International Art News

Bogoslowsky – astrobiology # 48 – 30” X 32” – Acrylic on canvas

From June 9 to July 29, 2013 – Elena Ab Gallery  – Tribeca, Manhattan, New York
COSMIC PASSION will feature work from the Cosmology Series of Andrey Bogoslowsky.
My fascination with the beauty of our Universe began in 2005,  when I first saw photographs from the Hubble telescope.  They were taken taken at long exposure, and reaching out to the deepest corners of the space. I realized that I also can create such clouds, and give them shapes familiar to us on Earth.  Soon I learned about possible origins of organic life elsewhere and that we, humans, are the results of four billion years of earthly transformation into complexity of our existence. The Universe is full of life and I, as an artist, can elaborate on this subject.  My paintings have become cosmic living symbols of humanity.

Bogoslowsky – Origins of life #732 – 50 X 40 – Acrylic on canvas

ELEMENTS is a series of paintings by Elena Ab that explore the physical and metaphysical building blocks of our world.

Elena Ab, Marilyn Monroe, 2013 – acrylic on canvas – gold and silver – 20″ X 28 “. (Detail)

Elena Ab was born in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russian Federation). As a child she left Russia for Jerusalem with her family. After being discharged from the Israeli Defense Forces, as a sergeant, she attended the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem. In 2001, she moved to New York, and graduated with a BFA in painting from the School of Visual Arts (on a Scholarship Award). While still in school, she started 368 Broadway Studio, in Tribeca.

NYC by Elena at Alpha – 40 inch by 120 acrylic on canvas 2011

The Elena Ab Gallery Tribeca is a new addition to downtown Manhattan, located on 185 Church Street between Reed and Duane. The Gallery is located across from a bus stop, and is a short walk from Chambers Street Station that services the J, M and Z trains. A parking lot is located around the corner. Nestled on a street between many restaurants and shops, the gallery has quickly gained popularity in the community since the opening.

Elena Ab Gallery Tribeca

Edvard Munch – Madonna

May 19, 2013–July 28, 2013 – National Gallery of Art
This 150th birthday tribute to Edvard Munch (1863–1944), Norway’s most famed painter and printmaker, includes more than 20 renowned works from the Gallery’s collection, such as Geschrei (The Scream) (1895), The Madonna (1895, printed 1912/1913), and a unique series of six variant impressions, Two Women on the Shore (1898, printed 1906–c. 1917 or later). Munch is today revered for his passionate visual expression of intense human experiences. “Art is your heart’s blood,” he said. His most famous image—a screaming figure, its eyes wide with horror—is an icon of anxiety, alienation, and anguish. Attraction, love, jealousy, and death were also recurring themes. In addition to these dramatic subjects, Munch made many telling portraits, tender visions of women, as well as sensitive studies of lovers, children, and adolescents. However, the real power of his art lies less in his biography than in his ability to extrapolate universal human experiences from his own life. In recent decades the National Gallery of Art has presented three major exhibitions of Munch’s work, the last in 2010.

National Gallery of Art

Lynn Hershman Leeson. Roberta’s Construction Chart #2. 1976. Chromogenic color print, printed 2003, 22 15/16 x 29 5/8″ (58.3 x 75.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Modern Women’s Fund. © 2013 Lynn Hershman Leeson

May 10, 2013–January 6, 2014 – Museum of Modern Art
This exhibition addresses photography’s influential role in contemporary art through a selection of recent major acquisitions, primarily multipart and serial works. Presented at MoMA for the first time, these works by 19 artists are grounded in diverse photographic traditions, suggesting the creative fertility of the medium from 1960 to today. They range from postwar experiments with darkroom processes (such as photograms and photomontages), to 1970s feminist performances conceived for the camera, to political and documentary engagements with labor history and globalization in the 1980s and 1990s, to forms of archival and historical reconstitution made since 2000.
The international, cross-generational group of artists includes Yto Barrada, Phil Collins,* Liz Deschenes, Stan Douglas,* VALIE EXPORT, Robert Frank, Paul Graham, Leslie Hewitt,* Birgit Jürgenssen, Jürgen Klauke, Běla Kolářová, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Dóra Maurer, Oscar Muñoz, Mariah Robertson, Allan Sekula, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simon,* and Hank Willis Thomas.*

*Works by these artists will be on view beginning August 23, 2013.

Museum of Modern Art New York

Albrecht Dürer – Abduction on a Unicorn, 1516 – etching (iron) – Meder, no. 67- Rosenwald Collection

From March 24 to June 9, 2013 – National Gallery of Art
Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) has long been considered the greatest German artist, uniquely combining the status held in Italian art by Michelangelo in the sixteenth century, by Raphael in the 18th and 19th centuries, and by Leonardo da Vinci in our own day.

While Dürer’s paintings were prized, his most influential works were his drawings, watercolors, engravings, and woodcuts. They were executed with his distinctively northern sense of refined precision and exquisite craftsmanship. The finest collection of Dürer’s drawings and watercolors is that of the Albertina in Vienna, Austria.

Albrecht Dürer – Portrait of a Clergyman (Johann Dorsch?), 1516 – oil on parchment on fabric painted surface: 41.7 x 32.7 cm (16 7/16 x 12 7/8 in.) Samuel H. Kress Collection

The Albertina’s works by Dürer have been acquired over many years, but the museum’s ability to amass such a collection of masterpieces results from primary sources that go directly back to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Dürer was his favorite artist, and the emperor spared no expense in searching for Dürer’s art. He used imperial ambassadors and the machinery of state to succeed in his purchases, among them extraordinary acquisitions from the Imhoff family in Nuremberg, whose works included Dürer’s personal estate.

This groundbreaking exhibition is a culmination of decades of acquisition, study, and exhibitions of early German art at the National Gallery of Art. It presents 91—including most—of the superb Dürer watercolors and drawings from the Albertina and 27 of the museum’s best related engravings and woodcuts. It also includes 19 closely related drawings and prints from the Gallery’s own collection.

National Gallery of Art

Jorge Santos – Inner Circle | 2013 | 80 x 80 inches | Oil and acrylic on canvas

From April 13 to June 15, 2013 – 101 / exhibit – (Melrose Av)
Jorge Santos was born in 1959, and spent his childhood in Luanda, Angola on the coast of Africa. In 1975, Angola exploded in the violent political turmoil of decolonization forcing Santos’ family to flee the country. At the formative age of 16, Santos found himself thrust into the equally turbulent and unknown culture of Lisbon, Portugal as that country slid into its own revolution. The national struggle paralleled Santos’ own personal one and fueled his passion for drawing. At this early stage, pencil drawing, the most simple and direct form of expression, perfectly suited his complicated and dramatic images and expressed his unique vision.

Though of Portuguese descent, the following years brought the artist no sense of belonging, so in 1982, Santos moved to the United States. It was here that his work evolved beyond drawing. His illusory, dreamlike images that hint at bizarre secrets leapt from the drawing board to the full realization of paint and canvas.

In 1990, the self-taught Santos began adding color to his images and in this second period black and white figures stand out in stark contrast to their colored environments. Though the techniques combine acrylic and pencil on board, or oil and acrylic on canvas, a balance of opposites continued to be the focus of his work. With every painting, a stage of ambiguous illusion is created.

Jorge Santos – Maitre D | 2012 | 66 x 80 inches | Oil on canvas

Suddenly, at the end of the millennium, Santos’ paintings burst into full color showing a mature command of his artistry. They are still surreal allegorical works but now tempered with the irony and humor of an eccentric yet adventurous mind.

Figures are frequently fragmented, boxed within rooms, cardboard containers, or trompe l’oeil frames. An unusual icon will repeat itself with humorous frequency: a fish, a plane, a train… His characters seem alienated, odd, socially awkward and disconnected; disconnected also from their backgrounds by texture and technique. The overall impact of the work is disturbing and yet endearingly funny.

While one could spend hours psychoanalyzing Santos’ imagery, perhaps the best path to understanding his work is of that of a master set designer who creates an emotional landscape and populates it with characters to be animated in the imaginations of his viewers. Santos sets the stage and creates the cast, but each individual who sees the work writes his or her own internal play, making Santos’ work a unique, almost interactive, experience.

101 / exhibit

A NORTH ITALIAN ARMOUR FOR THE TILT, MILAN, circa 1580
Size: Height 180 cm / 70.9 inches 244 cm / 83.5 inches with mount.
Courtesy of Peter Finer – Antique Arms & Armour – London

From February 5 to February 10, 2013 – Palm Beach County Convention Center.
Now in its 17th year, the AIFAF hosts international dealers presenting artwork spanning all periods – from antiquities to contemporary, as well as period to contemporary jewelry. The fair is proud to welcome over 14 new exhibitors from 5 countries as well as many returning exhibitors including Richard Green, Waterhouse and Dodd, Michael Goedhuis, The Silver Fund, Mallett, Peter Finer, Haynes of Broadway, Holden Luntz Gallery, A.B. Levy, Imperial Fine Books, Imperial Oriental Art, Faberge, Bayco Gems, Yvel, and more.

American International Fine Art Fair