Tag: Matisse

Solo Shows

Amelie Mancini: Longing and wonder

Contributed by Caroline Otis Heffron / Amelie Mancini’s debut solo exhibition at Massey Klein Gallery, offers poignant reflections on women, enticing viewers with harmonious colors and intricate patterns that initially convey a sense of contentment and balance. But her layering techniques, involving translucent paint, and repeating motifs – reminiscent of  Vuillard, Matisse, and Modersohn-Becker – encourage closer study of gesture and expression. As the viewer moves in, archetypal faces emerge with expressions of longing and wonder, leaving ambivalence. 

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Conversation

Ezra Johnson and Matt Bollinger: Disrupting convention

Painters Ezra Johnson and Matt Bollinger work across painting and handcrafted animation, and both are drawn to the textures of everyday American life — houses, haircuts, the quiet weight of ordinary moments. Two Coats of Paint invited the two to have a conversation on the occasion of their 2026 exhibitions: Johnson’s “Home and Garden Show” at Freight + Volume in New York, and Bollinger’s “Dawn” at mother’s tankstation in Dublin. The two artists speak here as peers, moving between close readings of each other’s work and reflections on their own practices. They discuss the relationship between painting and animation, the question of when a painting is “done,” and how handmade roughness can carry more truth than technical finish.

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Museum Exhibitions

Ben Shahn’s vigilance

Contributed by Margaret McCann / Ben Shahn’s lifelong advocacy against poverty, racism, and fascism is showcased in his solo exhibition “Ben Shahn and Nonconformity,” now up at the Jewish Museum. With engaging documentation, an array of global topics are addressed in printmaking, photography, commercial art, and calligraphy – and some excellent paintings.

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Solo Shows

Georges Rouault: The spirit of the visual

Contributed by John Goodrich / Georges Rouault’s star has fallen considerably since 1945, the year the curator and collector James Thrall Soby dubbed him “one of few major figures in 20th century painting.” The artist’s religiosity and stained-glass-window style are not so captivating today. …The 21 paintings now on view at Shin Gallery invite a reassessment. Organized in conjunction with Skarstedt Gallery, the exhibition offers a particularly strong selection of the Rouault’s work.

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Museum Exhibitions

Berthe Weill: The gallerist who loved art too well

Contributed by John Goodrich / Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. Looking back at the early decades of modernism, we may sense something inevitable about the ascent of Picasso and Matisse. Weren’t both driven, gifted artists poised to take advantage of their cultural moment? And wasn’t the time ripe for Matisse’s upending of expectations of color, and Picasso’s overturning of pictorial structures? Of course, life is not so tidy and linear for the artists operating in the moment. As the luminous exhibition “Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde” at NYU’s Grey Art Museum demonstrates, none of the early modernists had a monopoly on talent or a singularly dominant vision of what painting had to be.

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