Gandy Brodie
Santa Maria Novella Firenze
1955

Name: Santa Maria Novella Firenze
Brand: Gandy Brodie
Price: 4750 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Note: oil pastel on paper Gandy Brodie (American, 1924-1975) studied dance and jazz before teaching himself to paint, inspired by the paintings of Van Gogh, Klee and Picasso. Brodie's style was considered second-generation abstract expressionism(emphasis on the "expressionism" in abstract expressionism). He was known for his dense and thickly layered paintings, and for depicting simple, stark, and sometimes isolated subjects, many of which recurred throughout his career and assumed totemic significance. During his lifetime, art critics and historians Meyer Schapiro, Dore Ashton Leo Steinberg, Robert Rosenblum, and Thomas Hess, and artist Elaine de Kooning championed Brodie. Indeed, in 1951, at the age of 27, the critic Meyer Schapiro selected Brodie for a two-person New Talent Show at Kootz Gallery alongside Cy Twombly. Schapiro called him one of the most talented painters of his generation. However, in the years since his death, his work has faded from view, perhaps because he died so young. Brodie is part of the "second generation" of Abstract Expressionists. Of that group, which includes Norman Bluhm, Ed Clark, Grace Hartigan and Joan Mitchell, he remains among the most isolated. This is largely because of the way he merged paint and subject matter. In contrast to the loaded brush and aggressiveness we associate with Bluhm and Mitchell, Brodie's work is slow to reveal itself. In his best works, Brodie was able to coax an image right up to edge of the abyss of sentimentality and not let it fall in. Perhaps this is why Willem de Kooning and Hans Hoffmann included his work in their personal collections. His paintings and drawings are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Neuberger Museum of Art, and the Phillips Collection, among others.

Creator:

Gandy Brodie (1924 - 1975, American)

Creation Year:

1955

Dimensions:

Height: 20 in (50.8 cm)Width: 15.75 in (40.01 cm)

Medium:

Oil Pastel

Movement & Style:

Expressionist

Period:

1950-1959