Richard Pousette-Dart
Mythic Heads and Forms
Paintings and Drawings From 1935 to 1942
Knoedler & Company, New York
September 11 - November 5, 2003
Knoedler & Company presents Richard Pousette-Dart: Mythic Heads and Forms - Paintings and Drawings from 1935 to 1942. One of the youngest painters of the New York School, this exhibition is the first to focus on Pousette-Dart's early work created during the developmental years of Abstract Expressionism.
Richard Pousette-Dart was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Deciding on his artistic vocation early, and after a year at Bard College in 1936, he left school to devote himself to art. By the late 1930s - earlier than his colleagues Rothko, Gottlieb, and Pollock - Richard Pousette-Dart had discovered inspiration in African, Oceanic, and Native American art, Jungian and Freudian theories, as well as European modernism, especially Picasso.
Richard Pousette-Dart had his first solo exhibition at the Artists' Gallery, New York, in 1941. He went on to have solo shows with Marion Willard, Peggy Guggenheim, and Betty Parsons. His first museum exhibition was held at the Whitney in 1963. The Whitney held a subsequent retrospective in 1974, and also presented an exhibition in 1998. The Museum of Modern Art presented a touring exhibition of his work in 1969-70. In 1990 a major touring retrospective of Pousette-Dart's work was organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. There was an important survey of his paintings, drawings, and brasses at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1997. The Living Edge: Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992) Works on Paper opened at the Schirn Kunstalle, Frankfurt, in 2001, and traveled to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
Richard Pousette-Dart: Mythic Heads and Forms is accompanied by a catalogue with essay by John Yau, award-winning poet, art critic, and writer.
KNOEDLER & COMPANY
19 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021
www.knoedlergallery.com
