Mercedes Matter "A Retrospective Exhibition"
Baruch College/Sidney Mishkin Gallery
This event has ended.
This retrospective of Mercedes Matter’s paintings and drawings includes three of her earliest works. Two were completed at age nine, and one at age 15. In all, her rarely seen work spans seven decades from the 1930s to the 1990s.
Best known today as the founder of the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Mercedes Matter was a constant presence on the New York art scene. She frequented the Cedar Bar as well as the Artists’ Club, both congenial gathering spots for some of the giants of Abstract Expressionism. Matter wrote about art and artists, she taught art both in Philadelphia and New York, and she painted throughout her life. Her own work melded abstract and representational elements in a way that was uniquely her own. She did some of her most powerful studies in black-and-white charcoal drawings, several of them (Charcoal Still Life circa 1936-’37; Still Life with Skulls circa 1996-2000) included in this exhibition. Her oil paintings, in contrast, are a profusion of color, some blunt and forceful, others delicate and evocative.
A student of Hans Hofmann in the 1930s, Mercedes Matter was profoundly influenced by this man who mentored any number of Abstract Expressionists. From Hofmann, she acquired a lifelong passion for drawing and for still life. Many of the pieces in this retrospective are still lifes, sometimes with added elements (fish, eyes, skulls). In the 1950s and ’60s, as Matter’s paintings became increasingly abstract, she continued to use bold and varied colors to suggest seasons, locales and subject matter.
Media
Schedule
from October 30, 2009 to December 14, 2009
Opening Reception on 2009-10-29 from 18:00 to 20:00