Exhibition News: Moskowitz at Peter Freeman (Mar 14-May 16)

Robert Moskowitz: Paintings and Drawings from Four Decades

curated by Dieter Schwarz

14 March – 16 May 2024

Opening reception Thursday, 14 March, 6–8pm

Peter Freeman, Inc. is pleased to present Robert Moskowitz’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, curated by Dieter Schwarz, who writes: Robert Moskowitz has created an oeuvre that is painterly through and through, and at the same time possesses immense pictorial power. The selection of paintings and drawings in this exhibition makes it possible to trace some of Moskowitz’s motifs over an extended period of time.

In contrast to the imagery of Pop Art, Moskowitz’s images have a completely private character. Even the twin towers of the former World Trade Center, which he first painted in the late 1970s and revisited over the years, became a personal metaphor for him. Through his painterly treatment, Moskowitz reduces the image to its essential form and to its essential content, creating a particular physicality. This can be seen, for example, in the relationship between the image transformed into a silhouette to the color and format of the horizontally or vertically expanding picture surface. The image is embedded in it, waiting to be discovered by the viewer.

Moskowitz’s images possess a density and intensity that allows him to reproduce them in ever new forms over the years—be it on paper or on canvas. The subtle variations of medium—oil paint, pastel, graphite—and format express subtle variations of mood through the same image. In his studio, Moskowitz installed a large number of drawings, which mainly show iterations of the twin towers and the Flatiron Building. This wall of drawings, which is impressive due to the range of tonalities, has been reconstructed for the exhibition.

The room of paintings features a small selection of motifs: the Wrigley Building from Chicago, which Moskowitz painted from an advertising image, the Red Cross he glimpsed in a film with Bill Murray whom he admires, the Tsunami wave, and finally the man jumping into the depths from a mural in Pompeii. Moskowitz chose these images intuitively. In the course of his practice, which takes on obsessive traits through repetition and duration, both their physical presence and their enigmatic appearance become clearer. But the material beauty of the surfaces is only an attractive illusion because, as Moskowitz said in an interview, the images are existential: “what the picture is saying is not beautiful. It’s about being here.”

AES Collaborates with Robert Moskowitz Studio to Design and Launch a New Website

Building on the friendship and the near 20 year relationship between co-founder Jason Andrew and the artist Robert Moskowitz, Artist Estate Studio, LLC, is pleased to announce the launch of a website for the artist’s studio. The website features signature works from the artist's now six decade career as well as extensive biographical information, exhibition history and bibliography.

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RobertMoskowitz.org →

Robert Moskowitz (b. 1935) has been described as a significant link between the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School and New Image painters of the 1970s.

“Bob’s style is consistent in conversations as it is in the work; a variety of reflective statements on his personal life; an internal balancing, the method of a sensitive man whose gift is to adapt statements specifically about himself in terms that relate to a larger means.” —Michael Hurson

Moskowitz first gained recognition exhibiting at the Leo Castelli Gallery in the early 1960s. His inclusion in the historic exhibition Art of The Assemblage at The Museum of Modern Art in 1961, signaled his arrival into the contemporary discourse of the time. His work was featured in New Image Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978, where together with works by Jennifer Bartlett, Michael Hurson, Neil Jenney, and Susan Rothenberg, Moskowitz’s pared-down often silhouetted images marked a resurgence of figurative painting in the late 1970s.

Awards include John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (‘67), New York State Council on the Arts Grant (‘73), National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist’s Fellowship (‘75). Teaching positions include Maryland Insitute College of Art, Baltimore (‘64-’73), School of Visual Arts, New York (‘69-71), Yale Norfolk Summer School (‘67,’69). Visiting Artist appointments include Art Institute of Chicago (‘74), Ohio State University (‘75). In 2001, Moskowitz was Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.

In 1989, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden mounted a major retrospective of the artist’s work, which traveled to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

Over the course of his six-decade career, Moskowitz has focused on a variety of images, from well-known art historical sources to more commonplace things like birds, icebergs, and buildings, all executed against stark, monochromatic backgrounds.  Using symbolism, metaphor, and repetition, the artist’s images offer arresting images of timelessness—a teetering balance between recognition and abstraction.