NYAB Event - Nicolas Carone “Paintings from the 1950s”

Nicolas Carone “Paintings from the 1950s”

Washburn Gallery

This event has ended.

During the 1950s Carone was close to storm center of the era’s artistic turbulence. He lived down the road from Pollock in the Hamptons and was employed as advisor to Eleanor Ward who, at his suggestion, had opened a gallery in a former livery stable on New York’s Seventh Avenue. Under his guidance “The Stable” became an art world hub, not only as the venue for the later versions of the New York School’s historic Ninth Street Show, but through introductory shows of such artists as Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joan Mitchell, and retrospectives of Joseph Cornell and John Graham. His own densely painted oils, shown in the 1950s at the Stable and Staempfli galleries, were the summation of a wealth of experience that included lengthy academic training, three years as assistant to conservative artist Leon Kroll on a large mural project, several years of study with Hans Hofmann, and three years in postwar Italy, thanks to a postponed Prix de Rome. While in Rome (1947-1950) he formed a close friendship with and was profoundly influenced by the Surrealist artist Roberto Matta; when the latter arrived in Rome in the late 1940s they shared a studio and exhibited together at the Galeria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna … There is in Carone’s work over a sixty year period, including his seemingly archaic stone heads, a hint of layered images, traces of buried fragments, a line that traces the curve of a back or the angle of a bent leg, the motion of a dance, or shapes and colors that imply a narrative. Analogous to unfocussed images in layers of the unconscious mind as they impinge on consciousness, this latent content resists identification or interpretation, guarding its mystery.

Martica Sawin, 2014
Excerpt from illustrated brochure