Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Beverly Brodsky
The Way

2024

About the Item

Brodsky’s first classroom experience under Ad Reinhardt at Brooklyn College in 1961 was an extraordinary one. The students were asked to take their places in front of their easels in the large studio. The master had set up each easel with a 30 x 40-inch canvas primed white. As if the sight of the archetypal blank canvas was not intimidating enough, he spoke only once, issuing the simple directive: “Begin.” Then, with no explanation, he quickly departed the studio full of surprised students. When Reinhardt returned a few hours later, he slowly paced by the easels, reviewing the paintings in progress, but rarely speaking. When he came to Brodsky’s painting he paused and asked, “Who taught you how to paint?” Brodsky struggled to find a reply when Reinhardt answered his own question, saying, “You must have known all along.” “Reinhardt taught commitment,” says Brodsky. “He never used the word but that’s what he taught, not technique.” Upon graduation in 1965 Brodsky was awarded best in her class. In 1962, while still in college, Brodsky landed a job at Herbert Mayer’s World House Galleries. The gallery represented an eclectic group of European artists such as Herbert Bayer, Bernard Buffet, Jean Dubuffet, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, and Giorgio Morandi. For the next two years Brodsky also came to know two of the gallery’s leading Abstract Expressionists — Esteban Vicente and Philip Guston. When the gallery’s director learned that her assistant was an artist, she asked to see her work. She was so impressed that she added Brodsky’s watercolors to an exhibition to hang beside abstract watercolors by Kandinsky and Klee. Brodsky's work is about color and mark-making. Mark making is a term used to describe the different lines, patterns, and textures that are made visible as a manifestation of applied or gestural energy. It is the gestural “language” of the artist becoming manifest. She also shares an interest in mythology and symbolism. The critic Peter Falk writes: "It is mysticism joined with numerology, alchemy — and the primal mark-making of non-literate cultures as found in cave paintings — that have become part of a vocabulary that has continuously flowed into her paintings." Brodsky's work is also about the excavation of that which was always there. As Picasso famously said: "I do not create, I find." Over the decades, Brodsky’s deeply emotional response to color became her bedrock. The hallmark of her paintings is the chromatic tensions and transitions rippling across the surface as they evoke depth and space. This is accomplished through a careful technique using a variety of brushes, vivid high-quality pigments, and oil emulsifiers. The fine art of layering, glazing, and revealing pentimenti are crucial to her technique. Brodsky has had more than 30 solo and group exhibitions in her career.
  • Creator:
  • Creation Year:
    2024
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 48 in (121.92 cm)Width: 48 in (121.92 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Framing:
    Framing Options Available
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Lawrence, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1497214290852
More From This SellerView All
  • The Yellow Ribbon
    By Amaranth Ehrenhalt
    Located in Lawrence, NY
    One of the "Women of Abstract Expressionism" Caradoc Ehrenhalt would often accompany his mother, the artist Amaranth Ehrenhalt, on her visits to the Louvre in Paris and the Metropoli...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

  • Immersion
    By Stan Brodsky
    Located in Lawrence, NY
    Brodsky was a "romantic" painter, although he painted abstractly, and a master colorist. His abstract works are not "action paintings" in the sense of De Kooning or Pollock, but expl...
    Category

    Early 2000s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

  • G3
    By Diana Kurz
    Located in Lawrence, NY
    The story of the post-WWII New York School artists is still being written. The role of women in the art of the day still needs examination and study. Kurz is one such example. Diana Kurz (b. 1938) was born into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family whose business was Aryanized after the Anschluss forcing the family to flee, first to Spain, then across Europe, and finally to the United States. Brought up as a "normal" American girl, Kurz always wanted to be an artist. She studied at Brandeis, at Hunter with Robert Motherwell and received her MFA from Columbia. She received instruction from Hans Hoffmann, studied with Phillip Guston...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

  • Untitled
    By Charles Cajori
    Located in Lawrence, NY
    Oil and gouache on thick paper Cajori was an important second generation abstract expressionist painter. In 1952, he founded, along with Fred Mitchell, Lois Dodd...
    Category

    1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

  • Untitled (Falling Tower)
    By Robert S. Neuman
    Located in Lawrence, NY
    Oil on linen Neuman's work assimilated a wide variety of influences, including Bay Area Abstraction, the New York School and European Art Informel. Not bad for a young man raised in the rural mining town of Kellogg, Idaho! Arriving in San Francisco in 1947, at age 21, Neuman would first be exposed to the work of Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Clyfford Still...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

  • Pacific Orange
    By Stan Brodsky
    Located in Lawrence, NY
    Brodsky was a "romantic" painter, although he painted abstractly, and a master colorist. His abstract works are not "action paintings" in the sense of De Kooning or Pollock, but expl...
    Category

    1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

You May Also Like
  • "Pool" Oil on Canvas Painting
    By Daniel Phill
    Located in Rio Vista, CA
    A rare departure from Daniel Phill's abstract expressionist botanical paintings titled "Pool". Interior scene of an indoor pool painted with his saturated ...
    Category

    20th Century Abstract Expressionist Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Daydreams
    Located in Southampton, NY
    Part of a new collection of painted porcelain panels by Chinese artist Yuan Lin, “Daydreams” is a luminous meditation on the sun's rays. In this painting, Lin...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Ceramic, Glaze, Oil

  • Suspended
    Located in Southampton, NY
    Part of a new collection of painted porcelain panels by Chinese artist Yuan Lin, “Suspended” uses deep blues, purples, and reds, to explore Lin’s melancholy e...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Ceramic, Glaze, Oil

  • A World Without Limits
    Located in Southampton, NY
    Part of a new collection of painted porcelain panels by Chinese artist Yuan Lin, “A World Without Limits” contrasts blues and blacks to point to a deep and di...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Ceramic, Glaze, Oil

  • Tavern, Abstract (1960)
    By Chuck Close
    Located in Saint Augustine, FL
    Artist: Chuck Close Title: Tavern Year of Work: 1960 Medium: Oil on Canvas Signature: Signed & Dated Upper Left Dimensions: framed 31 x 25 unframed 30 x 24 Provenance: Chuck Close, Marjorie Dalton (Dear friend of Chuck), Private Collection. Tavern, is truly a rare find, an original oil on canvas, in compelling blues and grays with a touch of gold and orange. This work reveals more imagery and detail the longer one enjoys it. This painting was created during his years studying in Yale Art School, and draws different qualities to each new viewer similar to a Rorschach. Close's work is in the collections of most of the great international museums of contemporary art, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City. and the Tate Modern in London. Artist Bio: Chuck Close – (1940-2021) an American painter, artist and photographer born in Monroe, Washington. Early childhood illnesses including a neuromuscular condition, nephritis and dyslexia were compounded later in life by a condition known as prosopagnosia (face blindness), which may have inspired him to do portraits. Most of his early, large-format portraits are based on photographs, using photorealism or hyperrealism, of family and friends, often other artists. Close often painted abstract portraits of himself and others, which hang in collections internationally. Even though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he continued to paint inspired by artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Close's first solo exhibition, held in 1967 at the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, Amherst, featured paintings, painted reliefs, and drawings based on photographs of record covers. Being much in the mainstream of pop art, a fragment of Close's portrait of singer-songwriter Paul Simon...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

  • Large 20th Century Abstract Expressionist Oil circa 1975
    Located in Frome, Somerset
    A very good large 20th century Abstract Expressionist oil circa 1975. Stanley Smith (b. 1923) British. oil on board 61cmx 122cm. Gallery frame 65cmx 126c...
    Category

    1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

Recently Viewed

View All