NYAB Event - Kenneth Munowitz “Portraits Real and Imagined”

Kenneth Munowitz “Portraits Real and Imagined”

Baruch College/Sidney Mishkin Gallery

This event has ended.

The exhibition Kenneth Munowitz: Portraits Real and Imagined is presented at Baruch College’s Mishkin Gallery.

The work of painter and children’s book illustrator Kenneth Munowitz reveals a deep engagement with the inner life of the mind. His canvases combine elements of whimsy with a brooding self-reflection. After his death at the age of forty-two, the New York Times critic David Shirey wrote glowingly about the artist, arguing that his talent should not be ignored. Unfortunately, a major strike occurred at the New York Times and the review was never published.

Shirey wrote:
“Despite his brief career as an artist, he was able to produce a body of work of outstanding significance, especially the paintings he did in the few years before his untimely death. They deliver an extraordinary emotional and dramatic impact, filled with a powerfully spellbinding intensity.”

“If there is a feeling of immediacy in the paintings it is because this artist kept his palette close to his own life. In his portraits, still-lifes and landscapes he depicted his mother, aunts, cousins and friends as well as himself.”

“The paramount effort—a consummate tour de force—is a self portrait, last he did of himself. Wearing a Russian hat and a heavy coat, Munowitz captures our vision and holds it. He seems to be saying: ‘…I have something to say to you about life before I leave it. Pay attention.’ We pay attention and learn that he did have much to say.”

Among the portraits featured in the upcoming show at the Mishkin Gallery is this self-portrait of Munowitz in a Russian hat. Other portraits include life-size nude figures of Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson seated on a living room couch, as well as those of his close family members and friends. Munowitz painted his intimate world with a unique and startling perspective. Settings such as the bathroom and other rooms in his home are fraught with a surreal edge, and with colors that recall the intensity of paintings by Vincent van Gogh or Henri Matisse.

[Image: Kenneth Munowitz, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1975, © Collection of Milton Mann]