Aristodimos Kaldis and Elaine de Kooning Exhibition

Aristodimos Kaldis and Elaine de Kooning Exhibition

Shin Gallery (66-68 Orchard St.)

This event has ended.

Shin Gallery presents the inaugural exhibition of its newest program, SHIN REDISCOVERY.

Focused on reintroducing exceptional artists from overlooked moments in art history, this installment showcases a collection of works by New York painters Aristodimos Kaldis and Elaine de Kooning. The selected portraits, made between the 1940s and 1970s, provide a fascinating view into the close friendship between Kaldis and Elaine de Kooning and mark a formative moment in 20th-century American figurative painting.
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In a 1969 interview, de Kooning stated that her interest in male sitters was rooted in their clothing. She cited Kaldis as a prime example of the “strikingly visual” textures she sought to paint, textures found in his wild hair and the folds of his clothing. Several of her portraits of Kaldis, alongside her famous commissioned portrait of JFK, were highlights of the 2015 exhibition “Elaine de Kooning: Portraits” at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Kaldis, too, finds freedom through color and form in his portraits of her, and together these works form a unique vision of the artists through each other’s eyes.

Over the years, Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989) and Kaldis developed a close-knit friendship. They frequently sat for each other’s portraits, spawning dozens of works in the forty years they knew each other. So familiar were the two that Elaine, who first began painting Aristodimos in 1952, visited him in the hospital in 1970 and created a series of intimate portraits of him during that time. While de Kooning often chose to capture Kaldis’ boisterous disposition through her gestural lines and iconic brushstrokes in other works, these pieces depict a unique level of affinity that has since become a hallmark of de Kooning’s portraiture.

In a 1969 interview, de Kooning stated that her interest in male sitters was rooted in their clothing. She cited Kaldis as a prime example of the “strikingly visual” textures she sought to paint, textures found in his wild hair and the folds of his clothing. Several of her portraits of Kaldis, alongside her famous commissioned portrait of JFK, were highlights of the 2015 exhibition “Elaine de Kooning: Portraits” at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Kaldis, too, finds freedom through color and form in his portraits of her, and together these works form a unique vision of the artists through each other’s eyes.

As often as Aristodimos sat for Elaine, she was also the source of numerous portraits he painted in his signature bright, poetic style of figuration. Two of these depictions are exhibited here alongside a portrait of Sarah Carles Johns, a painter and art instructor connected to Albert C. Barnes. Kaldis’ depiction of Johns with a broad torso, simplistic facial features and use of deep, bold colors garnered the attention of Barnes himself. The collector subsequently acquired a similar Kaldis work from 1941 titled Absorbing Art, making him the first living artist to be added to the Barnes Collection. In a letter to Kaldis, Barnes described his excitement over the acquisition and how it was an exceptional work to have in his collection to share with future audiences.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing

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