|
In the 1930s Greene helped found the American Abstract
Artists group with her husband, who served as its chairman
for three terms. He went on to pursue a graduate degree
in art history at New York University’s Institute
of Fine Arts, and then taught at the Carnegie Institute
of Technology from 1942 until 1959. The couple commuted
back and forth between New York and Pittsburgh.
“Black
and White Construction,” from 1942, borrows the
forms from the collage but examines them sculpturally,
with wood instead of paper. The strong contrasts and
measured voids and projections play with the essential
qualities of the mediums she is traversing.
In 1947, Greene and her husband bought land in Montauk
and began to spend time on the South Fork as well.
By the later 1940s, Greene was becoming more linear
with her forms. The works in the show offer evidence
of her breaking up the blockiness of the previous years
with more skeletal frameworks in black and deep red.
These forms continue to be visible in her work into
the next decade, when she became more fluid and impressionistic
in her abstraction.
Before she died in 1956, much of her work was done with
a palette knife, offerring evidence of a synthesis between
the earlier blocky forms and the more delicate linear
constructions. In her paintings on paper, a real Abstract
Expressionist aesthetic and approach is seen to be forming,
while her canvases maintain a more formal approach.
Her “Structure and Space” series explores
the tension between what is contained and what is looser
and free. Contrasted with the less specific untitled
works, they offer a view of the world that feels urban
and modern, while the other works appear to refer to
more organic forms. “Composition (White)”
could be a waterfall or an expanse of ice on an outcropping
of rock.
“Gothic”
is a hybrid of both in which a more fluid application
of paint helps define what it appears to refer to, a
tall cathedral spire.
The looser works, including those on paper, can be very
atmospheric, almost romantic. In other paintings, the
subject matter is sterile and somewhat macho. Throughout,
a strong use of color shows an artist very much in control
of her medium.
The exhibit will be on view until Nov. 26.
To
view the article on the EH Star website go to www.easthamptonstar.com
|
