Keith Thomson

Elevator?, Oil Painting

2024

Aaron Fink (American, b. 1955) Hand signed and dated 1986, verso. The large canvas size measures approx: 72" x 66". This painting is part of the artist's "Images of Gambling" series, amongst his best figural work. Aaron Fink was born in Boston in 1955. He received his MFA from Yale University and his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan and Australia, and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among many others. He lives and works in the Boston area. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Muskegon Museum of Art, Michigan, the Rockford Art Museum, Illinois, and Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Figurative abstract expressionist art. In 2002 a monograph on Fink’s work, Out of the Ordinary, was published, with text by Eleanor Heartney. In 1983 Fink met the collector John Powers, who remained a strong supporter of his work until his death in 1999. Fink’s work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hara Museum, Tokyo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, among many others. Fink currently divides his time between Boston and Rockport, Massachusetts. He was included in the show The Expressive Voice: Selections from the Permanent Collection at the Danforth Museum of Art. An exhibition of Boston Expressionism, a school that embraced a distinctive blend of visionary painting, dark humor, religious mysticism, and social commentary. Historical roots of this movement can be traced to European Symbolism and German Expressionism, but artists living and working in the Boston area from the 1930’s through the 1950’s, were particularly inspired by Chaim Soutine and Max Beckmann. Artists included; Aaron Fink, Bernard Chaet, David Aronson, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Hyman Bloom, Jack Levine, Jackson Pollock, Jason Berger, Karl Zerbe, Lawrence Kupferman, Michael Mazur, Sigmund Abeles and Willem de Kooning. He was included in the show 40 Years of Printmaking: From the Center Street Studio Archives, along other great figural artists Gabor Peterdi, John Walker, Lester Johnson and Nell Blaine. S E L E C T E D C O L L E C T I O N S Art Institute of Chicago Bank of America Boston Public Library Bouwfonds Nederlandse Gemeenten, The Netherlands Brooklyn Museum of Art Castelli Collection, New York Chase Manhattan Bank Chemical Bank Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, CT Citizens Bank, Boston Coopers & Lybrand Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA Danish House of Parliament Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park Lincoln, MA Farnsworth Museum, Maine Fidelity Investments, Boston Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA G.E. Corporation Goldman Sachs & Company IBM, New York Indianapolis Museum of Art Library of Congress Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Museum of Modern Art, New York National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC New York Public Library Philadelphia Museum of Art Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine United States Department of State University of Massachusetts, Amherst Awards Residency, Anderson Ranch, Snowmass, CO, 1998, 1996 National Endowment for the Arts, 1987, 1982 Artist Fellowship, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1984 American Academy in Rome, Prix de Rome – Alternate in Painting, 1979 Yale University, Ford Foundation Special Project Grant, Fall 1979 Skowhegan Scholarship Award, conferred by the Maryland Institute College of Art, Spring 1976 SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Contemporary Responses to Modernism: A New England Perspective, University of Southern Maine Color and Line: Expressive Tradition in Boston, Endicott College, Beverly, MA, Beautiful Decay, Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, MA MICA Then and Now, Ethan Cohen Gallery, Beacon, NY Bon Appetit, Concord Art Association Celebrating Ten Years, Galerie D’Avignon, Montreal, Canada New England Impressions: Exploring the Woodcut, Concord Art, Concord, MA Go Figure: The Figure in Contemporary Art – A Response to Art History, Painting in Boston: 1950-2000, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA Working Sources: The Painter and the Photographic Image, Alpha Gallery, Boston, MA The Unique Print: Six Innovative Approaches to the Monotype, Starr Gallery, Newton, MA Selections from Atelier Mourlot, Hankyu Department Store, Tokyo, Japan Yale Collects Yale, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1993 70’s and 80’s: Printmaking Now, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1986-1987 Skowhegan Alumni, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, Public and Private: American Prints Today, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Contemporary Miami Collectors, Metropolitan Museum, Coral Gables, FL, 1984 The American Artist as Printmaker, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, 1983-84 Jon Abbott, Aaron Fink, Tom Lieber, Chris Wool...

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