George Nama

Whistle lino-cut from George Nama suite Tight Rope 1974

1974

George Nama (b. 1939 - ) is an American artist. Nama claims that all his images, whether drawings, etchings or sculptures, are figurative. If they don’t show something that really exists, his configurations “might exist”. Nama’s city of his birth, Homestead, Pennsylvania played a major role in his artistic vocabulary and imagery created in the early 1960’s. Industrial and rugged and largely void of color, Nama recreated familiar city vistas in a rich palette of blacks and grays. Using casein paint, oil sticks, watercolors and inks Nama also masterfully reproduced interiors of his mother’s living room, and his grandmother’s kitchen. Some of the later works, his openly expressionistic sketches of trees, fast and precise, figures and country landscapes point to his transition towards abstraction. Already involved with poets and writers since the early 1960s, Nama collaborated in 1976 with his friend, the French poet and art historian Yves Bonnefoy, on artist’s books. This in turn fostered a series of artist’s books and exhibitions with Alfred Brendel and Charles Simic. During his long career, Nama has been represented in numerous important exhibitions, galleries, and public collections, such as The Morgan Library, the Boston Athenæum, The Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the Carnegie Institute. He was recently included in the distinguished international art fairs at Maastricht and the Salon du Dessin in Paris.