Gerardo Pita: The Spanish Royal Tapestry Works at Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York

Gerardo Pita: The Spanish Royal Tapestry Works
Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York
April 29 - May 22, 1999

Hollis Taggart Galleries presents Gerardo Pita: The Spanish Royal Tapestry Works, an exhibition that represents the culmination of three years work by this highly regarded Spanish Realist painter. Over twenty oil paintings will be on view, and illustrated in the accompanying color catalogue. 

Known for his technical virtuosity and fascination with the depiction of wool, Gerardo Pita is the first artist ever to paint the varied activities and the sumptuous interiors of the Royal Tapestry Works in Madrid. The "factory" was founded in the 18th century by the first Bourbon king, Philip V, and has had a long, interesting history that spans over 200 years. Beginning with talented Flemish artisans who were enlisted to develop the craft to its highest level in Spain, the tradition was handed down and perfected through many generations. The Tapestry Works also conserved and preserved the collection of tapestries and carpets that belonged to the Monarchy. Court painters, including Francisco Goya, oversaw the artistic aspect of the production, both for Royal and private commissions. This rich and diverse historical context found in each room at the Tapestry Works, presented Gerardo Pita with the perfect vehicle for the investigation of the long-standing theme that has captured his imagination. Gaining such access was not only a privilege for Gerardo Pita, but of great historic significance as well. The factory is presently undergoing extensive renovations to modernize the interior spaces and its operations, and thus will soon be changing forever.

Gerardo Pita’s exploration of the views of the Tapestry Works allows endless possibilities of intricate compositions comprised of colorful skeins of yarn and wool juxtaposed with their unique surroundings. Commonly viewers stand mesmerized in front of these paintings in disbelief of the extraordinary precision with which he captures his subject matter. Strands of yarn, as those represented in his painting Hanging Wool with Sack, are so seemingly tactile, so meticulously rendered, that one feels as if they could be held.

Aside from the obvious virtuosity of the painter, Gerardo Pita’s poetic compositions are also visually inviting. As in Textile Bobbins, the painter has the ability to convert even the commonplace into an extraordinarily beautiful artistic statement. Rich colors, unusual angles of perspective, and fascinating subjects entice the viewer to examine each work closely. In many of these works, the viewer feels an attraction to step into the interiors. The Atelier, which shows the unoccupied artisans’ workroom, invites one to sit in the wooden chairs and touch the colorful bundles of wool.

Born in Madrid in 1950, Gerardo Pita (a third-generation realist artist) was recognized by his family to possess a nascent talent for art by the early age of five. He was enrolled in architectural school but ultimately, it was not his path. Drawing and painting were his passion. By the artist’s early twenties, he was already exploring the formal concerns of his chosen profession. His meeting in 1979 with the famous Chilean born realist Claudio Bravo resulted in an invitation to paint for a month in Bravo’s studio in Morocco. Since then, Gerardo Pita has exhibited worldwide, has been the recipient of many awards for excellence in painting and is generally recognized to be at the top of his generation of Spanish Realist painters. Hollis Taggart Galleries is Gerardo Pita’s exclusive representative in the United States. This is Gerardo Pita’s third solo- exhibition at Hollis Taggart Galleries.

HOLLIS TAGGART GALLERIES
48 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
www.hollistaggart.com

Appeal for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage in Yugoslavia

International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS)

The International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) urges all parties in the present conflict in the Balkans to comply with the international treaties relating to armed conflicts, especially the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its new Second Protocol, agreed by 84 countries and two organisations (ICBS, ICRC,) in The Hague on 26 March 1999.

Attention has been paid to the human suffering: civilians have been killed or wounded and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes and become refugees. The International Committee of the Blue Shield expresses its sincere sympathy for all those who suffer under this violence.

Cultural heritage constitutes a fundamental part of the identity and dignity of peoples and is always a victim during armed conflicts. The ICBS expresses its serious concern about all damage to the cultural heritage of the peoples of Yugoslavia resulting from military action or other deeds of violence by all sides in the conflict.

The ICBS therefore calls upon all parties in the conflict to do everything within their power to protect museums, archives, libraries, monuments and all other sites that are expressions of the history and the right of existence of the peoples in this region.

About the ICBS

The mission of the ICBS, which has taken up the emblem of The Hague Convention of the 1954 for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, is to collect and disseminate information, and to co-ordinate action in emergency situations affecting cultural heritage, such as armed conflicts or natural disasters.

The ICBS was founded in 1996 by four non-governmental organisations:

- ICA: International Council on Archives
- ICOM: International Council of Museums
- ICOMOS: International Council on Monuments and Sites
- IFLA: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

Street Theater by Yung Ho Chang and Atelier FCJZ

 

Street Theater

An installation by YUNG HO CHANG and Atelier FCJZ

Curated by Hou Hanru & Evelyne Jouanno

 

Yung Ho Chang is a leading architect from China. After studying and teaching in the US for 15 years, he went back to his native Beijing to establish its first private architectural firm, Atelier FCJZ (“Fei Chang Jian Zhu” or “unusual architecture”), in the early 1990s. In the face of rapid and radical modernization and urbanization in China, the questions of international influence and Chinese tradition, as well as globalization and local specificity, have become the main issues in architectural and artistic debates and practice.

Having experience in both the West and China,Yung Ho Chang critically observes and analyzes the current situation of urban explosion in China and proposes highly inventive solutions. Inspired by both the transformational capacity of traditional Chinese architecture and urban planning as well as contemporary developments in architecture, economics and technology, Yung Ho Chang and his firm have developed new concepts and approaches—such as “Micro-Urbanism”—to negotiate the urban condition of high density and complexity.

The exhibition at Apex Art C.P. will be Yung Ho Chang and FCJZ's first solo exhibition in the US. For this show, Yung Ho Chang has created a site-specific installation to provide the audience with a direct and corporeal experience of his architectural vision and projects. One part of the installation will function as a “Street Theater” (the other a “PeepshowTheater”) in which a dialogue between Beijing's urban reality and Chang's innovative projects in the city takes place. Visible from inside and outside the gallery, it is also a compelling and efficient "translation" of a made-in-China text into the New York context.

A brochure containing an essay by Hou Hanru and Evelyne Jouanno will be available free of charge.

 

Apex Art Curatorial Program, New York
April 22 - May 22, 1999

.

Sarah Moon, Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto - Inventaire 1985-1999

Sarah Moon: Inventaire 1985-1999
Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto
April 15 - May 15, 1999  

Marking Sarah Moon's first ever Canadian exhibition, Jane Corkin Gallery presents a retrospective of her work spanning the last 14 years.

Sarah Moon, born in Paris in 1941, is well known for her painterly fashion photographs seen in Marie-Claire, Elle and French, British and American Vogue. Fashion is not the only genre for Sarah Moon. She also turns her camera to landscapes, animals and gardens. Her photographs are mysterious, so intimate and dramatic they entice the viewer to take a closer look. This is evident in her close-up portraits such as that of Yaël Raich.

Her most recent work is large-scale colour, made as pigment saturated prints on watercolour paper. The colour defies photography. Here female forms are reduced to silhouettes and gowns to flickering shadows dissolving into deep pools of turquoise, wine or amber light. It is these ethereal images where it is most apparent that Sarah Moon does not merely photograph clothes, but the memories of clothes.

It is apparent that Sarah Moon is often inspired by children's fantasies and creates images about imagination. Her narratives are inspired by nostalgia evoking memories of childhood emotions.

The darker side of nature often predominates resulting in images that are at times frightening. An especially haunting photograph includes that of a flock of birds framed, lighted and printed in such a way that the creatures are rendered otherworldly. These black and white photographs are a precursor to her film achievements.

In 1991 she achieved critical success in the film industry for her award-winning feature film Mississipi One shown in Toronto at the International Film Festival that same year. Also directed by Sarah Moon are four other films including a documentary on well-known photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. She continues to work in film and to photograph in both colour and black and white.

Black & white photographs are either:

30 x 40 cm (11 13/16" x 15 3/4")

40 x 50 cm (15 3/4" x 19 11/16")

50 x 60 cm (19 11/16" x 23 5/8")

Colour photographs exist only as 74 x 57 cm (29 1/8" x 22 7/16")

Prices range from $2000 - $7750 US

JANE CORKIN GALLERY
179 John Street, Suite 302, Toronto, ON, M5T 1X4
www.janecorkin.com

Leica 4th Photographic Olympics Competition

Leica Photography, the international specialist magazine for 35mm photography, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. To mark this occasion, it is organizing a high-quality photo competition under the name of 4th Photographic Olympics together with Leica Camera AG and other partners such as Kodak, Lufthansa and Agrippina Insurance. The competition is to be a pentathlon with four set themes in colour and a theme of the photographer's choice in black-and-white. The set themes for the colour photos are "People", "Landscapes", "Architecture" and "Action". For the black-and-white photo, photographers can choose their own theme. However, not only allrounders have a chance of winning one of the attractive prizes, there is an incentive for specialists as well. Besides the main prizes for the winners in the pentathlon (the Photographic Olympics proper), there will be extra prizes for the winners of each category. The winner of the pentathlon, the International multi-theme Leica Champion, will receive a Leica SLR camera worth 15,000 DM, while the second prize is a Leica M6 camera worth 10,000 DM and the third prize a dissolve control unit with two Leica Pradovit RT projectors. There are also film packs of 10 Kodak T-Max T 400 CN films, vouchers for Lufthansa flights and camera insurance to be won. In all, more than a hundred prizes and premiums with a total value of over 50,000 DM are awaiting participants in the Leica 4th Photographic Olympics. The international jury is composed of well-known professional photographers and renowned personalities from amateur photographic associations. The photos and photo series they choose will be published in the special issue of the Leica Photography International magazine, due to appear this autumn to mark the magazine's 50th anniversary. Whether they are taking part in the pentathlon or in one category only, photographers may enter up to five pictures per theme. Both 35mm transparencies (with or without frame) or paper prints will be accepted. Prints should be min. 9x13 cm and max. 24x30 cm in size. Each picture must bear the name of its photographer, and each entry must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. SAEs from other countries must either have German stamps affixed or 5 US dollars must be enclosed. All amateur and professional photographers are invited to take part. The photographs need not have been taken with Leica cameras. The exact rules of the competition and the entry form are printed in issue 3/99 of the Leica Photography International magazine, which is printed in German, English and French. It can be ordered direct from Umschau Zeitschriften Verlag, Herrn Albrecht König, Stuttgarter Straße 18-24, D-60329 Frankfurt. Entries should be sent to: Datenservice A.V., Kennwort, IV. "Olympiade der Fotografie", Postfach 22, D-61203 Reichelsheim. Closing date: July 15th, 1999.

Kate Shepherd, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco

Kate Shepherd
Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco
14 April – 14 May 1999

Anthony Meier Fine Arts presents new work by artist Kate Shepherd. Having recently completed an artist-in-residency program at the Lannan Foundation in New Mexico, Kate Shepherd exhibits works which was made both there and in her New York studio. The exhibition includes wall paintings, paintings on wood and drawings.

The formal characteristics, highly saturated monochromatic backgrounds serving to highlight delicately drawn geometric forms are consistent with Kate Shepherd’s style of reductive painting. However, these paintings portray a new sense of playfulness not seen in previous work. The artist has set-up a game which is confined in a rigid geometric foundation where she lets unexpected things happen. The paintings are diptychs with each panel the same color as the other except for variations in hue which subsequently cause a spatial shift between the two panels. The geometric forms have become three-dimensional boxes and rectangles all of which are somehow slightly irregular. The subject matter may seem strident and dry but the lines of the boxes have a sense of movement which humanizes them to the point where many can be seen as standing portraits.

ANTHONY MEIER FINE ARTS
1969 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
www.anthonymeierfinearts.com

Recovered Pissarro Painting at Worcester Art Museum

Worcester Art Museum Acquires Recovered Pissarro Painting

The Worcester Art Museum has acquired Bassins Duquesne et Berrigny a Dieppe, Temps Gris (Harbor at Dieppe), a painting by Camille Pissarro, which was formerly owned by Worcester philanthropists Robert and Helen Stoddard. The Museum will acquire this important French Impressionist work through the Stoddard Acquisition Fund, which is used solely for purchasing art.

Once it arrives at the Worcester Art Museum, the painting will undergo a conservation treatment in preparation for Pissarro and Other Masters: The Stoddard Legacy, which will open in February 2000. This show will feature the Pissarro and other works that once hung in the Stoddard home, as well as the art the Museum purchased in the last two decades with proceeds from the Stoddard Acquisition Fund. After the Stoddard Charitable Trust established this sizeable fund in 1979, the Museum was able to add significantly to its permanent collection many distinguished works of art ranging from a 17th-century portrait by Dutch master Frans Hals, to a vibrant genre scene by Jacob Lawrence, the most noted 20th-century African American artist.

"Helen and Robert Stoddard were great lovers of art and had a wonderful relationship with the Worcester Art Museum starting in the 1940s," says James A. Welu, director of the Worcester Art Museum. "In addition to their great leadership and extensive volunteer efforts, they enabled us to acquire many fine works of art over the years, and we are extremely grateful for their friendship and generosity. I am particularly pleased that Bassins Duquesne et Berrigny Dieppe, Temps Gris will be added to the permanent collection of the Worcester Art Museum, which was the wish of Mrs. Stoddard." This painting, which dates from 1902, joins an earlier work by Pissarro, L'ille Lacroix à Rouen, which was painted in 1873 and came to the Museum through the estate of Robert W. Stoddard.

Stole from the Stoddard's Worcester home in 1978, Bassins Duquesne et Berrigny Dieppe, Temps Gris was lost for two decades. After the theft, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company reimbursed the Stoddards for their loss. On October 22, 1998, the FBI seized the painting from Wolf's Auction Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio. At the time of the seizure, the painting was about to be sold after Ohio businessman Daniel Zivko and Kenneth Bement had consigned it to the gallery. On April 8, 1999, Zivko, Bement, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, the Stoddard estate, and the Worcester Art Museum settled the matter in a Cleveland court cast. The decision will result in the painting coming to the Worcester Art Museum for its permanent collection.

French Impressionism was a favorite of the Stoddards, who collected other masters from this school, including Renoir and Sisley. Bassins Duquesne et Berrigny Dieppe, Temps Gris hung over the Stoddard's mantle piece from 1951 to 1978. After the theft of this painting, the Stoddards acquired several other pictures, including Pissarro's L'ille Lacroix à Rouen, which took the treasured spot over the mantlepiece. Both of these Pissarro paintings will now hang together for the first time ever, at the Worcester Art Museum.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), was a prolific artist, creating more than 1,800 paintings in his lifetime. Born to a Jewish family in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Pissarro attended boarding school in the suburbs of Paris where the headmaster encouraged his artistic talents. After working in the family business for a short time, Pissarro returned to Paris in 1855 to pursue an artistic career. He had a strong and deliberate style that featured a highly disciplined method of working, including a light palette and a varied application of paint.

Known as the "patriarch of French Impressionism," Pissarro was a moral and artistic role model to many of the famous French Impressionists, including Renoir, Monet, and Sisley. Pissarro had a particularly strong influence on Cézanne and Gauguin.

A peaceful but committed renegade, Pissarro helped organize the eight French Impressionist exhibitions in protest of the official Salon. He was the only member of the Impressionists to participate in all eight of these exhibitions. His style was called simple and naïeve by some, but always honest. His was devoted to artistic truth and his fellow men.

In 1886-87, Pissarro joined the ranks of the Neo-Impressionists and took up the pointillist technique (separating colors into little dots). This led to the estrangement of his critics and admirers. He returned to Impressionism and once again painted rural scenes and cityscapes, such as the painting the Worcester Art Museum recently acquired.

Camille Pissarro sold few paintings during his lifetime. He lost nearly 1,500 paintings representing 20 years of work during the Franco-Prussian War, adding to his financial dilemma. To support his wife and eight children, Pissarro tried other artistic pursuits such as painting fans, blinds and shop signs, as well as making etchings.

Camille Pissarro's writings, including his many letters to his son Lucien, are one of the most important documents on the beliefs of the Impressionists. His letters also reveal a great deal about his own personal aspirations. In one of his letters to Lucien, Pissarro wrote: "Painting, art in general, is what enchants me - it is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits."

The Worcester Art Museum is honored to add Camille Pissarro's Bassins Duquesne et Berrigny Dieppe, Temps Gris to its permanent collection in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Stoddard.

Worcester Art Museum

Worcester, Mass.

www.worcester.org

Scenarios: Recent Work by Lorna Simpson at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Scenarios: Recent Work by Lorna Simpson 
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 
April 11 - July 11, 1999

Brooklyn-based artist Lorna Simpson, who has used photography, text, and most recently, narrative film to raise complex social issues, is the subject of a Walker Art Center exhibition to be on view in Minneapolis April 11 July 11, 1999. Scenarios: Recent Work by Lorna Simpson, curated by Walker Assistant Curator Siri Engberg, features the artist's most recent single- and multiple-projection film installations, including a work commissioned by the Walker, as well as photographic pieces related to the film projects. Photographs made by the artist during the shooting of the films will accompany each film installation, as will photographically based large-scale works printed on felt, a medium the artist has increasingly employed in her work. A gallery brochure with text will accompany the exhibition.

Lorna Simpson has been well known since the mid-1980s for her provocative photographs, paired with text, that address issues ranging from racial and sexual identity to notions of the body, to interpersonal communication and relationships. Trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, she received her M.A. from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied film and fine arts. She began her career as a documentary photographer but soon found herself, as she has said, "tired of the viewer's approach to looking at documentary images." Interested in the way a photograph is "read" she began to create conceptual compositions pairing minimalist black-and-white images with text. 

In Lorna Simpson's earliest works she used an African-American model, often wearing a simple white dress. Lorna Simpson removed all information that would allow the subject to be identified as a particular individual, thereby inviting the viewer's own experience as a means of interpreting the image and its text. In the mid-1990s Simpson began creating editions whose photographic imagery and texts were printed on panels of felt of the sort used on printing press beds. Often hung in groupings to create large-scale images or multi-image tableaux, the visual fragments combined to create an identity or narrative.

What began as an interest in the figure has given way in Simpson's more recent work to an interest in space and narrative, a shift coinciding with her recent explorations in the medium of film. In 1996, during a residency at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, she used the Wexner's Art and Technology Lab to create Interior/Exterior, Full/Empty, a seven-projection film piece screened simultaneously on three walls. Each projection presents differing narratives delivered by characters who move in and out of what may or may not be an interlinking story. The following year Simpson made Call Waiting , a short black-and-white single-projection work that centers around notions of communication and relationships, presenting characters whose lives are woven together through a series of telephone conversations and interrupted calls.

In 1997-1998, Lorna Simpson participated in the Walker's Artist-In-Residence program working with Twin Cities community members and actors to create the film Recollection . Commissioned by the Walker, and first screened as part of the Hugo Boss Prize: 1998 at the Guggenheim Soho in New York, Recollection focuses on the characters' use of fragmented narrative memories to reconstruct past events. The film is accompanied by a new 18-foot-long felt piece incorporating photographs taken on location in Minneapolis. 

Scenarios: Recent Work by Lorna Simpson is made possible by generous support from the Arthur and Alice Kramer Foundation. Lorna Simpson's 1997-98 Artist Residency was part of the Walker Art Center's "New Definitions/New Audiences" initiative, a museum-wide project to engage visitors in a reexamination of 20th century art, made possible by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. The film Recollection was commissioned by the Walker Art Center through the Artist-in-Residence program, with additional support from the Penny McCall Foundation, New York.

WALKER ART MUSEUM
Vineland Place, Minneapolis, MN 55403
www.walkerart.org

Updated 23.06.2019