Karen Wilkin – författare

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) was an acclaimed Abstract Expressionist and one of the most influential art teachers of the 20th century. While his paintings have been the subject of many exhibitions and publications, his works on paper are comparatively little known, despite how central they were to his artistic practice and to the evolution of his style and technique. This is the first full-length book devoted to Hofmann’s works on paper, presenting a valuable new perspective from which to appreciate the achievements of this giant of postwar art. More than fifty examples from across his long career and from many genres—including self-portraits, figural studies, interiors, landscapes, and abstractions—are all attractively illustrated in color. In addition, works in different stages of finish, from rough sketches to polished pieces, offer an intimate glimpse into Hofmann’s methods and creative process. Distributed for MOCA JacksonvilleExhibition Schedule:Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL(01/28/17–05/14/17)Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME(06/16/17–09/10/17)

A celebration of a brilliant young artist's tragically short career, this revealing look at Bruno Fonseca's life, unorthodox training, and startlingly diverse paintings, drawings, and sculpture not only casts light on his own impressive work but also offers unusually acute insight into the creative process. The son of a sculptor and a painter mother, Bruno Fonseca grew up in an art-filled Manhattan household and started creating his own art in early childhood. By the age of 18, he had started a rigorous course of study with Augusto Torres in Manhattan, where he maintained a studio until his death at age 36 in 1994. Alan Jenkins's perceptive musings about the young artist's accomplishments capture Bruno's quirky charm and summon up the complexity of his relationships with family, friends, and the history of art. Karen Wilkin investigates Fonseca's throwback approach to the study of art, based on painstakingly learned ways of seeing and creating that relate more to the 19th-century Academy than to today's conceptualizing, career-chasing art schools.Isabel Fonseca's deeply touching memoir of her brother's childhood and last days brings to life his irresistible spirit and quicksilver intelligence.

This work on Georges Braque depicts the man and the artist, drawing out the contrasts they throw up. The man was cheerful, good looking, an amateur boxer and a player of Beethoven; the artist was serious and meticulous, whether as a Fauvist, Cubist (with Picasso) or in his own style.

This publication accompanies the Figuration Never Died: New York Painterly Painting, 1950-1970 exhibition at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. By about 1950, forward-looking New York painting was seen as synonymous with abstraction- especially charged, gestural Abstract Expressionism. But there was also a strong group of dissenters; artists, all born in the 1920s and many of them students of Hans Hofmann, who never lost their enthusiasm for the seductive qualities of thick, malleable oil paint. They remained, for the most part, 'painterly' painters. These rebellious artists include Lois Dodd, Jane Freilicher, Paul Georges, Grace Hartigan, Wolf Kahn, Alex Katz, Albert Kresch, Robert de Niro Sr., Paul Resika, and Anne Tabachnick. The compelling figurative work they made between about 1950 and 1970, in contrast to the prevailing Abstract Expressionism of the time, constitutes a significant chapter in the history of recent American Modernism.