In-Person Summer Exhibition at Bert Gallery Explores Modernism – Inside Art with Michael Rose

In-Person Summer Exhibition at Bert Gallery Explores Modernism – Inside Art with Michael Rose

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States emerged as a cultural powerhouse. Avant-garde leaders of fine art, architecture, and other fields emigrated to the States in droves and the balance of cultural power shifted from Paris to New York. With this change, American modernism took root in earnest. Although the 1913 Armory Show brought the first generation of modernists to this side of the Atlantic, America had remained largely rearguard in its approach to art-making until the middle of the twentieth century. New York was not the only bastion of innovative art in America, though. Even locally, artists explored new ways of making art. At a special exhibition on view through August at Bert Gallery in Providence, the work of three important modernists are explored.

Bert Gallery’s summer exhibition Providence Modernism: Feldman, Leif & Peers, is focusing on Rhode Island’s own modernists by exhibiting pieces by the late Gordon Peers, Florence Leif, and Walter Feldman. These artists each took up the mantle of twentieth-century modernism in their own way and the results are exciting.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Gordon Peers, who passed away in 1988, was an alumnus of RISD who worked closely under his mentor and RISD President John Frazier. His landscape work indicates his interest in creating lush fields of color and in the reduction of forms to essential parts. In paintings like those that focus on boats and harbors, Peers leverages the pure aesthetic qualities of a hull or a horizon to create images that explore shape and design in novel ways.

Florence Leif, another RISD graduate and the wife of Peers, developed her own body of work up until her sudden passing in 1968. In her often thickly-encrusted paintings, she played with texture and density. By building up and scraping away paint, Leif created objects of a fantastically tactile quality. In one painting in the exhibition, Leif captures her husband Gordon fishing. Instead of a traditional narrative scene, the result is a probing examination of forms which results in subtle geometric overlays. Round pools of bright light illuminate the otherwise murky depths of a lake while the mountainous background sets off a figure described with sparing daubs of paint.

In the work of Walter Feldman, visitors will appreciate the longer-term impact of modernist influences on an artist who enjoyed a lengthy period of production. Feldman began making art in his youth and continued to create into his 90s. A renowned Brown University Professor, he was schooled at Yale University under the direct tutelage of the likes of Josef Albers. Feldman, who passed away in 2017, had a varied career and his practice included painting, printmaking, mosaic, and book arts. A decorated veteran, he saw combat in Europe and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Feldman explored themes ranging from the sacred to the impact the War had on both him and his contemporaries.

In one of his earlier paintings, Roadway from 1952, a length of asphalt is transformed into an angular and corrugated surface seemingly licked by tongues of flame. In a later piece, his Stele, Venus and Mars, Feldman further reduced description in order to sparingly indicate an abstract portal. The result is not all that different from one of Mark Rothko’s impactful color field works of the same period.

In the art of Peers and Leif, viewers might recognize the influence of the first generation of avant-garde European artists like Cezanne, whose tendency towards patterned and impasted form is replicated by both artists. In Feldman’s work, the effect of a slightly later group of still more progressive art-makers is evident. By comparing and contrasting the work of all three artists, visitors will develop a greater appreciation for New England’s modernist tradition.

When asked to pinpoint her favorite aspect of this exhibition, Bert Gallery’s owner and director Catherine Little Bert states, “What excites me most about Modernism in the Providence School is that it verifies yet again that Providence was part of the progressive cultural maelstrom. Gordon Peers and Florence Leif from Rhode Island School of Design and Walter Feldman from Brown University brought to their community the new visual modernist ideas of the 20th century the next step beyond realism to an exploration of form, color and composition on the canvas.”

Bert Gallery, in business for over 30 years, is an important center for Rhode Island art and Catherine Bert is an expert in the field. In showing off the work of these three modern artists, Bert gives viewers a thrilling peek into the way avant garde ideas were transmuted through an American lens.

 

Bert Gallery is located at 24 Bridge Street in Providence. An online viewing room to accompany this exhibition is available at www.bertgallery.com.

June Hours: Through June 19th - Wednesday - Saturday from 12 - 4, and also by appointment

July Hours: July 6 - July 24 - Wednesday - Friday 12 - 4, Saturday 10 - 2.