Opening: Friday, September 12, 2008 from 6:00 – 8:00 P.M. September 13 through October 25, 2008
Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Paul Feeley: Nine Paintings, the next exhibition in his gallery at 523 West 24th Street.
The exhibition includes nine enamel on canvas paintings made between 1961 and 1964. Feeley’s works with their bright colors, simple repetitive forms and symmetrical compositions are an important aspect of American abstraction.
Feeley, alongside Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, worked against the grain of the prevailing Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s and his work is most often associated with the Color Field painters. Feeley’s distinct body of work, however, reflects a wide range of influences, including ancient Greek and Cycladic sculptures, Moorish decorative tiles and contemporary American subjects, like his motif derived from the children’s game of jacks.
Although his work is not as well known today, during his lifetime Feeley was at the center of the New York art world. His first one-person exhibition was at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1955. Starting in 1960, and continuing until his untimely death in 1966, he had yearly one-person exhibitions at the Betty Parsons Gallery. In 1968, he was given a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Feeley was fundamental in establishing the celebrated art department at Bennington College, where he taught for over twenty years. At Bennington, he organized many historic exhibitions including the first retrospectives of his friends Jackson Pollock, David Smith, and Hans Hoffmann, exposing his students—Helen Frankenthaler among them—to many of the most significant artists of the time.
Feeley’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, among others.
Paul Feeley: Nine Paintings will be on view at Matthew Marks Gallery, 523 West 24th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues) through Saturday, October 25th, 2008. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.
