#674

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Abe Ajay
#674
1974

About the Item

Abstract painting with bright, vibrant colors dating from 1974 by modern artist Abe Ajay. As an artist who challenged the boundaries of mid-century modernism, Abe Ajay employed various tenets of hard-edge painting, ready-made objects, and assemblage, resulting in a precise, clean-cut and intricate art form resembling that of both sculpture and painting. Within his artwork resonates temperaments of vitality, invention, harmony, rhythm and balance. Ajay’s first solo exhibition was held in 1964 at the Rose Fried Gallery, New York, a well-known venue for supporting and introducing modernism into the American art market. It was after this debut that Ajay began seriously seeking an artistic transition which would introduce elements of painting, architecture, and sculpture into his practice. He incorporated a variety of found objects into his works, including cigar molds, knobs, dowels, geometric blocks, and transparent paper, and each combination of these elements served as a continuation of the unexpected and experience of perpetual surprise. Ajay’s art was an evolving experiment in expressing perfect interrelationships of shape, color andform. A first-generation child of Syrian immigrants, he took to art making as a child, became a graphic designer, and then established his studio in Bethel, CT. He began by employing industrial cigar molds and other found objects in his works, but soon turned to carving and cutting his own abstract wooden shapes for assemblage. Ajay also cast polyester resin into pure white forms, combining shaped canvases, resin casts, and objects he designed – his “Alphabet.” In the last decade of his life he painted on paper and then cut or ripped the paper and assembled pieces to create intricate and emotionally charged collages. Ajay’s use of carefully designed forms and color arrangements, Louise Nevelson’s black and/or white found object compositions, and his near neighbor Alexander Calder’s lyrical mobiles and stabiles proved to be vital counterpoints to each other. Ajay also carried on what became a controversial published debate with Ad Reinhardt in ARTnews. Irving Sandler, writing in ARTS Magazine in response to a 1977 Ajay exhibition, described his works as “half-discovered, half invented…a private, poetic vision….” While these ruminations on his alphabet were indeed Ajay’s “private visions” of infinite geometric possibilities, they also function as universal reminders of our own connections to the rigid and organic forms that populate our lives and inner landscapes. Signature and date impressed lower left: AJAY 74

Creator:
Abe Ajay (1919 - 1998, American)
Creation Year:
1974
Dimensions:
Height: 22 in (55.88 cm)Width: 28.5 in (72.39 cm)Depth: 3 in (7.62 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Acrylic
Movement & Style:
Modern
Period:
1970-1979
Condition:
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU73632387161