Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to announce Nicholas Krushenick: Early Paintings, an exhibition of paintings, collages, and drawings at 529 West 20th Street. Opening on September 4, 2014, the exhibition is the artist's first since 2011. Nine of Krushenick's brilliantly colored, abstract paintings will be on view, as well as a selection of collages and preparatory drawings, many of which have never before been exhibited. The exhibition will open in advance of the artist's highly anticipated, full-career retrospective, Nicholas Krushenick: Electric Soup (2015, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College).
The exhibition offers a detailed view of Krushenick's work from 1961 to 1963—the period of time during which the artist first developed his signature “pop abstract” style. The loose geometries and web-like forms of works such as Sterling Moss at the Esses (1962), Rousseau Giving Love and Lions (1962), and Turn Back Columbus (1963) demonstrate Krushenick's deliberate caricature of Abstract Expressionist “drips” or “skeins” into what more closely resemble details from cartoons—like Superman's hair follicles, as critic Robert Rosenblum once described. A special section of the exhibition will be devoted to what Krushenick considered his first “mature” painting, Untitled (1961). Although small in scale, the artist worked on it intensely, creating dozens of drawings in order to perfect the composition.
Born in The Bronx, New York in 1929, Nicholas Krushenick studied painting at the Art Students League and the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. After completing his training, Krushenick designed window displays and worked in the Framing Department of the Museum of Modern Art. From 1957 to 1962, the artist, along with his brother John, operated the now legendary Brata Gallery in Manhattan's East Village. Brata displayed the works of many of the foremost artists of the day, including, among others: Ronald Bladen, Ed Clarke, Al Held, Yayoi Kusama, and George Sugarman.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Krushenick had solo exhibitions at many of the most influential and prestigious galleries, including: Graham Gallery (1958, 1962, 1964, New York), Fischbach Gallery (1965, New York), Galerie Sonnabend (1967, Paris), Galerie Ziegler (1969, Zürich), Galerie Beyeler (1971, Basel), and The Pace Gallery (1967, 1969, 1972, New York). During this period, his work also figured prominently in many landmark museum exhibitions, such as Post Painterly Abstraction (1964, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Vormen van de Kleur (1964, Stedelijk Museum), Systemic Painting (1965, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), and Documenta 4 (1968, Fredericianum), among others. In 1968, the Walker Art Center mounted a retrospective exhibition of Krushenick's work. His first European retrospective came four years later, in 1972, at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hannover, Germany.
Krushenick's work is featured in the collections of over sixty major museums, including: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Empire State Art Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Walker Art Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to represent The Estate of Nicholas Krushenick.
Nicholas Krushenick: Early Paintings will be on view at Garth Greenan Gallery, 529 West 20th Street (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues), through Saturday, October 11, 2014. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. For more information, please contact Garth Greenan at (212) 929-1351, or email garth@garthgreenan.com.
