William Bailey
October 22 – December 3, 2022
William Bailey studied art at the University of Kansas, Yale University and Yale School of Art where he studied with Josef Albers receiving his MFA in 1957.
Mr. Bailey’s first exhibition in New York was at Robert Schoelkopf Gallery in 1968, where he showed regularly until its closing in 1990. During the 90’s he exhibited at the Andre Emmerich Gallery and on its closing, exhibited at the Robert Miller Gallery. In 2004 Bailey moved to the Betty Cuningham Gallery where his most recent exhibition was held from April 30 - June 11, 2016.
Mr. Bailey’s work has been exhibited extensively in both America and Europe. He is represented in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting in 1965. Mr. Bailey was elected to The National Academy of Design in 1983 and to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986.
Mr. Bailey taught at The Yale School of Art from 1958 to 1962 and from 1969 to 1995. He has also taught at The Cooper Union, University of Pennsylvania and Indiana University. He maintains studios in New Haven and in Umbertide, Italy.
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“Silence” is what the late critic Terry Teachout attributed to the work of William Bailey (1930–2020)
Now on display at The Painting Center, the group exhibition titled “The Body in Question,” a phrase cheekily resonant of a coroner’s report, explores the body as a vessel for communicating experience through painting. Curators Ophir Agassi and Karen Wilkin have adroitly presented a diverse group of ten distinguished contemporary painters connected by their focus on the human figure. Collectively they cover a wide spectrum between clarity and ambiguity. But each piece tells a story with a figure that is living a life that the viewer can glimpse and share. Consequently, the show embraces and encourages empathy.
William Bailey, Modernist Figurative Painter, Dies at 89
By: William Grimes
"He swathed his nudes and still lifes of eggs, vases, bottles and bowls in a breathless, deceptively serene atmosphere heavy with mystery."
"William “Bill” Bailey, the longtime educator and contemporary American painter known for his serene but austere still lifes featuring eggs and vessels of different shapes and sizes—as well as his female figures and landscapes drawn from memory and imagination—has died."
"Yale School of Art Mourns the Passing of William Bailey
Alumnus, Former Dean, and Kingman Brewster Professor Emeritus of Art"
This Saturday, William Bailey reveals studio secrets in a conversation at the Gallery with Jennifer Samet.
Minutes before seeing a collection of William Bailey’s meditative still-lifes and figure paintings, I heard, yet again, a series of small-minded and reckless comments by Donald Trump. How soul enriching to leave behind a sleazy Presidential candidate’s hate and hubris to be in the presence of a masterful artist’s refined vision and voice. Bailey’s exhibit at the Betty Cuningham Gallery provides a welcome respite from the kind of nasty energy and ideas Trump-like politicians spew–so different from the picture-perfect, yet unconventional, world to which Bailey transports us.
William Bailey’s current exhibition at the Betty Cuningham Gallery in Chelsea covers a lot of ground. Although it emphasizes recent paintings created both in the U.S. and in Umbria, it also includes works made in 1963 and 1977. Examples of Bailey’s methodically burnished still-life paintings are on view alongside his serenely elegant figure paintings.
