Tag: abstract

Richard Diebenkorn

Four Landscape Paintings by Richard Diebenkorn

A highly influential mid-century American artist, Richard Diebenkorn is known for his abstract landscape paintings, in particular the “Ocean Park” series, which he exhibited when representing America at the 1978 Venice Biennale. Diebenkorn’s work is often highly gestural and layered, his use of the medium comparable to that of contemporaries like the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, an artist he greatly admired. Diebenkorn, however, preferred California to the competitive New York art scene, and became a leading artist among the Bay Area Figurative painters.

Even at its most abstract, Diebenkorn’s work remains rooted in the outside world, and he is celebrated for capturing his surroundings on canvas without representing them literally. Moving between New Mexico, Illinois, and, ultimately, California, his work progresses in tune with the changing architecture and landscape. Diebenkorn also painted portraits, expertly combining figurative and abstract styles in the same picture.

David Urban

Five Oil Paintigs by David Urban, Corkin Gallery, Toronto

Born in Toronto in 1966,  David Urban studied poetry and painting at York University, earning a BFA in 1989. Urban received a Master’s degree in English Literature and Creative writing from the University of Windsor in 1991 (where he studied with Alistair MacLeod) and a second Master’s degree in Painting from the University of Guelph in 1993.

His work is represented in many private and public collections including the National Gallery of Canada. In 2002, Urban curated Painters 15, an exhibition of established Canadian painters which was presented at the Shanghai Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.

Mark Francis

Four Oil Paintings by Mark Francis

Mark Francis is a Northern Irish painter known for his alla prima technique of blurring tones and forms to make photographic effects of glowing light. Like Gerhard Richter’s paintings of aerial photographs or  Ross Bleckner’s depictions of infected cells, Francis’ work focuses on the abstract nature of microscopic images, including those of sperm, fungus, and astronomical formations.Through this imagery, Francis aims to explore ways in which science is impacted by mapping, order, and randomness.

Born in 1962 in Newtonards, Northern Ireland, Mark Francis studied at St. Martins School of Art in London before receiving his MA from the Chelsea School of Art in 1986. While studying in London, Francis associated with the Young British Artists, a movement which also includes Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst. He received critical attention from his retrospective “Elements” at the Milton Keynes Gallery in 2000. His work is held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the Manchester City Gallery, the Dublin City Gallery, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco, among others. Francis lives and works in London, United Kingdom.

Images in Top Row: “Shutdown”; “White Light”

Images in Bottom Row: “Continuum”; “Growth”

Emil Holmer

Paintings by Emil Holmer from His Show: Mobilization Table

‘Dead Letters’ is the Swedish painter Emil Holmer’s first solo show in Berlin. His Mobilization Table is a sort of mission statement for his approach to painting: the canvas is a frame into which objects are assembled over and against each other, and techniques are hand-made weapons for dissecting materials. Collages of pornographic material meet total abstraction; media swap roles. The paintings are composed like installations from smaller paintings of sculptures, clusters spaced across the canvas, or piled on top of each other.

Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock, “The Key”, Oil on Linen, 1946, 150 x 208 cm., Art Institute of Chicago

“The Key” belongs to Jackson Pollock’s ‘Accabonac Creek’ series, named for a stream near the East Hampton property that he and his wife, the painter Lee Krasner, purchased in late 1945. Marking a crucial moment in his evolution as an artist, this quasi-Surrealist painting was created on the floor of an upstairs bedroom and worked on directly from all sides.

Although there is a general suggestion of landscape, here the process of painting became primary, expressing the power of spontaneous action and chance effects. The resulting abstraction, with its expressive, gestural appearance, prefigured the all-over compositions of Pollock’s celebrated drip paintings, which debuted the following year.

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, One of a Series of Color Studies of Squares and Circles

Wassily Kandinsky produced his early work in Russia, his mature and most revolutionary work in Germany, and his later work in France. He invented a language of abstract forms with which he replaced the forms of nature. His ultimate intention was to mirror the universe in his visionary world. He felt that painting possessed the same power as music and that sign, line, and color ought to correspond to the vibrations of the human soul.

Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts, “Hope”, 2011, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 48 x 38 cm

Born in Kiel, Germany in 1967, Tomma Abts is a contemporary abstract painter. She studied at Hodhschule der Künste in Berlin, later moving to London where she has her studio. Known for her small-scale, intricately composed geometric works, Abts works intuitively from drawings; her finished paintings bear the mark of being carefully re-worked numerous times.

The recipient of the 2006 Turner Prize, Abts has been exhibited widely. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions internationally, including at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 2011, Douglas Hyde Gallery in 2005, the New Museum in 2008, and the Kunsthalle Basel in 2005. She is represented in many prestigious public collections, such as The Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Britain, and the Hammer Museum, among others.

Since 2005, Tomma Abts has been represented by the David Zwirner Gallery with locations in New York, London, and Hong Kong.