Gitterman Gallery

Gitterman Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of early work (1989-1997), from the secondary market, by the Guatemalan artist Luis González Palma (b. 1957). During his early career, Luis González Palma made portraits of Guatemalan people of Mayan or mixed Mayan descent to honor their heritage and bring attention to the discrimination and exclusion they faced. In the process, he gained a greater understanding of his own mestizo ancestry. González Palma explains that “…having lived in a country ravaged by more than thirty years of armed conflict…[t]he subject of fear, loneliness, emptiness and absence are deeply embedded in my work.” (see interview with Alasdair Forester) González Palma uses Christian iconography as well as social and cultural symbolism to create his own lexicon which alludes to universal themes of life and death, fate, spirituality, and mysticism. Through the poignant gaze of his subjects, especially present in these works, González Palma engages the viewer as he honors Mayan identity and acknowledges the complex social history of Guatemala. He also implies that this is one history of many in which humans trespass against their fellow humans. Though González Palma photographed with black and white film and printed these images as gelatin silver prints, he used various additional processes and techniques including toning, collage, and painting with bitumen and asphaltum. Some are collaged with red ribbons to symbolize a bloodline; others have pages from biblical texts. Some have handling marks, and sometimes scratches, cuts and folds. The collage and handwork emphasize the physical dimension of each piece. They are not pristine photographic prints that suture us into a specific narrative but rather objects with textures from human touch that engage us as poetic evidence.

I am always on the lookout for art that will contribute to my understanding, art that will broaden my perspective or make me feel a sense of connection. Most importantly, it needs to be distinctive enough that I want to experience it again. The exhibition includes a selection of recent additions to the gallery inventory, mostly from my trip to Paris this summer. They are a diverse group and made in the 1920s through 1960s, yet all were created with an avant-garde style, ranging from Modernism to Surrealism to abstraction to conceptual portraiture. It is fascinating to see how well these works from periods gone by hold up and speak to a contemporary perspective. They were created by artists, some heralded, some lesser known, who were adding their own original expression to an ongoing discourse. Artists included are: Laure Albin-Guillot, Pierre Boucher, Émeric Feher, Raymond Journeaux, Francois Kollar, Helmar Lerski, Daniel Masclet, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Jean Moral, Jean Painlevé, Roger Parry, Jaroslav Rossler, Frederick Sommer, and Raoul Ubac.

Gitterman Gallery proudly presents Jackie Robinson and the Color Line, an exhibition of the collection of Paul Reiferson, which uses photographs and artifacts to vividly narrate the story of baseball’s journey toward integration. Jackie Robinson, a trailblazing figure in civil rights, shattered baseball’s color line when Martin Luther King, Jr. was still in college, earning praise from King as “a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.” The exhibition frames Robinson’s odyssey within a larger one that had begun sixty years earlier, when men like Fleet and Weldy Walker, Sol White, Robert Higgins, and Javan Emory played for integrated teams in the late 19th century.