Judy Glantzman
Judy Glantzman
April 4- May 11, 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 4th, 6 – 8 PM
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by Judy Glantzman. The exhibition, the artist’s fourth show at the gallery, will include approximately 100 small paper mounted on canvas paintings as well as 25 collage constructions and a set of sketches in response to Francisco Goya’s drawings including his Los Desastres de la Guerra series, all dating from 2009 to the present. Glantzman will be present for an opening reception on April 4, 6-8pm.
This most recent body of work comes after seeing Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, which she visited for the first time three years ago. As a result, Glantzman’s work began to shift away from her typical introspective self-portraits toward a more encompassing, outward exploration of war and its societal impact.
In a statement on the new work, Glantzman states:
“All of my work is like a flashlight on the dark underbelly that exists under the surface of polite society. The United States is engaged in wars without any impact on our daily life. My work always had the macabre, and I wanted to marinate in my natural impulse, no holds barred. I felt that I understood the language of the psychological self-portrait and I wanted to try to invent a new language for myself.”
The individual images interact with each other exposing the horrors and diversity of war. She continues:
“I approached the work with collage. What did one image look like next to an entirely different image: one might be made from observation- an image of something that symbolized war and death- a skull, other bones, guns. I tried, in a series of small canvas mounted with paper, various motifs like a mourner over a coffin. The hope was that, in combination, the pieces would yield greater meaning than the individual parts, that, as an artist, I was creating the stage with room for the viewer to locate his/her own associations.”
Judy Glantzman was born in Long Island, NY in 1956 and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978. She began exhibiting in the early 1980’s in the East Village art scene, at Civilian Warfare and Gracie Mansion. She followed with shows at BlumHelman and Hirschl & Adler Modern in the 1990’s and at Betty Cuningham Gallery for the past eight years. She had a 30 year retrospective at Dactyl Foundation in spring 2009. Glantzman is currently a Professor of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and a Professor of Drawing at the New York Studio School.
The artist’s work can be seen in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Art Museum, New York, NY; Grey Art Gallery, New York, NY; the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; The Progressive Collection, Cleveland, OH; and the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most notably the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 2001; the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Grant, 1997; the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, 1994; and the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, 1992. Glantzman lives and works in New York, NY.
Click below for full press release.
I love it when established artists start something new. After seeing Pablo Picasso's Guernica for the first time three years ago, Judy Glantzman began moving away from the introspective self-portraits she had been making for many years toward a less self-engaged exploration of the devastation caused by war. Determined that she was done with psychological self examination, Glantzman set out to develop a new, more outward-looking visual language. Here are images of a sprawling, roughly hung exhibition at Betty Cuningham in which Glantzman presents powerful work from her ongoing series.
