Question Marks the Art - Essay

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
Question Marks the Art

Seven Paintings

1

Curved Red on Blue

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), American

Oil on canvas, 84" x 105" (w x h), 1963

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas

"The curve is a form that exists in nature but can also be manipulated to be abstract. I was fascinated by the different effects you could achieve with a simple curve." -Ellsworth Kelly

Source: Balcom, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2015, edited

Throughout his fifty-year career, Ellsworth Kelly's art reflects his fascination with form as it presents itself to him on a daily basis, whether it be the shape of a shadow, an architectural detail, the curve of a hill, or the edge of a leaf. During the early 1960s, Kelly was particularly intrigued by the character of curved forms, leading him to explore the transformational qualities of various curves, using both color and edge to divide the ground of the canvas. Curved Red on Blue consists of an enigmatic red curve dividing a blue canvas. The canvas barely contains the red form, which pushes against all four canvas edges. Kelly acknowledged Curved Red on Blue is a seminal work that opened a career-long investigation of the curve and its transformational possibilities.

2

Where the Autumn Has Passed It All Became Dust

Vasile Dobrian (1912-1999), Romanian

Screen print, 1996

Source: Various

Vasile Dobrian, a Romanian artist and writer, was co-founder of the groups Grupul Grafic and MCMXLII. He was one of Romania's first and most important 20th century engravers. Known for his connections with the Romanian avant-garde, he was also a poet, although his volumes of poetry lacked critical acclaim. After his early art works from the 1930s often using social themes and influences from movements such as cubism, he moved on towards a gradually refined lyrical hard-edged style with figurative allusions. His geometric constructions often using the alphabet as a starting point.

3

U.F.O. Otaznik / U.F.O. Question Mark

Julius Koller (1939-2007), Slovakian

Mixed media on paper, 20" x 28" (w x h)

$650 USD

Source: Various

Trained as an academic painter, Julius Koller (1939-2007) took a critical stance as a student. He used conceptual techniques and dry wit to question the Western art world and comment on Communist Czechoslovakia where cultural production was divided into official and so-called free art. In 1970, two years after the Prague Spring had been put down by tanks of the Warsaw Treaty, Koller introduced the acronym U.F.O. into his work: Universal-Cultural Futurological Operations. Over the next three decades he created his major group of works under the same name, while he became the subject of a series of annual portraits known as U.F.O.-naut J.K.

Since the rediscovery of Slovak's Julius Koller's work (1939-2007) in the early 1990s by Slovak artists and intellectuals, his work has been shown throughout Eastern Europe. Only recently has Koller's conceptual work received wider recognition from the Western art world, exhibited regularly in Slovakia, Koller has also exhibited internationally including in Brazil, New York, New Zealand, Paris. Poland and Tokyo.

4

Nude

Nakao Yoshitaka (1911-1994), Japanese

Color woodblock print, edition of 210, 22" x 35" (w x h), 1960

$850 USD

Source: Ronin Gallery, NY plus various

Yoshitaka Nakao (1911-1994) was a woodblock print artist of the Sosaku Hanga (creative print) movement. Nakao was largely self-taught, though he studied woodblock printmaking for a time. Following awards in 1949 and 1956, he gained recognition among his fellow print artists. Until 1955, he favored the cement print, where he poured wet concrete into a wooden frame, carved into the surface as it dried, then relief printed from the dry concrete. In the following years, he shifted to oil-based inks and more traditional woodblock print techniques, still integrating the use of concrete paste to create rich texture in his woodblock prints. His work often features abstracted figures depicted in bold, textured blocks of color. In 1960, the Graphic Art Society of New York published his prints on three separate occasions. His woodblock prints are in collections such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

5

The Singer

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Russian

Woodcut on paper, 6" x 8" (w x h), 1903

Source: Wiki, edited

Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated from Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession, he was offered a professorship at the University in Estonia. Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) when he was 30-years-old. In the summer of 1902, 35-year-old Kandinsky taught summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. Art school, usually considered difficult, was easy for Kandinsky. It was during this time that he began to emerge as an art theorist as well as a painter.

6

Question Mark

Andrew Barrow (1945- ) British

Collage, 20" x 22" (w x h), 2012

Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, London, UK

Source: Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, London, 2020, edited

Winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the McKitterick Prize (best first novel by an author aged over 40) for his comic masterpiece novel, The Tap Dancer (1992), writer of nonfiction and novels, and UK collage artist Andrew Barrow creates collages which are like books rich with stories and connections.