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September Issue 2005
Walls Fine Art Gallery Brings Modern Masters to Wilmington, NC
The exhibit, Works on Paper: The Heavyweights, opens at Walls Fine Art Gallery in the heart of Wilmington, NC, on Sept. 8 and runs through Sept. 24, 2005.
It is a show of original printmaking, drawings and watercolor including Modern masters Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marie Laurencin, who painted in Europe in the early to mid 1900s and American, one German, and New York City artists (mid 1900s to present day) Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Peter Milton, Janet Fish, Christo, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Jeanette Pasin Sloan, Willi Kissmer and Judith Rothchild.
Rarely does the public have access to a collection
of such important twentieth century artists for both viewing and
sale. Every one of the pieces in the show is of museum quality.
During the exhibit's opening, master printer Steve Hoffman will
present a gallery talk entitled "Printmaking, the Process,"
designed to help collectors better understand
the methods used to produce the images in the show, as well as
learn what is and is not an original print. When contacted, Hoffman
said, "It's a pleasure to be involved in a show of this quality
and integrity."
Walls Gallery owner David Leadman said, "What I love about this show is that it is so representative of the twentieth century. There's such variety artists working at the same time in the same medium yet the types of work are poles apart." The show includes the traditional and archival techniques of drawing, watercolor and printmaking such as intaglio and lithography.
Matisse, Picasso and Laurencin are known and loved for their modernist figures, and this show does not disappoint. Deux Modeles Vetues, an etching from the 1933 Suite Vollard with voluptuous female forms, is classic Picasso. Another Picasso piece, Nature Morte a la Pasteque, was featured in a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of Picasso's linoleum cuts in 1985.
Helen Frankenthaler, whose work is considered a transition from Abstract Expressionism, is a leader in color fields. Causeway, her original intaglio print has a translucent quality that one might not expect in the medium. Frankenthaler studied with Rufino Tamayo and has had major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Representing the Pop Art genre are Rauschenberg, Johns and Dine. Jasper Johns grew up in South Carolina where he studied at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Johns painted his first US flag piece in 1954 and began working with lithography in 1960. He has been given exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris and Seibu Museum of Art in Tokyo. Christo is an artist/engineer known for his flamboyant installations all over the world, most recently in Central Park. Fish is a renegade traditionalist. Her realistic still-lifes painted in bold bright colors are a vehement reaction to the overwhelming prevalence of abstract work in the New York art establishment. Milton, Kissmer and Rothchild are astounding printmakers whose work can only be described as unique.
Many people confuse printmaking with reproduction.
The prints in Works on Paper: The Heavyweights are all
original works of art. In printmaking, the artist works by hand
on the surface from which an archival, rag paper
impression will be pulled, whether that working surface is a copper,
steel or zinc plate as in intaglio, or a stone as in lithography,
or a block as in linoleum cuts. Only that artist or a master printer
with the artist's supervision will pull the prints. Original prints
are part of an edition which is usually quite small (200 is high
average) because the image on the plates, stones and blocks wears
and the prints eventually do not meet the artist's standards.
The original prints in Works on Paper: The Heavyweights include
etching, mezzotint, dry point, aquatint (which all come under
the intaglio heading), lithography, and linoleum cut.
Since Walls Gallery opened in 1984, David Leadman and gallery director Nancy Marshall, painters themselves, have been passionately involved in fine art. From the beginning they have willingly shared their knowledge with visitors to the gallery, helping many art collectors of the Southeast develop an understanding of the arts and cultivate their own collections. The gallery is known for its exhibits of original works by living, mid-career artists. This exhibition is something of a departure in that the artists in this show are recognized all over the world, and Matisse, Picassso and Laurencin lived in another era.
In an interview, Nancy Marshall said, "David
and I both studied printmaking, and we have a warm spot for it.
In this age of uncontrolled digital reproduction and the misunderstanding
of the word 'print,' the original graphic has nearly been lost
in a marketing contest. Even a simple
etching shows workmanship and artistry as well as a highly developed
knowledge of the technical aspects peculiar to printmaking that
allow it to be honestly termed 'original.'"
For further information check our NC Commercial
Gallery listings, contact Nancy Marshall at 910/343-1703, e-mail
at (info@wallsgallery.com) or at (www.wallsgallery.com).
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