Twenty Drawings
Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Suzan Frecon, Alex Katz, Agnes Martin, Malcolm Morley, David Rabinowitch, Jan Schoonhoven, Philip Taaffe
We are pleased to present "Twenty Drawings," a selection of works on paper by nine artists spanning the years 1947 to 2007. Exemplifying the possibilities that drawings can afford from the figurative to the abstract and the spaces between, this online exhibition surveys creativity in the medium with the use of ink, pastel, watercolor, pencil, crayon, or oil on paper. This continues the gallery's ongoing interest in drawing that began in 1997 with the exhibition "Drawing a Line and Crossing It."
“I know that when I finish a drawing my anxiety level decreases. The realistic drawings are a way of pinning down an idea. I don't want to lose it. With the abstract drawings, when I'm feeling loose, I can slip into the unconscious.”
— Louise Bourgeois
"Drawings are thought feathers, they are ideas that I seize in mid-flight and put down on paper.”
— Louise Bourgeois
“A photograph to me is always a reminder of how the person was on a certain day in that certain light fixed. When I look at a watercolor of that same person, it seems to me alive, more open than a photograph.”
— Francesco Clemente
“I have never thought in terms of abstraction or figuration. I have always thought in terms of fluidity and fracture. My work is born out of a proliferation of designs."
— Francesco Clemente
“Watercolors are about fluidity and the experience of male versus female is about fluidity. It’s a simple encounter – watercolors, man, woman, and the relentless desire of life to live.”
— Francesco Clemente
“Composition works with color, with surface, and with light to create an abstract visual reality that I wish to exist solely on its strength as art….There is no need for the embellishment of ‘story.’”
— Suzan Frecon
"I find watercolor works best when I’m more focused on doing something specific with it. I often do watercolors from the large paintings."
— Suzan Frecon
“Landscape, architecture, human beings, and their consciousness: it is all there, but it’s not a depiction.”
— Suzan Frecon
"A sketch is very direct. It is working empirically, inside of an idea."
— Alex Katz
"I spend most of my time drawing. I spend far more time doing that than the larger paintings. It’s about getting the drawing and the logic right. Once you transfer that to the canvas for the painting, what you see is what’s there."
— Alex Katz
“When I think of art, I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is in the mind, not in the eye. In our minds, we have an awareness of perfection that leads us on.”
— Agnes Martin
“I really started painting watercolors when I was in jail, and I got very adept at it. And then the first time I went to art school, oil paint was introduced. Art was introduced. So, watercolors were shunted to the side. Much later on, I broke away from the photo-realist connection. Once I’d worked that out, I saw the possibilities of, ‘By jove! I’m a very good watercolor painter. Why don’t I make my oil paintings from my own images? I don’t need anybody else’s images now.’”
— Malcolm Morley
“The drawings referring to external things were begun in 1967. I had the idea then that sculpture could be looked upon as a species synthetic of other arts (like music or architecture) and nature. I suppose I used this tripartite division partly as a pretext to draw things I wanted to contact.”
— David Rabinowitch
“The construction of art determines itself as a beginning. It’s not dependent on sequential narrative content.”
— David Rabinowitch
“Each finalized diagram “contains,” imaginatively, a total range of attributes experienced in time, and space. The plans that I preserved are each the culmination of a process.”
— David Rabinowitch
“The most important thing in the development of the artistic creation of our century is the growing need for the representation of the essential through pure means. The essential takes shape most clearly in forms which are generally valid, forms which in themselves are possibilities of contemplation for the human soul.”
— Jan Schoonhoven
“I want to make it completely intangible. There should no longer be a single thing from tangible reality.”
— Jan Schoonhoven
"What I am doing, essentially is subjecting this material to my memory of art, and to my artistic desire. By imposing this new order of experience, I seek to place the known once again into a category of the unexplained.”
— Philip Taaffe
“I love delving into the past, but I am telling a brand-new story. I’m not trying to make some nostalgic thing—I’m trying to shape a future and give the world hope. We need to move forward.”
— Philip Taaffe
"Decoration in this folk sense is a kind of culturalized representation of nature. I primarily want to feel the living reality of these elements, and to respond to them in a personal way by making a composition that allows these other voices to speak again in a way that I’ve understood and responded to.”
— Philip Taaffe
*All works are subject to availability; all prices are subject to change.
© 2022 Blumarts, Inc.