Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is proud to present "Richmond Barthé: A New Day Is Coming," a solo exhibition of sixteen sculptures by the Harlem Renaissance master Richmond Barthé (1901–1989) curated with renowned artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien (b.1960). The exhibition will survey the most productive decades of Barthé’s career, from 1929 to 1966, with an emphasis on the works of the 1930s and 1940s that established him as a foremost sculptor of his era. "A New Day Is Coming" also debuts a new film by Julien, which he describes as an “archival meditation” on Barthé and his work composed of historical documentary footage discovered during research for Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die) (2022), an immersive, five-screen film installation commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. A quintessential artist of the Harlem Renaissance, Barthé created a pioneering body of sculpture that elevates the Black subject. Much of Barthé’s oeuvre reflects his penchant for allegory and an embrace of classical realism that rendered him a stylistic outlier of his generation. He consistently sought to convey a universal sense of heroism reflective of the African diaspora through his sculpture, producing a refined body of bust-length portraits and full-length figures portraying a variety of individuals, including historical luminaries, archetypal, religious, and mythological subjects, and contemporary celebrities from the dance and theater worlds. While the Black male figure was a prevailing focus of Barthé’s practice, a consideration of his larger oeuvre reveals a career-long investment in depicting subjects of both genders with authority and empathy. Often working from memory, Barthé used his superior technical ability to imbue his sculptures with a sense of movement and emotional interiority, affectingly capturing the spiritual essence of his subjects. "A New Day Is Coming" will feature several of the artist’s most celebrated sculptures, such as "Feral Benga" (1935), which portrays Parisian cabaret dancer François “Feral” Benga; "Julius" (c.1940), a portrait of Julius Perkins, Jr., a child actor and musician active in Harlem; "Stevedore" (1937) a heroic representation of the working everyman; "Black Madonna" (1961), an iconographic interpretation of the Holy Mother as a Black woman; and "The Negro Looks Ahead" (1944), a symbolic rendition of Black fortitude.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to return to Frieze LA with an exhibition of major paintings and works on paper by Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis, and Alma Thomas. Of the same generation and active in Paris, New York, and Washington, DC, respectively, these painters pioneered some of the most advanced approaches to abstraction of the twentieth century. Works on view at Booth A16 will focus on the most productive decades of the artists’ careers—the 1950s through the 1970s—presenting an illuminating survey of an unparalleled era in American painting. Like their abstract expressionist contemporaries, Delaney, Lewis, and Thomas privileged the individual painterly gesture as a means to conveying an essential truth, each forging visionary approaches to non-objective painting predicated upon the authenticity of the brushstroke. All three artists were resolute in their commitment to abstraction throughout their careers despite inadequate critical and institutional attention as well as pressure from certain circles within their own community to create representational images that directly addressed the Black experience. As art historian Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims writes, these artists’ approaches to painting were grounded in their distinct but intersecting theories of abstraction: “For Delaney, abstraction’s significance came through in the healing properties of color; for Lewis, abstraction articulated the interaction of art and social events; and for Thomas, its critical aspect consisted of post-Post-Impressionist chromatic evocations of time, place, sensibility and mood.”

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present "Hannelore Baron," a solo exhibition of collages, box assemblages, and monoprints dating from 1970 to 1986. Focusing on the artist’s singular visual language of signs, symbols, and ciphers, Hannelore Baron will provide an in-depth look at her personal iconography and material sensibility. A dedicated display featuring a selection of the unique cutouts the artist used to make the monoprints integral to her compositional approach will provide a special insight into her technical processes. Presenting thirty-eight collages, fifteen box assemblages, and three monoprints, "Hannelore Baron" will be accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue publishing new scholarship by art historian, professor, and curator Anne Koval. Evocative of the textual remnants of an ancient, lost language, urban graffiti, or children’s drawings, Baron’s poetic vocabulary of formal motifs and inscriptions imbue her collages and assemblages with a sense of enigma. As Ingrid Schaffner, curator of Baron’s 2002 retrospective organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), observed, “Each of her intimately scaled works appears vast, filled with the quiet energy and visionary power of medieval manuscript illuminations. Indeed, Baron’s art might be considered a form of illumination for modern times, aptly rendered in the language of abstraction.”[1] Many of Baron’s repeated symbols—such as stars, flowers, birds, windows, and bound figures—resemble a form of pictographic writing, a quality that is complicated by her frequent application of linework that possesses the qualities of script but denies any attempt to decipher it. This ambiguity, she explained, was intentional: “The writing that covers much of the surface is deliberately illegible because it represents all the words that have been written to tell the unimaginable and explain the unexplainable.”[2] [1] Ingrid Schaffner, Hannelore Baron: Works from 1969 to 1987, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service, 2001) p. 1. [2] Hannelore Baron, undated Artist’s Statement, Gallery Schlesinger.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce "The Art of Assemblage," a group exhibition organized in homage to The Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 1961 exhibition of the same name curated by William C. Seitz. Presenting a selection of works that mirror and expound upon Seitz’s medium-defining exhibition, the gallery’s iteration of "The Art of Assemblage" demonstrates the incisiveness and prescience of his thesis. Featured artists include Mary Bauermeister, Lee Bontecou, Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Arthur Dove, Melvin Edwards, Claire Falkenstein, Ilse Getz, Nancy Grossman, Edward Kienholz, Yayoi Kusama, Conrad Marca-Relli, Louise Nevelson, Alfonso Ossorio, Betye Saar, Lucas Samaras, Richard Stankiewicz, Lenore Tawney, Laurence Vail, and Vaclav Vytlacil. "The Art of Assemblage" is on view concurrently with the solo exhibition "Hannelore Baron."

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to participate in FOG Design+Art 2024 with a group exhibition celebrating the generative influence Eastern thought and aesthetics had on American art of the last hundred years. Featured artists include Leo Amino, Ruth Asawa, Mary Bauermeister, William Baziotes, Harry Bertoia, Lee Bontecou, Joseph Cornell, Harold Cousins, Jay DeFeo, Beauford Delaney, Claire Falkenstein, Morris Graves, Lee Krasner, Yayoi Kusama, Ibram Lassaw, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Alfonso Ossorio, Agnes Pelton, Richard Pousette-Dart, Betye Saar, Sonja Sekula, Toshiko Takaezu, Lenore Tawney, Alma Thomas, Mark Tobey, Charmion von Wiegand, and William T. Williams. In complement to a rich selection of painting, sculpture, collage, ceramics, and works on paper dating from 1938 to 2019, Booth 211 also features furniture by George Nakashima (1905–1990), one of the leading design innovators of the twentieth century and a father of the American craft movement. Over the last thirty-five years, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery has organized numerous group and solo exhibitions that have focused on the influence of Eastern thought and traditions on American artists. The gallery’s dedication to exposing audiences to this aspect of American modernism stems not only from its historical under-recognition, but also from the profundity of its effect, which is aptly summarized by Guggenheim curator Alexandra Munroe in her text for the landmark 2009 exhibition The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989: “What emerges [from studying the influence of Eastern thought in the U.S.] is a history of how artists working in America selectively adapted Eastern ideas and art forms to create not only new styles of art, but more importantly, a new theoretical definition of the contemplative experience and self-transformative role of art itself. The Asian dimension also gave a universalist logic to the modern and neo-avant-garde premise that art, life, and consciousness are interpenetrating realities unified by an existential concreteness.”

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is proud to participate in the Kabinett sector of Art Basel Miami Beach with an installation of twenty-four small-scale sculptures by Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997) from her celebrated "Fusion" series. Drawn from the holdings of the artist’s Foundation, the vast majority of the intimately sized works on view have never been publicly exhibited. An interdisciplinary artist whose career spanned seven decades, Claire Falkenstein does not fit easily into any school or movement. Comprising a wide variety of mediums—wood, ceramic, and metal sculpting, painting, prints, jewelry, and more—the "Fusions" are perhaps the greatest testament to her artistic ingenuity, as they encompass a seemingly infinite array of shapes, scales, and palettes. Composed of welded metal and melted glass, the "Fusions" embody the dichotomies that exemplify the artist’s practice as a whole: solid and fluid, opaque and translucent, durable and fragile.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition of American masterworks representative of the gallery’s historically grounded and culturally diverse program. Spanning eight decades, the majority of works on view are standout examples of midcentury American painting, sculpture, and works on paper by the artists that have been the backbone of the gallery’s program since its founding in 1989. Featured artists include Charles Alston, Benny Andrews, Ruth Asawa, Milton Avery, Hannelore Baron, Richmond Barthé, Mary Bauermeister, Romare Bearden, Harry Bertoia, Joseph Cornell, Harold Cousins, Sam Gilliam, Michael Goldberg, Nancy Grossman, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Yayoi Kusama, Alfred Leslie, Norman Lewis, Conrad Marca-Relli, Alice Neel, Alfonso Ossorio, Irene Rice Pereira, Milton Resnick, Betye Saar, Alma Thomas, Bob Thompson, Mark Tobey, Charles White, Jack Whitten, Charmion von Wiegand, William T. Williams, and Hale Woodruff. Organized into sections exploring a range of disciplines and stylistic approaches, Booth A17 includes a Kabinett installation featuring a stunning selection of fifty small-scale works by Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997) from her celebrated "Fusion" series of abstract metal and glass sculptures. Drawn from the holdings of the artist’s Foundation, the vast majority of the delicate, intimately sized works on view in Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s presentation have never been publicly exhibited.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present “Mary Bauermeister: Fuck the System,” a memorial exhibition organized in collaboration with the artist’s family. The first solo exhibition to open since her passing in March 2023, “Fuck the System” surveys the diverse, interdisciplinary oeuvre Bauermeister executed across seven decades. Taking its title from an assemblage executed at a key turning point in Bauermeister’s career, “Fuck the System” features works from each of her major series, including examples of rarely exhibited pastels, light boxes, and easel sculptures. A child of totalitarian Germany who rejected the Constructivist mandates of the country’s postwar schools of art and design, Bauermeister’s art and worldview were explicitly anti-tradition from the beginning of her career. The artist’s fascination with paradox and its potential to reveal fissures in the foundations of entrenched conventions is apparent throughout her work, which both embodies and challenges contradictory binaries, often vacillating between uncontrolled apostrophe and methodical structure, Zen-like serenity and impassioned rage, introversion and extroversion. This fluid approach to thinking about art manifests in a variety of ways; many of her works deal with the nature of optical and ideological perception while approaching the trappings of established hegemonies and contemporary trends with equal skepticism.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to participate in The Art Show 2023 with "Charmion von Wiegand," a solo exhibition of collages, paintings, and works on paper dating from 1945 to 1970, comprising a vibrant survey of the artist’s most productive years. The exhibition constitutes an abridged version of the Kunstmuseum Basel’s recent retrospective "Charmion von Wiegand" (March 24–August 8, 2023), to which the gallery loaned sixteen works. On view at Booth A4, "Charmion von Wiegand" charts the evolution of the artist’s mature style as she expanded her visual language to incorporate a thoroughly cosmopolitan range of influences. An important translator and protégé of Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), Charmion von Wiegand (1896–1983) developed her own approach to Neoplasticism that carried on the Dutch artist’s investigation of Theosophical principles while incorporating concepts, designs, and symbols from the Eastern religions she studied and eventually adopted as her personal spiritual guides. Also influenced by the automatist practices of the Surrealists and the densely urban environs of Manhattan, von Wiegand’s collages and biomorphic abstractions of the 1940s soon segued into a more overt embrace of Mondrian’s Neoplastic grid. She continued in this vein through the 1950s and gradually began to incorporate motifs and compositional processes drawn from Taoist doctrines. Throughout the 1960s, the artist’s intellectual interest and personal involvement in Eastern philosophies and religions, especially Tibetan Buddhism, inspired her to compose exacting amalgamations of stupas, mandalas, hexagrams, prismatic grids, and more.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present "Norman Lewis: Give Me Wings To Fly," the gallery’s sixth solo exhibition dedicated to the artist. A vital member of the first generation of abstract expressionists, Norman Lewis (1909–1979) executed hundreds of works on paper throughout his career, considering the medium to be of equal importance to his pursuits on canvas or board. "Give Me Wings To Fly" features sixty works dating from 1935 through 1978 that collectively trace the major developments of the artist’s visual language and reveal his immense range in subject, technique, and style. The exhibition will be accompanied by an online catalogue publishing new scholarship by art historian and Norman Lewis expert Ruth Fine. Now an independent curator, Fine retired from her position as a curator at The National Gallery of Art in 2012, after four decades at the museum. In 2015, she curated the critically acclaimed traveling exhibition Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, organized for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Borrowing its title from a 1954 ink drawing included in the exhibition, "Give Me Wings To Fly" constitutes a succinct microcosm of Lewis’ body of works on paper, highlighting standout compositions from each phase of the artist’s career. The staggering range of Lewis’ technical and stylistic experimentation is perhaps most evident in his paper oeuvre, which ranges from elegantly spare explorations of calligraphic linework to densely atmospheric, allover compositions executed in oil, gouache, and pastel. Lewis often used his works on paper as arenas for the exploration of new compositional processes and formal vocabularies, rendering this expansive body of work a vital key to understanding his overarching artistic concerns.

For Frieze New York 2023, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present "1973," a group exhibition featuring works created in the months leading up to and immediately following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision of January 22, 1973 in the case of "Roe v. Wade." Widely understood as a major victory for the second-wave feminist movement that was then at its peak, the ruling was a watershed moment for the nation and many artists were commensurately inspired by the empowerment it granted. Fifty years hence, the revocation of the rights conferred by "Roe" has revealed the disproportionate measure of power wielded by an unelected group of judges acting on behalf of the minority of Americans who oppose such freedoms. Coming into artistic maturity in an era of overt social and institutional sexism, the artists exhibited in "1973" levied their cultural cachet and risked the future of their careers to resist the dominant social and political powers in a variety of ways. Foregrounding themes of physical compromise, convalescence, and psychic resilience, Booth D11 features an interdisciplinary selection of works by a diverse roster of artists including Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017), Hannelore Baron (1926–1987), Mary Bauermeister (1934–2023), Lee Bontecou (1931–2022), Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), Barbara Chase-Riboud (b.1934), Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997), Nancy Grossman (b.1940), Louise Nevelson (1899–1988), Betye Saar (b.1926), Alma Thomas (1891–1987), and Claire Zeisler (1903–1991). Ranging from the intimately personal to the grandly universal, 1973 conveys a tangible sense of the manifold materials, processes, and iconographies engaged by this revolutionary generation of artists. Though not all of the works in the presentation are overtly political, an undercurrent of feminist thought, and political struggle is evident in each artists’ oeuvre and the exhibition as a whole. Highlights of "1973" include a standout example from Grossman’s celebrated series of leather-covered head sculptures, "Black" (1973–74). Despite their masculine features, Grossman refers to these sculptures as self-portraits, as they convey the rage she felt in witnessing the violence sparked by the political and social movements of late 1960s, when she created the first works in the series. Works such as "Black" further embody Grossman’s conception of the relationship between the individual and society, evoking themes of disenfranchisement and suppression. The deliberate confusion of attributes traditionally coded as masculine or feminine was a common technique among the second-generation feminists, often employed to expose the socially constructed origins of such categorizations. Similarly, Mary Bauermeister’s "Durchwanderung (Nature)" (1973–74) is a commentary on the gendered preconceptions that often require women artists to neutralize their femininity in order to be taken seriously in an art world dominated by men. Comprising a sprawling installation of wooden spheres, pencils, and one of Bauermeister’s famed lens boxes, the work opens onto a multitude of implications pertaining to the nature of visual perception, framing, and traditional symbols of biological sex (i.e., eggs and phalluses).

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce "Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy," a solo exhibition and career survey. Presenting major works from each year of the artist’s mature practice, 1958–1966, the exhibition demonstrates the extreme polarities of Thompson’s oeuvre, in which a broad range of art historical references converge through his portrayal of subjects both deeply personal and heroically universal. In addition to over fifteen paintings and a selection of works on paper, "Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy" includes a special installation of archival photographs and sketchbooks, offering an in-depth look at Thompson’s artistic process. In a tragically brief life, Bob Thompson (1937–1966) created a complex body of work structured by his own symbolic lexicon, fauvist palettes, and compositional devices drawn from the European Old Master tradition. As inspired by the improvisational riffs of jazz as he was by the formal devices of Fra Angelico, Poussin, and Tintoretto, Thompson’s viscerally executed paintings conjure a psychedelic allegory of his own experience. During the years he lived in New York, the artist was deeply immersed in the avant-garde scene of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, participating in Fluxus happenings, befriending poets Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), and frequenting legendary jazz clubs, especially the Five Spot and Slugs’ Saloon.

Following the success of our inaugural presentation at Frieze LA last year, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to return to Los Angeles with a solo exhibition of works by Bob Thompson (1937–1966) organized in complement to the recent traveling retrospective "Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine," which concluded its nationwide tour at UCLA’s Hammer Museum in January. The gallery’s presentation at Frieze LA 2023 constitutes Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s fifth show on Thompson and our first solo exhibition of the artist since acquiring the estate in 2019. The presentation at Frieze serves as a preview to an upcoming solo exhibition of the artist’s work that will be on view from April 1–May 26, 2023, in the gallery’s ground floor space in Chelsea. Sixteen major paintings and over thirty works on paper are on view at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s Booth A15, constituting a succinct, vibrant survey of Thompson’s visionary oeuvre. The works on view were executed between 1958, the year the artist moved to New York, and 1966, the year he passed away in Rome, providing a compelling synopsis of Thompson’s career. Both our Frieze presentation and the upcoming gallery show include works that have not been publicly exhibited in decades as well as several works that appeared in "This House is Mine."

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce "Harold Cousins: Forms of Empty Space," the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work in the United States in fifteen years. Comprising thirty metal sculptures executed between 1951 and 1975 as well as a group of related works on paper, the presentation is the gallery’s first exhibition dedicated to Harold Cousins (1916–1992) since taking on representation of the artist’s estate in 2020. Beginning with his first mature metal sculptures, "Harold Cousins: Forms of Empty Space" charts the formation and evolution of Cousins’ major sculpture series, including his "forests," "drawings in space," "Gothic cathedrals," and "plaiton" works. The inciting event for Cousins’ turn to metalworking occurred a few years after he moved from New York to Paris in 1949, where he joined a vibrant scene of fellow expatriate artists that included Ed Clarke, Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry, Loïs Mailou Jones, and others drawn to the exceptional stylistic freedom enjoyed by the city’s avant-garde. In Paris, Cousins was one of about ten students accepted to study sculpture at Ossip Zadkine’s studio, where he absorbed the irascible modernist’s lessons on sculpting in the round. However, it was another student at Zadkine’s studio, the American sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri, who would have a formative impact on Cousins’ early artistic development, when he taught Cousins how to weld with an oxyacetylene torch. Eager to learn more about metalworking, Cousins studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière from 1951–52; it was also around this time that Cousins discovered the work of Spanish metalsmith-turned-sculptor Julio González, an artist he came to revere as one of the greats of his era and whose work he cited as a primary source of inspiration for his initial foray into direct-metal sculpting.

Following the success of our inaugural presentation at FOG Design+Art last year, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to return to San Francisco with "Claire Falkenstein & Postwar Abstraction," a celebration of American artists working in abstraction in the middle decades of the 20th century centered on the career of Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997). Dating from 1951–1974, Falkenstein’s works are contextualized by a rich selection of works on paper from the same period by Lee Bontecou, Elaine de Kooning, Jay DeFeo, Beauford Delaney, Michael Goldberg, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Alfred Leslie, Norman Lewis, Conrad Marca-Relli, Alfonso Ossorio, Jackson Pollock, Alma Thomas, and Mark Tobey. A pioneering modernist known for her radical material experimentation, Claire Falkenstein is remembered for her prolific oeuvre that comprises sculptures in ceramic, wood, glass, and a variety of metals, as well as a strong body of paintings, works on paper, and prints. Falkenstein’s art was inspired by her diverse interests, which included theoretical physics, mathematics, and the natural world, often embodying a key concept that undergirds much of her work, namely the tangible relationship between stasis and movement, or, “structure and flow,” as she phrased it. Claire Falkenstein & Postwar Abstraction includes sixteen standout Falkenstein sculptures from each major series of her career, as well as nine works on paper and two canvases from her "Moving Point" series. Comprising layered, dynamic fields of rhythmic marks that coalesce into a larger form, Falkenstein’s "Moving Point" works generate the impression of swarming action. Continuums and aggregate structures are prevailing concepts in Falkenstein’s works—both two- and three-dimensional—as is a reliance on improvisation during the compositional process; the resulting works impart a feeling of organic, open-ended growth and proliferation, allowing a host of interpretations related to collective movement, from the trajectory of sub-atomic particles to the swell of waves in the sea.

"Postwar Abstract Painting: 'Art is a language in itself'” features a rich selection of works by some of the most eminent artists working in abstraction in the decades following World War II. This group exhibition explores the era’s remarkable proliferation of approaches to non-representational imagery. Exemplary paintings from a range of movements as diverse as the artists themselves comprise a vibrant survey of abstract art in the United States, offering a scintillating visual conversation on the reciprocal histories of abstract art in the second half of the 20th century. The title of the exhibition is drawn from a statement by Norman Lewis (1909–1979) first published in 1950: “Art to me is the expression of unconscious experiences common to all men, which have been strained through the artist’s own peculiar associations and use of his medium. In this sense, it becomes an activity of discovery...not only for the artist but for those who view his work. Art is a language in itself, embodying purely visual symbols which cannot properly be translated into words, musical notes, or, in the case of painting, three-dimensional objects...” Featured artists include Charles Alston, Norman Bluhm, Ilya Bolotowsky, James Brooks, Giorgio Cavallon, Jay DeFeo, Beauford Delaney, Burgoyne Diller, Claire Falkenstein, Perle Fine, Fritz Glarner, Michael Goldberg, Hans Hofmann, Norman Lewis, Conrad Marca-Relli, Robert Motherwell, Alfonso Ossorio, Richard Pousette-Dart, Milton Resnick, Theodoros Stamos, Alma Thomas, Jack Tworkov, Esteban Vicente, William T. Williams, and Hale Woodruff.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to participate in The Art Show 2022 with "Alfonso Ossorio: Congregations," a solo exhibition featuring a selection of found-object assemblages executed between 1962 and 1967 by the most significant Filipino artist of the 20th century. Created between 1959 and 1990, the Congregations explore themes Alfonso Ossorio (1916–1990) addressed throughout his career, including the trauma of human gestation and birth, the specious definitions of race, and the fraught relationship between religion and sexuality—something he personally struggled with as an openly gay man profoundly devoted to Catholicism. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s presentation brings together works from the 1960s, the decade that witnessed the evolution of the Congregations, which would become Ossorio’s final body of work. The artist’s unique approach to the medium of assemblage was highly influential to subsequent generations of artists, and "Alfonso Ossorio: Congregations" provides a rare opportunity to explore some of the finest examples from the series.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to be participating in The Armory Show 2022 with a group exhibition encapsulating the gallery’s exciting and diverse program. Featuring an interdisciplinary selection of works dating from the interwar period through the present, our presentation offers a showcase of artists and movements central to the history of American art in the 20th and 21st centuries. The focus of the presentation is a wall-sized masterpiece by gallery artist William T. Williams (b.1942), "Sister Puss" (1968), which correlates to the artist’s solo exhibition at the gallery’s 19th Street space, "William T. Williams: Tension to the Edge" (September 8–November 5, 2022). Additional highlights include standout works by Benny Andrews (1930–2006), Robert Colescott (1925–2009), Joseph Cornell (1903–1972), and Agnes Pelton (1881–1961). Williams’ "Sister Puss" (titled after a family member’s nickname that references the fairytale character Puss in Boots) belongs to a body of work that constitutes the genesis of the artist’s “diamond-in-a-box” motif, which became a formal and thematic continuum in his oeuvre. Williams has referred to this form as a “stabilizing force” that structures the chaos he sought to convey within these works as a reflection of the tumultuous conditions of the era. Such works embody “place as a specific type of poetry,” in Williams’ words, offering a composite of experiences and memories both personal and collective.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery proudly presents "Tension to the Edge," its third solo exhibition featuring the work of William T. Williams (b.1942). On view from September 8 through November 5, 2022, the exhibition will focus on the artist’s large-scale abstract paintings created between 1968 and 1970 as well as a related group of works on paper from the same period. Created during an era of significant social, political, and personal turmoil, the works on view in "William T. Williams: Tension to the Edge" address the upheavals of their moment through Williams’ distinctive language of hard-edged abstraction. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a stunning selection of five wall-sized paintings, four of which have not been seen since 1969; though they were painted nearly fifty years ago, Williams’ singular treatment of form, surface, and color render these works as fresh and groundbreaking as they were at the time of their creation. “The paintings that I was doing in the late 1960s had a number of devices that I thought spoke to [the political climate of the time],” Williams states. “The paintings were contained. I never allowed forms to go off the edges—I wanted this sense of containment and suppression. …I've said from the very beginning that my work is autobiographical: it speaks to those experiences that I've had as a human being but also more specifically as a Black human being. The work has always been about that.” The paintings featured in "Tension to the Edge" constitute the genesis of the “diamond-in-a-box” motif that would become a formal and thematic continuum in the artist’s oeuvre. Williams has referred to the diamond-in-a-box device as a “stabilizing force” that structures the chaos he sought to convey within these works—a reflection of the tumultuous conditions of the era.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Summer At Its Best, a group exhibition that celebrates the halcyon days, sultry nights, and scenic vistas of our most beloved season. On view from June 24 through August 5, 2022, Summer At Its Best traces nearly a century of American painting, sculpture, and works on paper, providing visions of the season’s fleeting passions, leisurely idylls, and chromatic richness. The exhibition borrows its title from a 1968 painting by Alma Thomas included in the show that encapsulates the spirit of the presentation in both form and concept: arraying daubs of saturated, warm colors in rhythmic sequences across the canvas, Thomas masterfully captures the flitting light and vivid palette of summer’s landscape. Summer At Its Best offers an abundance of juxtapositions that reveal unexpected harmonies in the eclectic selection of works on view. Expressionistic gestures inspired by the rise and fall of the sea are the prevailing formal and thematic concerns of ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu’s Ocean’s Edge vessels from the early 1990s, as well as Beauford Delaney’s fauvist portrayal of a day spent sailing off the coast of Maine (1951) and Norman Lewis’ masterful abstraction of the sea’s upheavals, Seachange (1976). A standout example of Delaney’s swirling, allover paintings of pure light is situated in conversation with a Joseph Cornell box of the late 1950s, where an anthropomorphic sun excerpted from the compulsive collector’s library of printed matter beams down over a collage dedicated to the souvenirs of distant travelers. Other exhibition highlights include Heaven (1967) by Benny Andrews, a psychedelic scene of an otherworldly paradise that anticipates the fantastical landscape of his monumental 1975 collage painting Utopia, the sixth and final work in his landmark Bicentennial Series. Reginald Marsh’s depiction of Coney Island’s clamorous midsummer crowds presents a roiling, baroque scene of urban leisure, which is offset by more intimately-scaled seaside works by Milton Avery, James Daugherty, Dorothy Dehner, Louis Elshemius, Robert Gwathmey, and Fairfield Porter.

Nancy Grossman: My Body Meet and Greet with the Artist in Booth D10 Friday, May 20, 5-7PM Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present at Frieze New York 2022 a solo exhibition of works by Nancy Grossman (b.1940) that focuses on her oeuvre-spanning engagement with the figure in sculpture, collage, printmaking, and drawing. Nancy Grossman: My Body will trace the major developments in the artist’s treatment of the human form, which she conceives as an arena where the intricately related themes of agency, otherness, vulnerability, and identity play out in both collective and individual terms. Using the body as a touchstone, the presentation at Frieze New York will survey three decades of Grossman’s figural practice, assembling a striking group of works that complement and expound upon an exhibition of the same title currently on view at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Demonstrating the artist’s unique understanding of the figure, Grossman’s ink drawings of the early 1960s portray the body as a single, monumentally proportioned masculine form perpetually struggling against tethers both explicit and implied. Also on view will be works from Grossman’s series of dyed paper collages created throughout the 1970s, which depict men of herculean proportions in various positions of restraint. Grossman discovered that repeatedly soaking paper cut-outs in water and dye imbued the material with a weathered texture evocative of skin, especially when organized in a schema mimicking human musculature. This series was initiated in 1973, the same year Grossman began another body of works highlighted in the presentation, which feature leather-clad heads with guns strapped onto their faces; referred to as her “gunhead” series, the motif constitutes a potent format for expressing the violence humans inflict on one another, not only with literal weapons but with their words, gazes, or silences. Rounding out the presentation will be a selection of Grossman’s large-scale figure drawings from the 1970s and 80s that reveal the evolution of the artist’s masculine bodies, who exhibit increasingly colossal physiques—a trope she found ripe with allegorical possibility. Notably, the subjects of these works are uniformly anonymous, their faces obscured by hooded masks, shadows, or turned away from the viewer, augmenting the indeterminacy inherent to Grossman’s portrayal of the figure and rendering her compositions open to a variety of interpretations.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present its fifth solo exhibition featuring the work of Nancy Grossman (b.1940), which focuses on the artist’s oeuvre-spanning engagement with the figure in sculpture, collage, printmaking, painting, and drawing. Encompassing over five decades of her career, Nancy Grossman: My Body surveys the major developments in the artist’s treatment of the human form, which she conceives of as an arena in which the intricately related themes of agency, otherness, vulnerability, and identity play out in both collective and individual terms.

For its inaugural participation at Frieze Los Angeles, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (Booth D20) is pleased to present an exhibition of historical works by eight artists essential to the canon of 20th-century figurative art: Benny Andrews (1930–2006), Richmond Barthé (1901–1989), Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012), Robert Colescott (1925–2009), Beauford Delaney (1901–1979), Augusta Savage (1892–1962), Bob Thompson (1937–1966) and Charles White (1918–1979).

For its inaugural presentation at FOG Design+Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce Romare Bearden: Collage/In Context, a dual presentation of exhibitions exploring the evolution of collage practices throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Following the success of our exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Manhatta: City of Ambition, a group show featuring a broad selection of artists central to the gallery program, open now at our gallery in Chelsea. Inspired by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s avant-garde film Manhatta (1920–21) the artists featured here offer scintillating visions of urban life, exalting the struggles and triumphs of a densely-populated metropolis rebuilding itself in the wake of global catastrophe. In addition to the diverse selection of paintings, works on paper, and sculptures in the exhibition, we are screening Manhatta on a continuous loop in a dedicated alcove of the gallery.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition inspired by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s avant-garde documentary film Manhatta (1920–21) at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021. Brought together in celebration of the centennial of Manhatta’s premiere, the works on view explore themes of urbanity, industry and immigration, conjuring visions of urban life that capture the scintillating energy and soaring aspirations of a densely populated metropolis. Featuring a broad selection of artists central to the gallery program, Manhatta: City of Ambition celebrates urban centers as loci of inspiration, highlighting artworks that exalt the struggles and triumphs of life in a major city rebuilding itself in the wake of global catastrophe.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce its third solo exhibition of paintings by Beauford Delaney (American, 1901–1979), which will contextualize the artist’s highly personal portraiture practice in relation to his compelling body of non-objective abstractions.

Spanning the second half of the twentieth century through the present—beginning with a Kusama net drawing dating to 1953 and ending with a text-based Bauermeister work created in 2019—Alternative Worlds features five artists whose practices center repetitive mark-making, a deep interest in the intricacies of the natural world, and the poetic rhythm inherent to the act of artistic creation.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is delighted to participate in Frieze Viewing Room - presented online in conjunction with Frieze New York - exhibiting a selection of works on paper by leading abstractionists Barbara Chase-Riboud (b.1939), Ed Clark (1926-2019), Beauford Delaney (1901-1979), Sam Gilliam (b.1933), Norman Lewis (1909-1979), Alma Thomas (1891-1978), Jack Whitten (1939-2018), William T. Williams (b.1942) and Hale Woodruff (1900-1980). A selection from the online exhibition will be installed in our viewing room at 100 Eleventh Avenue.

Group exhibition featuring the work of Charles Alston, William Baziotes, Norman Bluhm, James Brooks, Elaine de Kooning, Jay DeFeo, Beauford Delaney, Claire Falkenstein, Sam Gilliam, Michael Goldberg, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Alfred Jensen, Yayoi Kusama, Alfred Leslie, Norman Lewis, Conrad Marca-Relli, Joan Mitchell, Alfonso Ossorio, Richard Pousette-Dart, Milton Resnick, Alma Thomas, Mark Tobey, Jack Tworkov, Charmion von Wiegand, William T. Williams and Hale Woodruff

To download the online exhibition catalogue, visit https://bit.ly/hannelorebaron. To schedule an appointment to view the exhibition at the gallery, visit https://app.artsvp.co/6f7d76. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is proud to present Hannelore Baron: Collages – a solo exhibition dedicated to the collage work of Hannelore Baron (1926-1987). This exhibition, scheduled to be “live” from January 16 to February 20, features twenty intimate and meticulously-composed collages from the 1980s. In her collage work that masterfully combines experimental printmaking techniques with found materials, Baron explores the human condition. She wrote of her work: “The thoughts and feelings that underlie the collages are those of concern with the social issues and problems of the century, as well as the precariousness of existence at any time.” Baron, who immigrated in 1941 from Germany to the United States and lived/worked in Bronx, NY, often made her art in her kitchen during the quiet and solitude of the night. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Hannelore Baron.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce our participation in OVR:20c, Art Basel’s latest online viewing room dedicated to art made between 1900 and 1999. OVR:20c will be live from October 28 to October 31; our presentation Figuring America will be online alongside 100 international galleries and on-site at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery for the duration of this virtual platform. Representing currents of 20/21 century American portraiture, Figuring America will include signature masterpieces in both painting and sculpture by Benny Andrews (1930-2006), Milton Avery (1885-1965), Richmond Barthé (1901-1989), Beauford Delaney (1901-1979), Nancy Grossman (b.1940) and Charles White (1918-1979). In times of societal upheaval, many artists have turned to representations of the figure in search of and as recognition of a collective existence—either as a personal expression or as a touchpoint for shared, life-affirming experience. In this current moment of unprecedented isolation and social reckoning, our desire is to share a story of common humanity. To schedule an appointment to view our OVR:20c exhibition at the gallery, visit https://app.artsvp.co/0c5d75

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present its third solo exhibition for Benny Andrews (American, 1930–2006), showcasing portraits—a vital and constant genre throughout the artist’s oeuvre. Scheduled to open on Saturday, September 26, 2020, Benny Andrews: Portraits, A Real Person Before the Eyes will feature 35 portraits, represented by paintings and works on paper created between 1957 and 1998. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated color catalogue with new scholarship by Jessica Bell Brown, Associate Curator for Contemporary Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art; Connie H. Choi, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem; and Kyle Williams, Director of the Andrews-Humphrey Family Foundation.

An escape to the seaside signals the arrival of summer days and the restless yearning for adventure. The sea—at once a tranquil oasis and an unpredictable temptation—has had an eternal lure, drawing in swimmers, sailors and explorers with the smell of salty air, the feel of warm sand and the sound of crashing waves. For the arrival of this most unusual July—the seventh month of the year, named for the Roman general Julius Caesar—we feature seascapes in a range of styles and mediums that capture life by the shore: one that is bustling and teeming with sea craft, boisterous crowds, beach games and graceful birds, as well as one of sublime isolation—a liminal place on the edge of the world where land meets the great expanse and unknown of the ocean. These portraits of the sea depict marine pastimes like fishing and sailing, swimming and sunbathing, as well as its inhabitants—from birds and fish to the mythic creatures of our wild imaginations. They evoke all that is unique to the coastal shoreline—from the natural: the shimmer of the sun as it reflects off ever-moving water, the early morning mist that wafts over its surface, the bite of the salty breeze, the call of seabirds on the hunt—to those sights and sounds distinguished by centuries of leisurely human pleasures: the anticipation of cool water on hot skin, the laughter elicited from a wave’s spray, the solace of a shady umbrella, the simple joy of a sandcastle, the communion of friends and family. We hope you find some beach time this summer and, as Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged, “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air’s salubrity…”[1] Going to Sea features works by Milton Avery, Leonid Berman, Joseph Cornell, James Daugherty, Louis Eilshemius, Morris Graves, Robert Gwathmey, Palmer Hayden, Hans Hofmann, William H. Johnson, Lee Krasner, Hughie Lee-Smith, Norman Lewis, Reginald Marsh, Jan Matulka, Fairfield Porter, Theodore Roszak, Charles G. Shaw, Esphyr Slobodkina and Toshiko Takaezu. 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Merlin's Song," in The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: The Modern Library, 1940), 80

New York City is our home and we are proud to be #NewYorkTough, contributing to the metropolis that for centuries has been a global hub of creativity and innovation. To honor our city, we present a selection of paintings and drawings—sixteen examples, dating from 1912 to 2007—that capture the urban environment from uptown to downtown, from east to west, and from street to sky, intimately illustrating landmarks and thoroughfares. To view our online exhibition including works by Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Max Arthur Cohn, Howard Norton Cook, Joseph Delaney, Red Grooms, Hananiah Harari, Jacob Lawrence, John Marin, Adelaide Morris, Richard Rychtarik, Paul Sample, Henry Ernest Schnakenberg, Abraham Walkowitz, Max Weber, and William T. Williams visit our website.

Hopscotch! Chess! Jump rope! Billiards! Football! Baseball! Cards! Make-believe! Hide-and-seek! All of these activities & more are part of our collective and shared American cultural experience. Now that we are spending more time at home, without the distraction of live sports, film, theater, and museums, activities of playtime have become more crucial, and more creative, than ever. We present a selection of works from the 20th century that portray familiar and celebratory moments of Americans at play.

Cut, Crumpled, Drawn, Torn, Glued, Layered, Painted, Folded, Saturated, Creased, Stained, Dyed, Scratched, Erased, Scrubbed, Printed, Stamped, Peeled... Exploring the Materiality of Paper

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery | Celebrating 30 Years Michael Rosenfeld Gallery opened its inaugural exhibition on December 10, 1989. In celebration of this milestone, we present a selection of exemplary works by the artists that we have consistently championed over the past thirty years. Visit us in Booth G4 to see many of the artists that you have come to know and admire through our rich history of exhibitions, programming and publications.

Opening Reception Thursday, November, 21, 2019 / 6:00–8:00PM Featuring works by Charles Alston, William Baziotes, Romare Bearden, Harold Cousins, Dorothy Dehner, Jimmy Ernst, Claire Falkenstein, Herbert Ferber, Michael Goldberg, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, David Hare, Hans Hofmann, Richard Hunt, Gerome Kamrowski, Lee Krasner, Ibram Lassaw, Norman Lewis, Seymour Lipton, Boris Margo, Roberto Matta, Gordon Onslow Ford, Alfonso Ossorio, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Theodore Roszak, Mark Rothko, Charles Seliger, Janet Sobel, Theodoros Stamos, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Laurence Vail and Hale Woodruff.

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 5, 2019 / 6–8PM

A color catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is the exclusive representative of Mary Bauermeister (b.1934).

Art of Defiance: Radical Materials examines the groundbreaking use of materials by artists Hannelore Baron, Mary Bauermeister, Lee Bontecou, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Claire Falkenstein, Nancy Grossman, Louise Nevelson, & Betye Saar. Each developed their individual approach by utilizing materials defined by their physicality, representing a freedom from the constraints of traditional, male-dominated media in art history. The exhibition explores how these artists blurred the boundaries of two- and three-dimensions with their singular constructions, expanding the field of art-making in a way that still resonates today.

Image: Norman Lewis (1909–1979), After Dawn, 1966, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 60 , signed

Michael Goldberg (1924-2007), "Park Avenue Facade" (detail), 1957-58, oil on canvas, 111 1/2" x 107 1/2" / 283.2 x 273.1 cm, signed and dated