BETWEEN GESTURE AND FORM: ABSTRACTION FROM MID-CENTURY TO NOW
JACK WOLFE J. NICK TAYLOR WALTER QUIRT
CK CONTEMPORARY, San Francisco
BETWEEN GESTURE AND FORM ABSTRACTION FROM MID-CENTURY TO NOW September 12, 2026 - October 10, 2026
JACK WOLFE
J. NICK TAYLOR
WALTER QUIRT
CK CONTEMPORARY, San Francisco
FOREWORD There are moments in a gallery’s life that feel like pure serendipity. This exhibition began with one of them. For years, CK Contemporary has stewarded Jack Wolfe’s legacy—placing his work in public collections and witnessing a deepening appreciation for his achievements. We have also represented Walter Quirt’s work for several years and recently assumed full responsibility for his estate. In doing so, we have taken on the care of his richly varied body of work: a catalog of lyrical figuration, abstraction, and a pioneering spirit that deserves renewed attention within the history of American art. One particularly eventful day in the gallery, paintings by both artists arrived at the gallery at the same time. Quirt’s poetic, abstracted figures and Wolfe’s colorful, emphatic abstractions moved past my desk side by side. At that very moment, images of new sculptures by J. Nick Taylor—a contemporary artist from Fort Bragg—were open on my computer screen. The visual conversation among the three bodies of work was immediate. Although Wolfe and Quirt worked nearly seven decades before Taylor, his sculptures seemed to carry forward the sense of movement, tempo, and gesture that they had helped establish. His work bridged the distance between pure abstraction and the sensuality of the human form, extending their restless, exploratory spirit into forged steel.
An idea took shape: an exhibition about the persistence—and continual reinvention—of abstraction across generations. Thus Between Gesture and Form: Abstraction from Mid-Century to Now was born, in equal parts serendipity and conviction. There is also a striking historical convergence among these three artists. In 1958, Wolfe and Quirt’s paintings were shown together in the Whitney Museum Annual, one of the defining surveys of its time. In mid-century America, the Annual served as a national barometer for new work, regional voices, and emerging debates. That year’s exhibition brought together an extraordinary range of artists, including Ruth Asawa, Alexander Calder, Richard Diebenkorn, and Helen Frankenthaler, placing Wolfe and Quirt within the unfolding story of postwar American modernism.
Wolfe arrived at that moment as a rising star. In the preceding five years, his work had appeared in numerous major museum and solo exhibitions. Quirt—older, and shaped by the WPA, leftist circles, and Surrealist automatism—was already an established and respected figure in the New York art world. The 1958 Annual caught each artist at an important inflection point: Wolfe early in his ascent, and Quirt at a more mature stage of his career. It was also the year J. Nick Taylor was born, creating an unexpected historical link between the artists in this exhibition. This exhibition proposes that abstraction is not a closed canon but a living vocabulary. Across generations, it changes its materials, contexts, and questions while retaining its capacity to hold feeling, memory, and thought. The fact that Wolfe and Quirt exhibited together in 1958—the year Taylor was born—is a compelling historical knot. More meaningful to me, however, is the unplanned coincidence that has brought these bodies of work into proximity now: an opportunity to reconsider their continuities and differences, and to see how artists separated by time can respond to similar formal and human questions. I am deeply grateful to the families of Wolfe and Quirt, and to J. Nick Taylor for entering into this conversation. It is a rare privilege to watch distinct careers resonate in the same room —and to invite our audience into that exchange. If this exhibition began with a flash of recognition—paintings arriving, images on a screen, and a sudden conviction—that light has now taken form in the gallery. —Lauren Ellis Owner & Director, CK Contemporary
Jack Wolfe No Exit, 1959 Oil on canvas 78 x 96 inches
Walter Quirt Memories, 1958 Oil on canvas 70 x 50 inches
J. Nick Taylor Bobulbee, 2024 Steel 37 x 26 x 22 inches
Jack Wolfe Mediterraneans, 1961 Oil on canvas 78 x 96 inches
Walter Quirt The Road With No Turn, 1952 Oil on canvas 36 x 40 inches
Walter Quirt Horse No. 7, 1961 Oil on canvas 15 x 18 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Blue, Black and Gold Abstract Figure) , 1960s Acrylic on paper 32.25 x 25.5 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Figure in Blue and Green), 1961 Acrylic on paper 22 x 15.25 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Standing Figure in Pastels), 1964 Acrylic on paper 29.5 x 22 inches
J. Nick Taylor YouKnow, 2024 Steel 27 x 10 x 8 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Figure in Yellow, Blue and Brown), 1960s Acrylic on paper 23 x 29 inches
Jack Wolfe Red X, 1962 Oil on canvas 78 x 78 inches
J. Nick Taylor Within, 2026 Steel 16 x 14 x 12 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled: Lake Harriet Series, 1962 Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Burgundy and Blue Figure), 1960s Acrylic on paper 35 x 23 inches
Jack Wolfe Dylan’s Green, 1963 Oil on canvas 78 x 78 inches
Walter Quirt Lake Harriet Series: Family, 1964 Oil on canvas 10.5 x 14 inches
Walter Quirt Seated Figure, 1962 Oil on canvas 19 x 12 inches
Walter Quirt Bull, 1961 Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches
J. Nick Taylor Eden, 2023 Steel 16 x 13 x 6 inches
Jack Wolfe Quadrant, 1976 Oil on canvas 72 x 72 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled, Figure #232, 1961 Oil on canvas 40 x 50 inches
Walter Quirt Bromide, 1959 Oil on canvas 59 x 46.5 inches
J. Nick Taylor Big Boy, 2017 Steel 22 x 18 x 16 inches
Jack Wolfe Game 1, 1965 Oil on canvas 72 x 72 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Small Seated Figure), c. 1962 Watercolor on paper 6 x 5.5 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Gestural Woman), 1963 Ink on rice paper 19.25 x 12 inches
Jack Wolfe Green Bearce, 1958 Oil on canvas 42,5.x 66.5 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Thinking Woman), 1960s Acrylic on paper 31.75 x 22 inches
Walter Quirt Grand Pose, 1958-60 Oil on canvas 70.5 x 50 inches
Jack Wolfe Game 2, 1965 Oil on canvas 72 x 72 inches
Walter Quirt Green to Red, 1961 Oil on canvas 34 x 24 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Sitting Woman), 1960s Acrylic on paper 24 x 18.75 inches
J. Nick Taylor Winter Twilight, 2025 Stainless steel 32 x 22 x 21 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Green Swirling Woman), 1960s Acrylic on paper 15 x 12.5 inches
Walter Quirt Mexico III, 1964 Oil on canvas 30 x 50 inches
Walter Quirt Lake Harriet Series #3, 1962 Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches
Jack Wolfe Untitled, 1963 Mixed media on paper 19.75 x 29.25 inches
Walter Quirt Double Indemnity, 1956 Oil on canvas 38 x 44 inches
Jack Wolfe Benefactor, 1955 Oil on canvas 60 x 28 inches
J. Nick Taylor Black Night, 2025 Steel 15 x 13 x 13 inches
Jack Wolfe Untitled, 1962 Oil on canvas 51 x 47.5 inches
Walter Quirt There, 1962 Oil on canvas 62 x 50 inches
Walter Quirt Female Figure, 1960 Oil on canvas 40 x 28 inches
Jack Wolfe Red Pulpit, 1963 Oil on canvas 50 x 40 inches
Walter Quirt Use of White (Seated Figure #14), 1961 Oil on canvas 50 x 36 inches
J. Nick Taylor The Guardian, 2026 Steel 30 x 22 x 12 inches
Walter Quirt Woman in White, 1961 Oil on canvas 36 x 28 inches
Jack Wolfe Passion Play, 1951 Oil on canvas 77 x 77 inches
Walter Quirt Untitled (Exultant Figure), 1958 Acrylic on paper 30 x 25.5 inches
Walter Quirt Eternal Need, 1958-60 Oil on canvas 67 x 42 inches
JACK WOLFE AMERICAN, 1924 - 2007 Selected Public Collections: Addison Gallery of American Art, MA Boston Public Library, MA Boston University, MA Danforth Museum, MA deCordova Museum, MA Fuller Art Museum, MA Harvard Museum, MA Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA Phoenix Art Museum, AZ Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA The Art Complex, MA Tufts University, MA University of Massachusetts Museum, MA Whitney Museum of American Art, NY Worcester Art Museum, MA
In 1959, after a series of wildly successful solo museum and gallery exhibitions, as well as group exhibitions at the Carnegie Institute and the Whitney Museum of American Art, where his work was shown alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler and many others, Jack Wolfe was asked by a young student what he was thinking about when he painted a canvas he had titled “Chorus”. To the student, he responded, “In the formal sense as you mean it, I was not thinking. Art is communication. The artist looks at a picture, maybe on the wall or out the window…a country scene…and he looks beyond, as far as you can see and then further beyond into space. The artist is involved with space, beyond, beyond and beyond and then almost further than imagination.” From this place beyond imagination, Jack Wolfe enjoyed a career with every hallmark of success. Every hallmark that is, except for fame. To Wolfe, fame and success were opposing ideals, and very early on he made an unshakable commitment, not to marketability and commercial advancement, but to his unique vision as an artist and his integrity as a man. In this sense, the elegant, daring and consequential paintings we have from Wolfe today speak for themselves. Born in Omaha Nebraska in 1924, and raised in Brockton, MA, Wolfe studied first at RISD and then under the great Boston Expressionist, Karl Zerbe, with classmates Cy Twombley and Ellsworth Kelly at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the late 1940’s. Almost immediately, he attained representation at Boston’s distinguished Margaret Brown Gallery, alongside Alexander Calder and other cutting edge Moderns that defied the more conservative tastes of New England collectors at the time. By 1953 he had his first of dozens of subsequent museum exhibitions and became one of the earliest artists championed by the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA
and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. The 1950’s marked additional achievements, such as inclusion in the traveling exhibition, New Talent in the USA with the American Federation of the Arts, and paintings in two Whitney Museum Annuals, where the Whitney purchased one of Wolfe’s large triptychs for their permanent collection. In 1958, two of Wolfe’s works, his widely acclaimed “Portrait of Abraham Lincoln” and his five paneled “Crucifixion” were chosen by the US Information Agency for exhibition at the Salzburg Biennial and circulated throughout Europe, where they were met with widespread acclaim. After winning both the first Margaret Brown Memorial Award and the Clarissa Bartlett Graduate Scholarship in 1958, Wolfe embarked on a year of travel, briefly stopping to paint in Mexico before settling in San Francisco. Upon his return in 1959, the DeCordova museum hosted Wolfe’s third solo exhibition, featuring work made during his time in California where it was reported that “more than 500 persons attended the opening. Competitive bidding added to the general mood of excitement. Eleven paintings were sold on the spot.” Of that exhibition, it was written in the Sudbury Mass Weekly Independent that, “Mr. Wolfe ranges in his work from fine portraiture to the most extreme abstractionism, both done with great success. He has been called the American inheritor of French cubism, a logical descendent of Picasso.” Edgar Driscoll added in the Boston Globe, “To those who have followed this 34 year old artist…the promise he had seems to be fulfilled. To our mind he has his national stature chiefly because this always powerful and individualistic young painter has added a new dimension – depth.” With his future as one of the great artists of his time laid out
neatly before him, Wolfe moved to New York in the early 1950’s, which was then the postwar epicenter of the art world and in the midst of experiencing the first real revolution in American Art, now known as Abstract Expressionism. However, almost immediately upon his arrival he became disenfranchised with the overtly commercial nature of the art scene there, spurning fame and security in an unwillingness to bend his creative vision to the expectations of others. After four short months, he left New York, returned to Massachusetts where he bought property in Stoughton, cleared the land, and built both his home and studio with his own two hands. Wolfe would go on to paint there, extensively exhibiting and garnering constant critical acclaim, until his death in 2007 at the age of 83. Known primarily for his revolutionary, explosively colored and large-scale abstractions, Wolfe was also celebrated throughout his career for his portraiture (He and Elaine de Kooning enjoyed a successful two person portraiture exhibition in 1965) and was well known for his political and socially conscious works revolving around The Civil Rights Movement, Native Americans, and the Vietnam War. His work continues to be represented in private and museum collections, including the Whitney Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Rose Art Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Worcester Art Museum, The Harvard Art Museum and the Addison Gallery of American Art.
WALTER QUIRT AMERICAN, 1902 - 1968 Selected Public Collections: Addison Gallery of American Art, MA Des Moines Art Center, IA de Young Museum of Art, CA Georgia Museum of Art, GA Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN Minnesota Museum of Art, MN San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC The Columbus Museum, GA The Museum of Modern Art, NY The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, MO The Newark Museum of Art, NJ The University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI The University of Minnesota Museum of Art, MN Walker Arts Center, MN Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
A prominent American Surrealist, Walter Quirt (1902-1968) established innovative methods of painting while remaining resolute in his ideals, asserting the importance of art within society. Born in 1902 in rural Michigan, Quirt moved to New York City in 1929 where he became an active member of numerous radical artists groups, such as the John Reed Club. He worked as a muralist in the WPA and as his style evolved, he became acquainted with many of the Surrealists who had fled Nazi-Occupied Paris. In 1936, Quirt became the first American to have a solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery, solidifying his position in the art world as a cutting-edge American Surrealist. While working in New York, Quirt made many connections to artists who were challenging the status quo. He became close friends with Staurt Davis, and collaborated with Romare Bearden and Jackson Pollock. In fact, in a 1999 MoMA publication about Jackson Pollock, Pepe Karmel wrote, “Quirt may be virtually forgotten today, but in 1944 he and Jackson Pollock seemed like promising young artists of comparable importance”. Currently, Walter Quirt’s artwork is in the permanent collection of many major museums, including the The Museum of Modern Art NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, the de Young Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Using a bold automatic painting style, Quirt’s artwork bridges the gap between socialist-realism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism. His style constantly evolved to capture what he called “the emotional and social tempo of society”. His Mid-century artworks depict figures on the edge of abstraction, with striking colors and rhythmic brushstrokes that allow his compositions to each convey a unique emotional pitch. In 1947, Quirt moved to Minnesota to teach at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, a job he continued until the end of his life. After his death, his wife Eleanor kept the majority of his artwork in storage at the University of Minnesota, because she felt that showing it was “giving him away”. Currently, Quirt’s work is in excellent condition due to its careful storage at the University. His link between Pre and Post-War American Art remains significant today, and his expressive, dynamic artwork continues to capture the mercurial pulse of society.
J. Nick Taylor's work is a manifestation of the energies within his search to understand both his own life and the world he inhabits. His sculptures reflect his strengths and weaknesses present at the moment of their creation. The natural world, one of the few places where Taylor finds beauty, calm, and order, is the overarching influence on the organic forms of his work. His wood sculptures often begin with a mental image, though not always. Most are carved from a single piece of wood, primarily oak or fir, harvested from his own property in Fort Bragg, Ca. Taylor works to incorporate the uniqueness of that once-living organism into each finished piece. These works emerge through a reductive process, the act of carving away becomes a search for the shapes and forms already latent within a given piece of wood.
J. NICK TAYLOR AMERICAN, B. 1958
The metal works spring from a different artistic foundation. Formed from a man-made material, metal inherently carries little personality of its own—even when made from recycled materials. That personality is something Taylor creates himself, through cutting, hammering, welding, and grinding. As a result, the metal pieces are additive, the opposite of the wood works. Rather than revealing form through reduction, they grow. Taylor rarely begins a metal piece with a mental image; instead, he works from a sense of energy that gradually reveals each piece’s final form. Taylor has been making sculpture for over 40 years and his work has been shown throughout the United States. He earned his MFA from the University of California, Davis, and his BA from the University of Tennessee. In addition to his studio practice, he spent over 25 years as an exhibit fabricator for the museum and entertainment industries, and is perhaps best known for serving as site Project Supervisor for Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Chicago's Millennium Park. His work has been featured at institutions including the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, the Bedford Gallery, and the San Francisco MOMA Artists' Gallery, among many others.