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Installation Views

Mid-Century Abstraction

Press Release

Mid-Century Abstraction
May 1 – June 2, 2018

Richard Gray Gallery
1018 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10075

Richard Gray Gallery is pleased to announce Mid-Century Abstraction, an exhibition spotlighting work by Abstract painters in the late 1940s through the early 1960s.The gallery presents work by Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, and Hedda Sterne alongside notable paintings by Bradley Walker Tomlin, William Baziotes, and Richard Pousette-Dart.

The exhibition examines the post-war artistic vanguard in New York. Each artist cultivated their own personal influences to achieve a clear individual style, all rejecting overt representational form in favor of an international pictorial language of abstraction that to this day expresses strong emotional content. As Hedda Sterne described, “[New York was] like a gigantic carousel in continuous motion – on many levels – lines approaching swiftly and curving back again forming an intricate ballet of reflections and sounds.” Many of the artists included in Mid-Century Abstraction showed at legendary galleries such as Betty Parsons and Tibor de Nagy at a time when New York City was becoming the epicenter of the avant-garde art world. In conversation with one another, the work in this exhibition vibrantly communicates this period of immense artistic exploration and growth.

Featured Works

Hedda Sterne (1910 - 2011), Road #12, c. 1957
Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899 - 1953), Number 10, 1949
William Baziotes (1912 - 1963), Egyptian, 1960-61
Grace Hartigan (1922 - 2008), White, 1951