Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2020 i Fine Art Connoisseur

For well over 15 years, this magazine has carried the flag for the new realism, which some call contemporary realism. We have highlighted its artists, schools, and collectors, and we have encouraged their interconnections with kindred galleries and museums because we believe strongly that this movement has a solid future in a world that had once lost interest in all things realistic. In normal times, young artists’ works are embraced by young buyers, who ultimately become collectors. Today, alas, there is a huge gap. We now see many well-trained artists creating incredible works, yet there are not enough buyers. Not enough younger people (or even older ones, for that matter) know about this movement. There is an urgent need to both educate and create awareness. Recently, my millennial nephew, Ryan,…

The artist Duffy Sheridan (b. 1947) seeks “to magnify the dignity of the human spirit, and also the singular beauty of all things.” He explains, “When people look at one of my paintings, I’d like them to see that humans, indeed, are noble beings.” He achieves this by capturing in paint “a look, a movement, a casual occurrence that enshrines power and grace in time.” Amazingly, Sheridan has been able to create his compellingly life-like paintings without formal training, except for a few basics proffered by his father, who was a traditional painter of marine scenes. “But if I had it to do over again,” he admits, “I probably would have gone to art school, as it would have saved me considerable time.” As it was, he taught himself by…

The artist Jon deMartin (b. 1955) is a lucky man. Every autumn he spends two weeks in Venice drawing, painting, and studying the methods of the many historical Venetian masters who have long inspired him. Fortunately, his latest visit occurred before the catastrophic flooding this November that submerged much of La Serenissima, and now he hopes that his favorite destinations are both uncompromised and drying out. Over the years, deMartin’s visits to Venice have prompted a subtle “sea change” (pun unintended) in his artistry, a move from a naturalistic approach to one that is — in his words — “more felt,” more reliant on his own drawings and his own memory. This evolution has been somewhat surprising even to deMartin, who is hardly a newcomer to art. A native of…

THE TOAST OF DENVER DENVER  coorswesternart.com January 11–26 Featuring 60 artists from across America, Canada, and Europe, the 27th annual Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale will tempt collectors from Denver and beyond with an eclectic mix of contemporary realist artworks capturing the Western way of life. This year’s featured artist is Sophy Brown, a Coors participant for the past 10 years. Illustrated here is her Signature Work, Maelstrom, already acquired for the collection of the National Western Stock Show, of which the Coors exhibit is a key part. (Posters of it can be purchased online and on site.) Born in England, Brown earned her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan and is now based in Colorado, where she rides horses regularly. Her latest paintings depict these extraordinary animals with an…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES New York City cwlac.org and nationalartsclub.org January 7–31 In the spirit of their namesake, the members of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club will soon host their 123rd Annual Open Juried Exhibition, available to all women artists and held again at the National Arts Club. Founded in 1896, the organization owes its existence to the philanthropic generosity of Miss Wolfe, the only female co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During their presentation of more than 50 awards on January 17, the organizers will award the club’s highest honor for painting, the Horse’s Head Medal designed by sculptor member Anna Hyatt Huntington. Miami ascasogallery.com through January 31 Recent paintings by the Cuban-born, Florida-based artist Julio Larraz are on view at Ascaso Gallery this season. This exhibition is…

It’s the New Year, but everyone is still talking about the banana that fetched $120,000 last year. If you haven’t heard about it, you are lucky, and I hesitate to relieve your bewilderment. Every December the cutting-edge art world gathers in Miami for the constellation of fairs surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach. Billions of dollars’ worth of art is traded, most of it more conceptual, minimalist, or experiential than what you see here in Fine Art Connoisseur. If you haven’t visited Miami during the first week of December, it’s well worth going, once, to get a sense of how closely cutting-edge art resembles show business these days. Perhaps Miami Basel’s greatest triumph ever came last month when Galerie Perrotin — a leading international dealer — exhibited a real banana attached…

ONGOING FROM 2019 December 6, 2019–April 11 Richard Galusha Retrospective "An Artist’s Journey,” Steamboat Art Museum, CO JANUARY January 7–March 28 Carmelo Blandino Exhibition (Opening Reception January 9), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI January 11–March 22 Dox Thrash, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY January 19–April 26 Francisco Goya, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY FEBRUARY February 1–May 3 New Beginnings: An American Story of Romantics and Modernists in the West, The Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA February 8–March 22 Masters of the American West® Art Exhibition & Sale, Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA February 11–July 11 Legacies of the Vaqueros, The Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA February 13–June 7 The Jackson Hole 5: Important Painters from the West, The Booth Western…

When Patti Mollica (b. 1955) graduated from art school in 1977, she was “unfocused. I didn’t know where things would lead or how to get more rooted in the art world.” OK, no real surprise there. At some point, most artists have probably said the same thing. Fortunately, Mollica is now a successful and prolific painter living in Nyack, New York. Her most popular subjects are street scenes of Manhattan; she sells an average of 50 paintings annually through four galleries, as well as directly to individual collectors. Mollica did not follow a straight line from art school to such robust sales figures. After graduating, she set up a booth at various arts festivals and did 10-minute portraits at the Great New York State Fair in her hometown of Syracuse.…

For Benjamin Frowein, it was love at second sight. When the president of Schumacher fabrics was a graduate student in Madrid from 2004 to 2006, he walked into the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum and came upon Edward Hopper’s painting Hotel Room (1931). “When I look at things, especially artworks, that don’t immediately scream at me to pay attention, I always give them a second chance,” Frowein says from his headquarters in New York, where he gives many second looks at patterns and designs for Schumacher, the internationally renowned maker of fine textiles. “There must be a reason a painting like this is on view, and so I give it a second look.” It was during that concentrated study of Hopper’s details — a partially undressed woman reading a book on a bed…

In the paintings of SARA SCRIBNER (b. 1982), young women appear in ethereal settings, dressed in vintage clothing, and usually surrounded by flowers, butterflies, birds, and other feminine symbols. Featuring otherworldly environments and mystical motifs, these paintings create a sweeping sense of being in another time or place, perhaps even in a dream. That is why Scribner refers to her paintings as “dreamscapes.” In her words, she is looking to transport the viewer to “a more magical place,” using her imagination and skills as a realist painter to create that portal to another world. “Lately, I have been thinking more about creating dreamscapes,” the artist shares. “I want to capture the moment when you wake up from a dream — when you open your eyes but can still see the…

“I sometimes think,” Vincent van Gogh wrote his brother Theo, “there is nothing so delightful as drawing.” The Dutch master was remarking on his own pleasure before a sheet of paper, but for the Chicago gallerist and collector Richard Gray (1928–2018), that sentiment was equally apt. A leading dealer in modern and contemporary art, Gray was, for more than 50 years, an active connoisseur of works on paper, primarily drawings, which afforded him — as he said of Willem de Kooning’s Two Women, I (1952) — “the sense of a connection with the artist … as if I were there, a fly on the wall, looking at him drawing.” By the time Gray died in 2018, he and his wife, art historian Mary L. Gray, had assembled a trove that…