Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to announce Nicholas Krushenick: Nine Paintings, an exhibition of paintings at 545 West 20th Street. Opening on Thursday, November 17, 2016, the exhibition is the artist’s first since his recent full-career retrospective, Nicholas Krushenick: Electric Soup (2015, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery). The exhibition will coincide with the release of a new 300-page monograph on the artist, featuring contributions by Harry Cooper and Barry Schwabsky, among others.
The exhibition includes nine signature acrylic on canvas paintings by Krushenick made between 1964 and 1971. During this period, the artist developed a distinct style that straddled the lines between Op, Pop, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Color Field painting. Juxtaposing broad black lines with flat Liquitex colors, he created bold, energetic abstractions that combined the graphic clarity of Pop with nonfigurative shapes and forms. For Krushenick, this unclassifiable status was ideal, as he once remarked: “They don’t know where to place me. Like I’m out in left field all by myself. And that’s just where I want to stay.”
Born in The Bronx, New York, Nicholas Krushenick (1929–1999) 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 Clark, 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). 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 Fine Arts, Boston, 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: Nine Paintings will be on view at Garth Greenan Gallery, 545 West 20th Street (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues), through Saturday, January 7, 2017. 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 info@garthgreenan.com.
