami.
@sashaagordon

.pro-gallery-wix-wrapper {display: block !important;} .pro-gallery-wix-wrapper .gallery-item-container {opacity: 1 !important; display: block !important;}