Exhibition News: Biala opens at PAAM (Provincetown)

View fullsize

August 10-September 30, 2018

Opening reception: Friday, August 10, 8pm

Provincetown Art Association and Museum
460 Commercial Street
Provincetown, MA 02657

Provincetown Art Association and Museum presents Biala: Provincetown Summers: selected paintings and drawings. This historic exhibition is the first to focus entirely on the paintings and drawings by Janice Biala (1903-2000), which were created or inspired by her summers in Provincetown and on Cape Cod. The exhibition opens with a reception on Friday, August 10 at 8pm and will run through September 30 at Provincetown Art Association and Museum (460 Commercial Street, Provincetown, 508.487.1750 ext.17 / www.paam.org)

Organized and curated by Jason Andrew (Artist Estate Studio, LLC), the exhibition features twenty-seven paintings and twenty-three works on paper ranging in date from 1924 to 1985. Highlights include the earliest painting by the artist titled The Violin (c.1923-23) painted as an homage to her mentor and friend, Edwin Dickinson; Portrait of a Writer (Ford Madox Ford) (1938), who she met in 1930 and remained at his side until his death in 1939; The Beach (1958), a masterwork from the artist's most gestural period; a group of whimsical drawings of her grandnephew's first steps in Provincetown Bay; and Pilgrim Lake (1985), a pensive and contemplative painting that sublimely captures a layering of water, dunes, and the sky above. Works are on loan from the Estate of Janice Biala (courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York), as well as several major loans from private collections, The Art Collection of the Town of Provincetown, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

Mr. Andrew will give a gallery talk on Tuesday, August 21 at 6pm
as part of the Fredi Schiff Levin Lectures.

An online catalogue with essay by curator Jason Andrew is available here by visiting www.janicebiala.org

Exhibition News: Edith Schloss at Meredith Ward Fine Art opens Feb 8

View fullsize

Meredith Ward Fine Art is pleased to present Edith Schloss: By the Sea, an exhibition of 20 paintings and works on paper painted in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s (February 8 – March 30, 2018). This is the first exhibition of Schloss's work at the gallery and includes several paintings that will be on view for the first time. "Schloss's colorful and whimsical still lifes are a revelation," said Meredith Ward, President of the gallery. "They add an entirely new dimension to our understanding of figurative painting in the 1960s and 1970s." This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Estate of Edith Schloss and with the support of Artist Estate Studio, LLC.

Intrinsically linked to the milieu of postwar American art, Edith Schloss was an integral member of the Chelsea-New York art world, which flourished around the New York School and include photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt (whom she married in 1947) and the Jane Street Group around Nell Blaine.

In 1962, having separated from Burckhardt, Schloss with her young son in tow, left New York City for Italy. There, with Rome as her base, she sought out the legendary Giorgio Morandi, befriending him and drawing inspiration from his subtle and calculated still lifes. Among the first paintings Schloss produced in Italy were a series of still lifes that are the focus of this special exhibition. In these paintings, which border on the bittersweet, fragile, and naïve, Schloss lines up vases, teapots, flowers, and other objects and paints them against the Mediterranean Sea.
These whimsical works display vitality, inventiveness, and a distinctive painterly abstraction.

Schloss wrote of her work, "What I really do is what any painter worth his salt has always done, I abstract color and line from life around me, and make another life out of it." Among the highlights of the exhibition are two paintings titled Rignalla, which are being exhibited here for the first time. Over several summers, Schloss accompanied her lover, the composer/musician Alvin Curran, to Florence where he had a gig playing Dixieland Jazz at the Red Garter. From her room along the via di Rignalla, she painted several still lifes, which became mementos of her sojourns there.

About Edith Schloss
Edith Schloss (1919-2011) was born in Offenbach, Germany. As a young woman she traveled extensively in Europe. Working as an au pair in London during the Blitz, she was evacuated to the United States and landed in New York City. There, she met the political refugee Heinz Langerhans, who introduced her to Bertolt Brecht, and other intellectuals at The New School for Social Research.

From 1942 to 1946, she studied at the Art Students League with Will Barnet, Harry Sternberg, and Morris Kantor. In 1945, Schloss met Willem de Kooning through her friend, the painter Fairfield Porter. Around the same time, she became connected with a group of artists, poets and filmmakers in Chelsea, including Ellen and Walter Auerbach, Nell Blaine, Edwin Denby, and Rudy Burchkhardt. She joined the Jane Street Group, New York's first artist cooperative gallery, and in 1947 had her first one-person show at the Ashby Gallery.

Schloss married Rudy Burckhardt in 1947 and the couple spent summers with Fairfield Porter and his family in Maine. In 1962, she and Burkhardt separated, and Schloss moved to Italy. Schloss’s paintings have been shown in exhibitions in Rome and New York and her work is represented in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Keats-Shelley House, Rome; the Hessisches Landsmuseum, Wiesbaden; and the Offenbacher Stadtmuseum, Offenbach, Germany.

In 2015, a landmark retrospective of work by Edith Schloss was curated by Jason Andrew and held at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York. That exhibition marked the first show of the artist’s work in New York in twenty-five years. This exhibition at Meredith Ward, with a focused look on the works from the 1960s, continues the momentum and renewed interest in the artist’s work.

This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Estate of Edith Schloss and with the support of Artist Estate Studio, LLC. The exhibition will be accompanied by an online catalogue.

About Meredith Ward Fine Art
Meredith Ward Fine Art opened in 2004 specializing in American art from the 19th century to the present. The gallery is the exclusive representative of the estates of John Marin, Larry Day, Steve Wheeler, and Flora Crockett. Meredith Ward Fine Art is located at 44 East 74th Street in New York City and is open to the public Tuesday through Friday, 10am to 5:30pm and Saturday by appointment.

For more information or images, contact Julia Wilcox at 212-744-7306 or
info@meredithwardfineart.com | www.meredithwardfineart.com