Galerie Gmurzynska New York is pleased to present an exhibition of Louise Nevelson’s iconic monochromatic wood assemblages alongside her rarely seen collages. These works will be on view at 39 East 78th Street, 3rd floor, from May 2nd to June 15th.
To this day one of the most celebrated female artist of the 20th century, Nevelson’s work has been exhibited alongside other greats such as Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly,Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg. Her works took notice among the combines of Rauschenberg and the immense color block paintings of Stella and now reside in the collections of top museums such as the Tate Gallery in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
As monumental as they are memorable, Nevelson’s wood assemblages have been aligned with many different movements from Abstract Expressionism, to Cubism and Surrealism. In presenting these objects, Nevelson is presenting us with her own valued collection, her found objects, a personal anecdote, and a glance into her life.
Born in present day Ukraine in 1899, Nevelson’s family settled in the United States by 1905. She studied the arts with Frederick Kiesler and Hilla Rebay, was introduced toMarcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, briefly attended Hans Hofmann’s school in Munich, and worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera. With such prominent and influential colleagues, teachers, and mentors, she went on to create a unique art that would resonate with a myriad of artistic movements while staying wholly and genuinely her own.
Nevelson’s collages are a harmonious and lesser seen companion to the assemblages. Titled after a famous Nevelson quote, “The way I think is collage,” the gallery’s publication was the first to focus on her collage work and brought to the surface never before published documentary images and personal essays by Robert Indiana and Bill Katz. Three of her collages will be on view for the exhibition.
A Singular Masterpiece at TEFAF New York Spring
As a unique Art Fair exhibition concept Galerie Gmurzynska will present at this year’s TEFAF at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, a single Masterpiece of enormous scale and seminal historic importance. The 9 x 13 meters (366 x 512 inches) painting was created for the world’s most famous ballet company of all times, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and was presented 105 years ago in Paris and London only weeks before the outbreak of World War I. Le Coq d’Or was one of the last productions of Sergei Diaghilev.
As at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005, the work will be suspended from the ceiling of the great hall of the Park Avenue Armory and will be accompanied by a special exhibition stand (designed by the famed designer Tom Postma) at the entrance to the fair.
Natalia Goncharova’s backdrop is the only surviving large scale painting from this Diaghilev production but also one of very few important large scale backdrop paintings, such as Picasso’s stage cloth for Diaghilev’s Le Train Bleu from 1924, today in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Le Coq d’Or was sold in 1968 at the famed Diaghilev Sale at Sotheby’s London, and has since been shown at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Royal Albert Hall in London, and the MART Museum with a Skira publication entitled The Dance of the Avant-Gardes, paintings, scenes and costumes from Degas to Picasso, to Matisse to Keith Haring.
The presentation at TEFAF coincides with a strong renewed interest in the work of Natalia Goncharova, with a major retrospective of the artist set to open at the Tate Modern in London in June with a room dedicated to Goncharova and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes including designs for Le Coq d’Or. It is also noteworthy that a 1916 painting by Goncharova was recently sold at Christie’s London for over 8 Million Dollars.
The documentation will include two original drawings. A portrait of Natalia Goncharova by her husband, Mikhail Larionov, and a Costume Design by Goncharova for Le Coq d’Or.
