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Gershon Benjamin, “The Fedora Hat,” 1945, oil on canvas, 37 by 31 inches.

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Geshon Benjamin, “Milkweed,” circa 1945, oil on canvas, 36 by 29 inches.

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Jane Wilson, “Rain, Heavy at Times,” 2004, oil on linen, 60 by 70 inches.

photos sent down for scanning 3-21

MUST RUN 3/28

SPANIERMAN GALLERY PRESENTS TWO EXHIBITIONS, W/3 Cuts

avv/lsb set 3/21 #732970

NEW YORK CITY — “Over Seven Decades: The Art of Gershon Benjamin (1899–1985)” is on view through April 26 at Spanierman Gallery. A separate exhibition, “Light of Spring,” on view through April 26, features the works of ten contemporary painters inspired by the light of Long Island’s East End.

Including landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, figurative works and portraits produced over the course of a 70-year career, this exhibition of more than 60 works is the first large-scale presentation of the art of Gershon Benjamin.

Drawing on his academic background and many European modernist influences, Benjamin distilled the exhaustive array of visual stimuli that he encountered into reductive, thoughtful images, using form and color to encapsulate his emotive responses to his subjects. The catalog from his first solo show, held in 1934, stated that his “theory embraces a precise expressionism” and commented that in his “nuanced studies you will encounter the evasive, evocative personality of the true searcher after the emotional ‘mot juste.’”

This exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive scholarly catalog by Dr Lisa N. Peters, the first publication to make use of the extensive archive of material housed in the Gershon Benjamin Foundation. The catalog positions the artist within the many contexts in which his professional life unfolded.

In the 1930s Benjamin was at the center of a band of artists — including Avery, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb — that countered the hegemony of the patriotic nativism of American Scene and Regionalist painting by espousing what they termed an “expressionist art” that applied the inspiration of European modernism to an American context.

During the rise of the New York School in the 1950s, Benjamin was content to maintain his own artistic path, but he continued to exhibit his work in New York and at local New Jersey venues until the end of his life. Benjamin’s close friends included some of the leading artists of his time. In addition to Avery, Rothko, Gottlieb and the Soyer brothers, he was intimately acquainted with George Constant, Arshile Gorky, Karl Knaths, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Maurice Sievan, John Sloan and others.

In “Light of Spring,” some of the same artists use landscapes and flowers as their vehicles of expression, while others give little attention to natural forms, focusing primarily on light.

Several of the artists portray explicit imagery, but their images are imaginative rather than literal translation. The artists’ various ways of “seeing” complement each other, capturing each of their unique feelings and responses to their subjects and experiences.

Shari Abramson creates abstract paintings in which shapes informed by nature and light glide through translucent fields of color and line, evoking qualities of depth, atmosphere and reflection. In “Spring,” colorful, soft-edge elements seem weightless and wind-borne on the white ground, suggesting active landscape elements against an open sky.

Roy Nicholson also creates abstract works that capture experiences of light. In his “Vernal Passage” series, elements of nature are simplified to essential forms that fill the picture plane as though he has cropped bits of a landscape through which white light emerges.

Zenlike quietude emanates from the works of Jane Wilson, in which large oils are often filled mostly with interactions of clouds and sky from which light emerges from depths of deep color.

Frank Wimberly carries on the East End abstract expressionist tradition of de Kooning and Kline, but uses his own voice in works in which he is deliberate and his use of light is often spare and mysterious. Pamela Sztybel isolates particular places and abstracts them through a sfumato effect of shifting atmospheric light and dark to capture their elemental aspects.

In works in acrylic on heavy paper mounted on canvas, Deborah Black’s loosely painted textural blues, green and purples provide definite suggestions of trees, water and pathways against light skies. Priscilla Bowden creates more recognizable landscapes, often recording places that have been radically altered by development.

The gallery is at 45 East 58th Street. For information, www.Spanierman.com or 212-832-0208.