About the Artists
DAN CHRISTENSEN (1942-2007)
Among America 's leading abstract painters, Dan Christensen has been devoted over the course of the last forty years to exploring the limits, range, and possibilities of paint and pictorial form. Although his art belongs within the category defined by the influential art critic Clement Greenberg as Color Field or Post-Painterly Abstraction, he has both carried on the legacy of this approach while stepping outside of it, through drawing from a wide variety of Modernist sources, using many idiosyncratic techniques, and employing methods more commonly associated with the action painting techniques of Abstract Expressionism. The result is a distinctive body of work that is original, surprising, and filled with joy, exuberance, and pleasure in the act of painting.
Born in Cozad , Nebraska , in 1942, the son of a farmer and truck driver, Christensen chose to become an artist when, as a teenager, he saw the work of Jackson Pollock on a trip to Denver . After receiving his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri , in 1964, he moved to New York City . His "spray loop" paintings, produced by using a spray paint gun, were a fascinating embodiment of the reductive abstract tendencies in 1960s American art, and of the interest of the time in innovative applications of new techniques. With their powerful ribbon-like configurations, and shimmering allover surface effects, these works won the attention of Greenberg, who became an enthusiastic supporter of Christensen's art.
Christensen had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1967. Two years later he was given his first one-person show at the Andre Emmerich Gallery , joining this important showcase for color-field painting, where works by artists such as Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Helen Frankenthaler were also shown. Christensen soon started to be invited to participate in major museum shows, including the Whitney Annuals in New York and the Corcoran Gallery's Biennials, in Washington , D.C. From the 1970s to the present, Christensen has been unrelenting in his exploration of new techniques as well as in his return in new ways to treat forms that had held his attention in the past.
In 2001 Christensen's unique approach to line and shape was highlighted in the survey of his art held at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown , Ohio . He has received several awards, including a National Endowment Grant, 1968, a Guggenheim Fellowship Theodoran Award, 1969, a Gottlieb Foundation Grant, 1986, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 1992. His art is included in many important public collections, including The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Eversen Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; the Albrecht Art Gallery, St. Joseph, Missouri; the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Dayton Art Institute, Ohio; the Denver Museum of Art; the Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Texas; Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Ludwig Collection in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri; the Robert Rowan Collection, Pasadena, California; St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; the Seattle Art Museum, Washington; the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia; the Toledo Museum, Ohio; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Christensen, who began visiting eastern Long Island in the 1960s, lived in East Hampton until his death in 2007. View Works »
JIMMY ERNST (1920-1984)
An important and influential artist and educator, Jimmy Ernst was associated with two of the twentieth century's major art movements-surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The son of the Surrealist painter Max Ernst and the art historian Louise Straus, he was born Hans Ulrich Ernst in Cologne , Germany , on June 24, 1920. His parents divorced two years later, and his father moved to Paris , while Ernst stayed in Cologne with his mother.
In 1930 Ernst traveled to Paris to visit his father, where he met the many of the Surrealists, including Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Andre Masson, Jean Miró, and Man Ray. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Ernst apartment in Cologne was searched and his mother began to fear for their safety. He was sent to live with his maternal grandfather, while his mother moved to Paris . Five years later, in 1938, Ernst immigrated to the United States . After settling in New York , he met other European exiles and members of the avant-garde.
Ernst petitioned the Emergency Rescue Committee in 1941 to help his parents escape France . His father successfully fled Europe in 1941, arriving in America with Peggy Guggenheim. However, his attempt to rescue his mother was unsuccessful. In 1944 she was sent to Auschwitz , where she died.
Ernst had his first solo exhibition at Norlyst Gallery in New York in 1941. On October 20, 1942, Guggenheim's legendary Art of this Century Gallery opened, with Ernst as director, a role that further associated him with the New York avant-garde.
In 1950 he joined such eminent artists as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko in the famous "Irascible Eighteen." The largely Abstract Expressionist group protested the perceived anti-abstractionist bias of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and drew much attention to the New York School . Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Ernst exhibited in the Grace Borgenicht Gallery , Inc., New York , and in various other galleries across in the United States and abroad.
Ernst married Edith Dallas Bauman in 1947. They had two children, Amy Louise (1953) and Eric Max (1956). In 1969 Ernst moved to East Hampton , where he lived off and on for the rest of his life. In 1982 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate by Southampton College of Long Island University . Shortly before his death, in 1983, Ernst was elected to the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters, both in New York .
Ernst died suddenly of a stroke on February 6, 1984, in New York . His works are owned by numerous world-class public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts , Houston ; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia ; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. View Works »
BALCOMB GREENE (1904-1990)
A pioneering figure in the development of American geometric abstraction, Balcomb Greene was active as both a painter and a sculptor. Born in Millville , New York , in 1904, Greene grew up with no intention of becoming an artist. After graduating from Syracuse University in 1926 with a degree in philosophy, Greene continued his education at Columbia University receiving a Master's degree in English. Greene became interested in art after he met and married sculptor Gertrude Glass, and in 1931 Greene traveled to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière Here he was heavily influenced by the works of Piet Mondrian. He returned to the United States in 1933 having developed a geometric abstract style that lasted for the subsequent decade. Sadly, most of Greene's paintings from this early period did not survive a studio fire in 1941.
In 1935 Greene, a founding member and first chairman of the Abstract Artist Association, publicly promoted American abstract art and pushed for widespread acceptance of this style during the height of Regionalism. Greene's paintings gradually became more representational throughout the 1940s and by the early 1950s the human figure was dominant in all of his work, with little abstraction. In addition to New York City , Greene spent time on Montauk, Long Island, where he built a large home on Montauk Point .
In 1961 the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, showcased a retrospective of Greene's career. Greene is represented in over 60 museum collections, including the following: Allentown Art Museum , Pennsylvania ; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , New York ; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. View Works »
GERTRUDE GREENE (1904-1956)
A pioneering figure in the development of American geometric abstraction, Gertrude Greene was active as both a painter and a sculptor. One of the first American artists to explore such progressive concepts as Constructivism, Suprematism, Neo-Plasticism and Surrealist biomorphism, Greene's work was admired and collected by a number of her contemporaries, including fellow artists Albert E. Gallatin and George L.K. Morris.
A native of Brooklyn , New York , Greene studied sculpture at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in Manhattan from 1924 until 1926. In 1926 she married the painter Balcombe Greene. For the next five years the couple divided their time between New York , Vienna and Paris , familiarizing themselves with the latest currents in modern art.
Greene and her husband returned to New York permanently in 1931. In the years ahead, she developed a reputation as a leading proponent of non-objective art. In addition to producing free standing sculpture and constructivist-inspired wood reliefs, Greene also executed many collages, often combining both organic and geometric forms. Towards the end of the 1930s, influenced in particular by the work of Naum Gabo and Piet Mondrian, her work assumed an even greater degree of abstraction. In 1937, Greene's wood relief Composition ( Berkshire Museum , Pittsfield , Massachusetts ) was purchased by Gallatin for his Museum of Living Art , the first of her works to enter a public collection. During her later years, Greene focussed her attention on "palette-knife paintings," acclaimed by the critics for their rich textural qualities and sensuous color.
Greene was one of several vanguard artists, among them Alice Trumbull Mason, Ilya Bolotowsky and Rosalind Bengelsdorf, who founded the American Abstract Artists group in 1936. She was also a founding member of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, the Sculptors Guild and the Artists' Union . In New York , Greene had important solo exhibitions at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery (1951) and at the Bertha Schaefer Galleries (1955). After moving to Pittsburgh in 1942, Greene continued to maintain a studio in Manhattan , to which she commuted on a regular basis. She died of cancer in New York in 1956.
In conjunction with the growing interest in American abstract art of the 1930s, Greene's work has attracted the attention of many scholars and critics. Since the late l970s, she has been the subject of numerous articles and studies. Greene was also included in the landmark exhibition Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America , 1927-1944 , organized by the Museum of Art at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (1983). Examples of Greene's work can be found in major public and private collections throughout the United States , most notably the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. View Works »
CHARLOTTE PARK (b. 1918)
Charlotte Park was born in Concord , Massachusetts in 1918. From 1935 to 1939 she studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts in New Haven , Connecticut . She moved to New York City in 1945 and studied privately with Australian artist Wallace Harrison, who also instructed noted abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler. In New York , Park met fellow artist James Brooks and two years later, they married. Park and Brooks began visiting the Springs, East Hampton , in 1949 and bought property in 1957. Both Park and Brooks were important members of the growing artistic community on Long Island .
Throughout the 1950s, Park exhibited regularly at the prominent Stable Gallery in New York and was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition of 1935. Park also taught early in her career at the Dalton School in New York in 1951, as well as at the Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1955-57. In 1979, Guild Hall in East Hampton held an exhibition of her works from the 1970s. The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton hosted Three East End Artists in 2003 featuring Park alongside Dan Christensen and Allan Wexler as three influential artists who have lived and worked on Long Island .
Examples of her work can be found at The Parrish Museum of Art, Southampton , New York ; Guild Hall, East Hampton , New York , and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. View Works »
BETTY PARSONS (1900-1982)
Renowned as an esteemed and legendary art dealer who for more than three decades was devoted to encouraging and championing many of the leading artists of the mid- and late- twentieth century, Betty Parsons was also an accomplished artist in her own right, who developed a penetrating and original vision in response to the abstract art of her era. She exhibited her work regularly during her lifetime, and several shows have been dedicated to her role as a dealer since her death. She transcended the often purely formal and dogmatic issues that preoccupied much of mid-twentieth century abstraction after Abstract Expressionism began to be viewed as a school akin to a new academy in the late 1950s.
Born in 1900 into a socially prominent and wealthy family, Parsons showed her independent streak early. At age thirteen she had her first electrifying experience of Modernism in the spectacle at the Armory Show of 1913, which showcased the European avant-garde. While many New Yorkers found the art of the Cubists and Futurists to be shocking, it enthralled Parsons, forging her determination to become an artist, and she aspired to be a sculptor like Antoine Bourdelle, the French sculptor, who was her favorite artist at the time. Her family expected her to follow a traditional path, to the extent of marrying, which she did in 1919. Unhappy in her marriage, she divorced in 1924, leaving that year for Paris , where she set out to fulfill her earlier dream of pursuing a career as an artist. Enrolling at the Académie de La Grand Chaumière, she studied with Bourdelle, Alexander Archipenko, and the sculptor and painter Ossip Zadkine. One of her classmates was the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti and her circle of friends included Man Ray and the American sculptor Alexander Calder. Parsons also received instruction in painting and watercolor from the English artist Arthur Lindsay.
The first exhibition of Parsons's work was held in Paris in 1933, shortly before the Great Depression severed her income and forced her to return to the United States . Initially she went to California , where she had a show of her work in Los Angeles in 1934, before she came back to New York in 1935. That year she began her association with Midtown Galleries, where she subsequently had ten solo shows, the last in 1957. In 1936 she had her first experience in selling art, working for Midtown Gallery. She then held a variety of jobs, including serving as director of Wakefield Gallery and of Mortimer Brandt Gallery, before opening her own gallery in 1946.
At her gallery on 57 th Street Parsons held groundbreaking shows for Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, and Barnett Newman, which were instrumental in gaining Abstract Expressionism its first important foothold in the postwar art scene and for establishing these artists as the movement's leaders. When some members of the art world had doubts about this group, Parson's considered them "great innovators" She gave many contemporary artists their first solo shows in New York, including Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, Richard Tuttle, and Ellsworth Kelly.
Although Parsons did exhibit her work and was given a solo exhibition at London 's prestigious Whitechapel Gallery in 1968, her paintings were never fully appreciated during her years as a gallery owner. Indeed, her fame as an art dealer created an extra burden. It was thought unseemly for art dealers to compete with artists.
Parsons died in New York City in 1982. Her work may be found in numerous public collections, including the Parrish Art Museum , Southampton , New York ; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum , Washington , D.C. View Works »
