5 Apr 2008 to 10 May 2008
Gallery Hours:
Tues.- Fri., 10am -5:30pm; Sat., 11am -5:30pm
Craig Krull Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue, Building B3
CA90404
Los Angeles, CA
Santa Monica
California
North America
p: 310.828.6410
m:
f: 310.828.7320
w: www.artnet.com//ckrull.html
Don Bachardy Untitled, 2007 Acrylic on paper, 23 x 29 in
DON BACHARDY: Portraits and Abstractions MARVIN SILVER: L.A. Artists in the 60s (photographs)
RECEPTION: April 12, 4-6 GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday – Friday 10-5:30 and Saturday 11-5:30
Craig Krull Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of portraits and abstractions by legendary L.A. artist, Don Bachardy. Recognized for his extraordinarily deft, fluid, and graphically concise portraits, Bachardy has rendered such figures as Aldous Huxley, Anais Nin, and Dorothy Parker, as well as the official portrait of Governor Jerry Brown, which hangs in the California State Capitol. A native of Los Angeles, Bachardy met his lifetime partner, author Christopher Isherwood, in 1953 with whom he remained until Isherwood’s death in 1986. In 2005, Bachardy was given a retrospective exhibition of his portraits at the Huntington Library, which also owns the complete archives of Isherwood. Commenting on his approach to portraiture, Bachardy said, “…I have obeyed my early, instinctive urge to complete each work I do in a single sitting. The departure of my sitter is like the breaking of a spell. I never alter any detail of the work I’ve done once the sitting has ended.” The exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery will include new portrait paintings on paper, but will also mark the first exhibition of Bachardy’s recent abstract work. The patterns, stripes and drips began as backgrounds upon which portraits were painted, but Bachardy soon found the pure abstraction to be a unique pleasure independent of previous artistic concerns. “It is a luxury,” he said, “not to be dependent on a live sitter.”
Concurrent to the Bachardy exhibition, the gallery will present the photographs of Marvin Silver. This exhibition will include images of L.A. artists such as Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Moses, George Herms and others at the early stages of their careers, during that now legendary and seminal period of local art history, the late fifties and early sixties. Although formally trained at Art Center, Silver says that the photographic work that he made in the company of these artists and his exposure to their conceptual and experimental way of thinking was his greatest education. As Silver proclaimed, “It changed my life…and gave me an edge in my future photographic career.”
