2col APG8677…

Donald Judd, Untitled (Schellman nos. 298–301), 1993, set of four color woodcuts with an oil paint stripe on the glass of each galvanized iron frame, each 23½ by 313/8   inches. Judd Art ©Judd Foundation, licensed by VAGA, New York City, 2007.

2col 72nd…

Frederick Brosen, “72nd Street and Broadway,” 2007, watercolor over graphite on paper, 33¾ by 48 inches.

 

 

Revised for date

FREDERICK BROSEN, DONALD JUDD AT HIRSCHL & ADLER OCT 10 w/2 cuts

avv/gs set 9/25 #713312

NEW YORK CITY — Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc is presenting “Donald Judd,” an exhibition of works in a variety of media by one of the foremost American postwar artists and a major figure in the Minimalist art movement, and the exhibition, “Frederick Brosen: Recent Watercolors.” Both will be on view through November 10.

Donald Judd’s exhibit opens with a group of rare, abstract color woodcuts conceived in 1960–63, a moment coincident with Judd’s dissatisfaction with the constraints of traditional painting and his initial forays into three-dimensional work.

Judd found the printing process sympathetic to his attempts to isolate the material qualities of color as a subject in its own right; as he would declare at the time, “a shape, a volume, a color is something in itself. It shouldn’t be concealed as part of a fairly different whole.”

A second period in his work will be represented by a framed set of 16 large-scale etchings from 1977–78, whose different geometric iterations have as their immediate correspondent the 16 plywood wall units, Untitled of 1978 (Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas).

Here, as with his iconic series of 100 floor pieces in mill aluminum (also the Chinati Foundation) the visual equivalent of a limitless variation and fugue unfolds through horizontal, vertical and diagonal division of a uniform rectilinear space.

The later color prints, represented in this exhibition by many of the most important sets executed in the last decade of the artist’s life, have much in common with the artist’s “stacks” and other serial pieces. Regardless of the medium, the viewer is presented with carefully delimited individual forms that function equally successfully as individual parts as they do a cohesive whole. And in both, color becomes a fierce and immutable visual force, eclipsing early spatial concerns.

“Frederick Brosen: Recent Watercolors,” the artist’s first solo show with Hirschl & Adler Modern, features more than 18 new cityscapes in watercolor, ranging in size from 5 by 5 inches to 40 by 60 inches.

Brosen brings to life the urban architecture and streets of ever-changing New York and Paris. The show is accompanied by a 12-page catalog with an introduction and 12 images in color.

Brosen is a New Yorker. Gotham is his muse and his primary subject as he celebrates the poetry of her streets. He has been at home in Paris, in London, in the cities and towns of Italy, painting them with the same understanding and affection that inform his views of his own neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Yet Brosen is not a genre painter — his interest lies in the built environment, its architecture, monuments and public spaces.

Over the years he has revisited favorite locations, marking changes as well as preserving what once was. In “72nd Street and Broadway,” Brosen paints the subway kiosk not as it has been recently altered, but as it pleases him to see it. Even if new developments are captured in the composition, as the restaurant “Pastis in Ganesvoort Street,” Brosen’s work is often about the city as it used to be, with cobblestones and potholes, broken brick and sagging roofs.

Brosen’s subjects are often set against intense skies that light his work. Brick facades glow and tiled rooftops shimmer, as transient light and weather effects play changing chords to illuminate his crystalline compositions.

In Brosen’s work, there is a sense of time stopped and captured. Streets and the structures lining them become carriers for the expression in his art of formal qualities of rhythm, geometry, palette and texture, the psychological bases of visual delight in urban architecture.

Located in a landmark townhouse, Hirschl & Alder Modern is at 21 East 70th Street. For more information, www.HirschlAndAdler.com or 212-535-8810.