Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Nancy Powhida, age 80, has just had her first solo exhibition in New York, curated by Kristen Jensen at Essex Flowers. Titled a deceptively straightforward “Oh Dear! Our Life was Like a Horror Show! (No Wonder You Had to Learn to be Resourceful),” the show comprised six graphite drawings and one oil painting, each piece an unnervingly moving revelation.
Tag: Max Beckmann
Neue Galerie’s “degenerate” art and Babylon Berlin
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Neue Galerie?s compellingly incisive exhibition, titled ?Eclipse of the Sun: Art of the Weimar Republic? and anchored by Georg Grosz?s 1926 painting Eclipse of the Sun, yields an ominously resonant tableau of a post-World War I Germany saturated with angst. Grosz?s busy, quizzical work depicts […]
Artists under duress: Max Beckmann
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Esteemed in Germany during the Weimar Republic but branded a “degenerate artist” by the anti-modern Adolf Hitler, the great expressionist painter Max Beckmann fled Nazi Germany to Amsterdam and continued to paint. Returning to Germany after the war may have struck him as craven or […]
Studio pin-ups from Germany
The little pictures and postcards that artists hang on our studio walls create a visual guide to our artistic DNA. Over in the corner, or above our desks, images (often paint-smeared) are haphazardly taped to the wall as both reference for visitors and technical reminders to ourselves. I was chatting […]
Dallas: David Bates paints Katrina’s victims
David Granberry at the Dallas Morning News writes about David Bates, whose recent paintings presented at Dunn and Brown Contemporary depict the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The majority of the paintings consist solely of human faces, and remind me of haunting Max Beckmann figures combined with Marsden Hartley landscapes. The […]
German history paintings: Dix, Grosz, Beckmann, Meidner and Steinhardt
“Allemagne, les Ann�es Noires,” or “Germany: The Black Years,” organized by Annette Vogel and Bertrand Lorquin. Mus�e Maillol, Paris. Through Feb. 4. In the NYTimes, Alan Riding reports: “It can be argued that Impressionism killed off historical painting, and with it the tradition of portraying military victories on canvas. Yet […]