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Richard Pousette-Dart Paintings
At the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
(Guggenheim New York Website)
1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street
NYC, NY 10128
212.423.3500
Press: Guggenheim Public Affairs
August 17 - September 25, 2007
Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower
September 23, 2007
(Assisted by Guggenheim Press Notes).
Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992), an early Abstract Expressionist, was one of the first artists to use large-scale canvasses and influenced Jackson Pollack’s large-scale murals, among works of other contemporaries and protégées. His rough-hewn works, with hints of Pointillism, Native Americanism, and African motifs, emphasized gesture and thickly layered paint. “Pousette-Dart's lifelong belief was that the abstract symbols of painting could reveal universal truths by suggesting the mysterious realm of the spirit.” (Guggenheim Website). Pousette-Dart was active in New York in the 1940’s, and Peggy Guggenheim gave him his own exhibition in her New York gallery in 1947. Pousette-Dart was inspired by Jung, Freud, and Oriental philosophy, and his abstract symbols were to reveal the truth of the human spirit.
In 1951, Pousette-Dart moved to Suffern, NY, for solitude in creativity, as he turned to his “white” paintings with gouache-oil and pencil-graphite. In the 1960’s, color and lyrical abstraction exuded from his oeuvres. He is said to have expanded on Impressionism with abstract thought and gestures. These works are bright, dynamic, and infused with textured tones. Pousette-Dart’s works are internationally renowned. I found his works to resemble the fragmented tiny dots of light of Pointillists, Seurat and Signac (“Lost in the Beginnings of Infinity”), as well as the exaggerated and surreal heads painted by Picasso (“Head of a Woman”). I found additional stylistic similarities to Paul Klee, Georges Braque, and Joan Miro.
Check the Guggenheim Museum Website for current and future exhibitions and events.
Richard Pousette-Dart
Head of a Woman, 1938–39
Oil on linen
40 x 24 inches
Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart, New York
and American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich
© 2007 Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Richard Pousette-Dart
Illumination Gothic, 1958
Oil on linen
72 x 53 1/2 inches
Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart, New York
© 2007 Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Richard Pousette-Dart
Night Landscape, 1969–71
Oil on linen
46 x 60 inches
Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart, New York
© 2007 Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Richard Pousette-Dart
Spirals by the Sea, Sequence Spiral, 1978
Oil on linen
72 x 120 inches
Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart, New York
© 2007 Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Richard Pousette-Dart
Lost in the Beginnings
Oil on linen
Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart, New York
© 2007 Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Richard Pousette-Dart in his studio, Suffern, NY, 1962.
Photo: Nathan Rakin
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