Jack Wolfe: Beyond the Known

JACK WOLFE BE YOND THE KNOWN AN AMERICAN ARTIST’S LEGACY REVISITED

JACK WOLFE BE YOND THE KNOWN AN AMERICAN ARTIST’S LEGACY REVISITED

“Art is a communication. The artist is trying to communicate what he sees. He 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. Then he puts down what he sees. The artist is involved with space, beyond, beyond and beyond and then almost further than imagination.”

Jack Wolfe, 1959

CONTENTS 1

Foreword Lauren Ellis

2

Extreme Eclecticism Robert Cozzolino

6

Jack Wolfe: Recent Work (1983) Laurie Lingham

10

Paintings

88

Works on Paper

110 Biography and Curriculum Vitae

FOREWORD Since the founding of CK Contemporary in 2013, our mission has been to actively seek out the best contemporary artists in the world and bring them to San Francisco. While we will always proudly pursue that goal, 2020 transformed every part of our life and the world around us. Galleries closed or went digital, and I, like so many, started to wonder if anything we had done before could be relevant once again. Though faced with the same doubt and dread that touched us all, I was resolute that the only way forward was to broaden my vision for the gallery rather than diminish it. We proceeded with our physical expansion into the beautiful multi-level gallery on Powell Street that we now call home. After many months of forced distance, I believe now more than ever that seeing and experiencing important art in person is an invaluable gift. The real expansion, however, came in the form of the story of art and history that I wanted CK Contemporary to tell.

From this place of introspection, I found myself looking back towards the generation of artists whose shoulders so many of our contemporaries have stood upon. It was then that a 1957 catalog from the Whitney Museum of American Art stopped me dead in my tracks and set me on a serendipitous path whose destination was the life, work and legacy of Jack Wolfe. Seeing Wolfe’s paintings for the first time was like a jolt of electricity. Massive canvases, swirling color, odd shapes and confronting portraits, were all filled with a quality of conviction and assuredness that mirrored my commitment to this new direction for the gallery. Further research exposed the story of a man who navigated life and art on his own terms, always outside the lines, yet unwavering in his principles and creative beliefs. “What you know is a security … I have to risk everything every time,” he said in an interview on the occasion of his fifth exhibition at the deCordova Museum in 1961. Embodying that same ideology, but without knowing what I would find, I hit send on an email that I hoped would make its way to the Wolfe family. Little did I know, I sent that email on Jack’s birthday, and what I found was an extraordinary family and a body of work that exceeded every expectation I could have imagined. When you want a plant to grow, you put it in a larger pot. When you want a gallery to expand in alternative directions, you find an artist whose work is so powerfully compelling that it propels you toward new objectives.

Representing the Wolfe estate has been one of the greatest honors of my professional career. To share his story is a privilege and a joy and I feel that the legacy of CK Contemporary is now entwined with the legacy of this exceptional painter. Jack’s wife Laurie, his daughters Twyla and Jen, and his son-in-law Ben, have been a remarkable source of information, documentation, and guidance throughout this project, and none of this would be possible without their loving stewardship of his work. This exhibition marks the beginning of a long partnership between CK Contemporary and the Wolfe estate, and we invite you to join us on this thrilling journey Beyond the Known.

Lauren Ellis Partner/Director CK Contemporary 1

EXTREME ECLECTICISM B y R o b e r t C oz zo lin o Jack Wolfe approached the act of painting with humility and curiosity. Over the arc of his long career he followed an intuition that guided him to numerous shifts in subject matter and process. In the late 1950s he made ferociously composed, emotionally volatile Crucifixion paintings. During the early days of the Civil Rights movement and American War in Vietnam, he made politically assertive paintings protesting the human rights abuses he felt were happening on U.S. soil and overseas. Wolfe’s calmly composed and gorgeously realized portraits of the 1970s and 1980s seem to have come from his close emotional bond with sitters. His monumental portraits of the courageous leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), reveal the degree to which activism mattered to him and how he respected those who put their lives on the line for change.

Wolfe’s abstract paintings, which he made throughout his life, do not form a through line amidst these shifts so much as they engage in a conversation with his other work. As he made a wide range of abstractions Wolfe learned lessons that he applied to political and existentialist subject matter. Meaningful ways of deploying pattern and geometry affected the austerity of portraits. The scale and objecthood of his shaped canvases revealed powerful ways to compose homages to AIM leaders. Wolfe understood the value of pushing into new creative territory because of this relational practice. It was how he grew as an artist – accepting some discomfort and productively working through it. “You’re not anywhere unless

you’re beyond what you know, and you can’t even start to paint a painting until you reach the point where you are going beyond what you know,” he told an interviewer in 1961. “What you know is a security … I have to risk everything every time.”1 Contrary to what surveys of modern art in the United States may have proclaimed for many generations (and in response, museum installations of the period) the American art world reflected and supported the variety shown in Wolfe’s practice. Midcentury museum surveys of contemporary art regularly showcased a pluralistic artworld, and Wolfe himself showed purely abstract paintings alongside those that were explicitly representational. Many of his peers shifted back and forth to freely work between abstract and representational modes throughout their careers.

Wolfe was self-aware and thoughtful about this voracious creativity. “It’s complicated because I’m not really an abstractionist – I’m a grossifier,” he noted. “I’m looking for some way to deal with everything. I want my approach to be open so that using any means and dealing with anything is a possibility each time I come to a painting. Of course, this is childish … and it’s childlike.”

For Wolfe, each new painting achieved its own character and fulfilled a need to express something of being in the world. Whether it was an ecstatic response to color and light, inspired by being in nature, or furious despair at seeing pictures of civilian dead and wounded in a war, that free exploration in the studio brought forth a form commensurate with the content, emphasizing his emotional relationship to that source. This approach was a way of “keeping the possibilities wide open, allowing for an infinite amount of interchange.”

This strategy is evident even in the focused group of abstractions featured in the current exhibition. Chorus (1959) sets writhing organic forms that jitter from searing red to grey and then simmering oranges and yellows within a framework of hard edged architectural elements along the edges. The contrasts provide a tangible sense of depth, light, and space, despite no recognizable imagery. In Archer (1963) Wolfe shifted the axis of the composition at an angle to animate the square format of the canvas. Hard lines and bands of solid color at the upper right and lower left compress the vigorous gestural brushwork into the center, causing a thrilling tension between the frames and churning action in the core. Blubar (1976) presents a set of nine circles and squares, nested in one another and arranged in a three by three grid against a cruciform stricture. To soften the geometry, Wolfe gradated the color tones, varied the thickness of the shapes’ edges, made lines permeable, and subtly altered scale. These decisions enliven the composition, alleviating the rigor one might expect of such a painting.

So many myths pervade the histories of modernism in the United States. They still form the source for what the art market, museum world, and academia values.

It is hard work to untangle them and to tell different stories that foreground what is unfamiliar to specialists, connoisseurs, gatekeepers. We can trace the source of these myths in successive critical attempts to impose order on unruly creative human beings. Critic Clement Greenberg is prominent here, writing in 1944, “The extreme eclecticism now prevailing in art is unhealthy, and it should be counteracted, even at the risk of dogmatism and intolerance.”2 Perhaps as unlikely a source as one might expect countered this two decades later – the artist Donald Judd, when he wrote, “The history of art and art’s condition at any time are pretty messy. They should stay that way. One can 3

think about them as much as one likes, but they won’t become neater; neatness isn’t even a good reason for thinking about them … Things can only be diverse and should be diverse.”3 That is an attitude Jack Wolfe would have approved, countering what Greenberg pled as he tried to corral creative production into a neat and tidy teleological aesthetic. Wolfe’s choices would have infuriated Greenberg.

Art audiences increasingly want to understand relationships in history better and to reconsider those discarded by the establishment. Upon deeper examination of how past art world communities operated on the ground, we find relationships were more fluid and people who are kept apart in canonical histories were there together, interconnected and at the heart of things. The heart of things was often not really a single place but networks, interconnected systems of community – a stronger model than the idea of a privileged geographical center. The center was everywhere, a shifting lens that broke ideas into fractals that reflected light throughout the world.

Among the pervasive myths in American modernism is the assertion that art made in one or two cities deserve our full attention while the rest of the vast country is minor and only tangentially relevant. Artists working outside of that place (e.g. New York City) are still relegated to the margins, despite the vibrancy of their vision or the communities in which they choose to live and contribute. These myths would have us believe that artists are/were abstract or they are not; these modes of working are irreconcilable, and become politically determinate. Consider the wellknown but absurd controversy over Philip Guston’s transition in the late 1960s back to recognizable imagery. Canonical wisdom has it that confident, self4

assured artists should find a style and stick with it; if they are consistent it is better for the market – it can consider their name a brand. Finally – histories are already written, authorities have spoken, and what you see in textbooks and on permanent display in “major” museums is what matters.

Jack Wolfe proves all of this to be fallacy and it is significant that he is re-introduced to us now, when so many aspects of museums and the art world are being examined, interrogated, and remade. He followed his curiosity about the world and made art according to where it led him, regardless of how it did or did not fit into a known narrative or please a market. That meant shifting his focus in ways that might be surprising, but it is truer to how we navigate the world if we are vulnerable and open to its possibilities.

Robert Cozzolino Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings Minneapolis Institute of Art

“Quotes from a Conversation with Jack Wolfe,” in Robert Hamilton, Jack Wolfe: Recent Paintings (Lincoln, MA: deCordova Museum, 1961), n.p. Subsequent quotes by the artist come from this source.

1

Clement Greenberg, “A New Installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a Review of the Exhibition Art in Progress,” in O’Brien, Clement Greenberg: Collected Essays and Criticism Volume I, 213.

2

Donald Judd, “Local History,” Arts Yearbook 7 (1964); reprinted in Donald Judd: Complete Writings, 1959-1975 (Halifax: The Press of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and New York: New York University Press, 1975), 151.

3

5

JACK WOLFE: RECENT WORK (1983) B y L auri e L in gham Jack Wolfe is not one for fanfare. He squirms under the bright lights of publicity and fame. One is tempted to read fame as success, but Wolfe would insist that the two are mutually exclusive. Jack Wolfe has had many opportunities to pursue fame – his work has been included in such prestigious exhibitions as Carnegie Institute’s International in 1955, The Whitney’s New Talent and Annual in 1957 and 1958, and the U.S Information Agency’s 1958-59 exhibition which traveled to the Salzburg Biennale and circulated throughout Europe. Early in his career Wolfe chose his own brand of integrity – the reflective, simple life of a thinking man. The work speaks for Wolfe; it is elegant, subversive, bawdy, tragic, and has momentous staying power. The exacting discipline, the unshakeable commitment to painting, and the stubborn will to pose unanswerable questions has shaped Wolfe’s life.

“The personality of the artist … finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself … The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind, or beyond, or above his handiwork, invisible … indifferent, paring his fingernails.” (James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) Like James Joyce, Wolfe sees the artist’s role as that of a medium, moving with the work as it begins to happen, getting out of the way, so to speak, so as not to impede it as it comes into its own. With each painting, Wolfe goes beyond what he knows.

In the context of capitalism, the measure of success for an artist is how well he has penetrated the

selection system by merchandising his work or ideas.

The route is that of showing in galleries and museums, being collected, and becoming known. The artworld has taken its cue from the commercial premise of marketable products, supply and demand, and the assumption that artwork is important if it meets such pedestrian criteria. Most artists accept the system and work within it, often subsidizing a career with teaching.

By commercial standards, Jack Wolfe would be judged unsuccessful. He has chosen to separate himself from a venal network that distorts and vitiates. Wolfe’s entire career has been shaped by his conviction that such a climate does little to nurture important or good art. With all the makings of a brilliant career – solid schooling under Karl Zerbe, early recognition, and solo exhibitions from which every painting sold – he spurned recognition and security, dedicating himself to the production of a body of significant work, and his “commitment not to hedge.” To that end, Wolfe bought property in Stoughton, Massachusetts, in the late forties, cleared the land, built home and studio, and settled there in the early fifties. There he maintains the proud stance of detachment.

Always an iconoclast, Wolfe’s intellectual development was primarily shaped in the heady days of Abstract Expressionism and the Beats, a time when American art and technology was coming into its own after World War II. His inquisitive nature was nourished by reading forays in areas of philosophy, political and social criticism, literature, art history, and Eastern thought. He was deeply influenced by resistance to the war in Viet Nam and by the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, and embraced the counterculture and the intelligentsia that built revolutionary momentum.

Wolfe has never held a teaching position. With wry glee, one can imagine him teaching: what a subversive proposition, even though he would not intentionally incite or provoke. The paintings alone perform in that

capacity. Wolfe will share experiences with anyone, but refuses to be the medium of unfiltered interpretation.

Teaching would be to hedge; he feels that most artists who teach pay a terrible price in the sacrifice of their work. One could argue that Wolfe has also paid dearly, sacrificing the audience that is most readily gained through the established channels. An important factor for him, as it is for every artist, he acknowledges the dismaying lack of listeners to his voice. Ancillary to this concern is the persistent question: “For whom do I paint?” Wolfe paints for a handful of appreciative people who have remained loyal through even his lean or fallow periods. Wolfe is confident that there is an audience which shares with him the extraordinary universals, those things he has examined so deeply and worked so hard to pull out of himself. As his work has matured, the paintings have met with increasing resistance, in part because former admirers have pulled away from a more passionate world-view to form shells of conservative resignation, and in part because the paintings come closer to a truth unpalatable to most.

Painting gets harder, as does the life he has chosen to live. Although, in Wolfe’s opinion, he can work through anything, no matter how rough it may be, he concedes: “I can be stopped by ‘out there’ … If I could hedge, I would … ” There is a resigned tone in his voice. It is neither bitter, nor regretful; he would do it all again with the same self-reliant, iconoclastic bent.

The act of painting – its discoveries of pure delight, others of pure fear, and the continuous clarification process – is Wolfe’s entire raison d’etre. The family, the hardship, the times, pale when the work begins.

Jack Wolfe: Recent Work May 8 - June 19, 1983 deCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts © deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Trustees of Reservations

7

“You’re not anywhere unless you’re beyond what you know, and you can’t even start to paint a painting until you reach the point where you are going beyond what you know. What you know is a security . . . I have to risk everything every time.”

Jack Wolfe, 1961

Passion Play 1951 Oil on canvas 77 x 77 inches

10

11

Detail: Passion Play

Untitled 1950 Ink and gouache on paper board 9 x 13 inches

14

15

16

Still Life 1953

Oil on canvas

26 x 32 inches

In Memoriam Wiley Post 1954

Oil on masonite

48 x 72 inches

17

Untitled c. 1950s Oil on canvas 43 x 57 inches

18

19

Chorus 1959 Oil on canvas 77 x 95 inches

20

21

Detail: Chorus

24

Neufeld Oil 1961

Oil on canvas

20 x 31.75 inches

Phantom 1961

Oil on canvas

42 x 19.75 inches

25

“Jack Wolfe is in the mainstream of the American painting movement which includes such artists as Pollock, Gorky, Kline and De Kooning.”

Frederick P. Walkey Executive Director, deCordova Museum Robert Hamilton/Jack Wolfe, 1961

26

Lowell’s Yellow 1962 Oil on canvas 40 x 49.5 inches

28

29

Peasant Red 1962 Oil on canvas 80 x 72 inches

30

31

32

Archer 1963

Oil on canvas

78 x 78 inches

Robin’s Rock 1962

Oil on canvas

78 x 78 inches

33

Spanish Bunny c. 1965 Acrylic on canvas with collage 20 x 23 inches

34

35

Ytoris c. 1960s Acrylic on canvas 92 x 72 inches

36

37

Vesh 1967

Acrylic on canvas

40 x 90 inches

39

40

Guardian c. 1960s

Acrylic on canvas

60 x 50 inches

Stadium c. 1960s

Acrylic on canvas

60 x 50 inches

41

ALaurie c. 1960s Acrylic on canvas 50 x 72 inches

42

43

44

Ihil c. 1960s

Acrylic on canvas

71 x 47.25 inches

Aegean 1965

Acrylic on canvas

90 x 30 inches

45

“While he can be said to preserve some of that original A-E temperament, however, Wolfe is not a latter-day Abstract Expressionist. Abstract, yes, and vigorously expressive to boot; but the mixture is unquestionably personal.”

Carl Belz Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Painted in Boston, 1975

46

Mandala 1969 Acrylic on canvas 34 x 50 inches

48

49

Title Date Description Dimensions

50

Tectonic c. 1960s

Acrylic on three canvas panels

73.5 x 102 inches

51

Spanish Window 1968 Acrylic on canvas 92 x 60 inches

52

53

Untitled c. 1970 Acrylic on canvas with collage 68 x 44 inches

54

55

Title Date Description Dimensions

56

Arctic 1971

Acrylic on shaped canvas

104 x 59 inches

57

58

August Dozen (eight examples) 1973

Acrylic on canvas

17 x 17 inches each

59

Summerfest 1972 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 60 inches

60

61

62

Italia Firenze 1974

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 90 inches

Diabarit 1973

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 78 inches

63

Brown Wittgenstein 1975 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

64

65

66

Blubar 1976

Acrylic on canvas

72 x 72 inches

Allegheny Mantra 1977

Acrylic on canvas

72 x 72 inches

67

Meadow Wittgenstein 1977 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 72 inches

68

69

“It is impossible to use any broad generic descriptive terms for Wolfe’s paintings.

They radiate warmth-heat-life ... It is this combination of color, precision and free but controlled expressionism that makes Wolfe’s paintings so exciting visually and intellectually; for he knows just when to push an expression further and when to stop.”

The Boston Globe, September, 1973

71

72

Escadrille 1975

Acrylic on canvas

70 x 78 inches

Untitled 1975

Acrylic on canvas

49 x 20 inches

73

Qubrak 1978 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 84 inches

74

75

Detail: Qubrak

78

Drawing with Blue Drip c. 1970s

Mixed media on canvas

19.5 x 15.5 inches

Redun c. 1970s

Acrylic on canvas

40 x 78 inches

79

80

Logo Rondo 1999

Acrylic on shaped canvas

30 inches diameter

Logo Rondo I 1999

Acrylic on shaped canvas

30 inches diameter

81

August Moon 2000 Acrylic on canvas 68 x 30 inches

82

83

84

Linda Gray Dress 1971

Oil on canvas

50 x 40 inches

Linda (Purple) c. 1960s

Oil on canvas

28 x 24.5 inches

85

86

Long Shadow 1986

Acrylic on shaped canvas

76 x 76 inches

Maikai Female Healer 1986

Acrylic on shaped canvas

42 x 48 inches

87

88

M ixed media on paper board

9 x 11.25 inches

M ixed media on paper

17 x 14 inches

89

90

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

91

92

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

93

94

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

P en and ink on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

95

96

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

97

98

M ixed media on rice paper

17.75 x 13.5 inches

M ixed media on paper board

17 x 11 inches

99

100

M ixed media on paper

12.25 x 13.25 inches

M ixed media on paper board

14 x 11 inches

101

102

P en and ink on paper

17 x 14 inches

M ixed media on paper

17 x 14 inches

103

1958

104

1958

Pen and ink on paper

Pen and ink on paper

5.5 x 8.5 inches

3.5 x 6 inches

1958

Pen and ink on paper

5.5 x 8.5 inches

105

106

1963

Mixed media on paper board

8.25 x 6.25 inches

1963

Mixed media on paper board

8 x 6 inches

107

108

M ixed media on paper board

12.5 x 10 inches

M ixed media on paper board

12.5 x 10 inches

M ixed media on paper board

12.5 x 10 inches

109

JACK WOLFE (1924-2007) 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 a 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, Massachusetts, Wolfe studied first at RISD and then under the great Boston Expressionist, Karl Zerbe, with classmates Cy Twombly and Ellsworth Kelly at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the late 1940s. 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 1950s 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 hit national stature chiefly because this always powerful and individualistic young painter has added a new dimension – depth.”

110

With his future as one of the great artists of his time laid out neatly before him, Wolfe moved to New York City in the early 1950s, 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 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 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.

CV SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1955 Carnegie International, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA 1956-57 New Talent in the USA, American Federation of Arts Traveling Exhibition, American Federation of Arts, New York, NY 1957 Whitney Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1957 Margaret Brown Memorial Exhibition, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1957 Young America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1957 Selection, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA 1958 Whitney Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1960 View, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA 1961 Robert Hamilton/Jack Wolfe: Recent Paintings, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1962 Turn Toward Peace, Nova Gallery, Boston, MA 1962 American Painting, 1962 (Second Quadrennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting), The Virginia Museum, Richmond, VA 1962-63 Forty Artists Under Forty, from the Whitney Museum of American Art (circulated by the American Federation of Arts), New York, NY 1963 New England Art in Five Parts, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1964 Religion and the Arts, St Mary’s Church, Rockport, MA 1965 New England Art Today, sponsored by New England Contemporary Artists, Inc, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 1965 Elaine de Kooning & Jack Wolfe Portrait Exhibition, Grover Cronin Gallery, Waltham, MA 1965 Examining Prejudice, Rockport Church, Rockport, MA 1965 Corporations Collect, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA 1966-67 Art for Embassies, U.S. State Department 1968 Artists for McCarthy, Weeden Gallery, Boston, MA 1968 Central Art Exhibit, Castle Square Project, sponsored by “Artists Against Racism and the War”, Boston, MA 1969 Portraits, Brockton Art Center Fuller Memorial, Brockton, MA 1969 Three Centuries of New England Art, Brockton Arts Center, Fuller Memorial Museum, Brockton, MA 1970 Collection of Contemporary Art given to Saint Lawrence University by Mr. and Mrs. Patrick B. McGinnis, Griffiths Art Center, Canton, NY 111

1971 Group Exhibition of works by leading contemporary artists alongside sculpture on loan from the Whitney, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1973 Art for Israel, Harold Ernst Gallery, Boston, MA 1974 Drawings, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1975 Painted in Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA 1975 Candid Paintings, American Genre, 1950-75, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1975 Contemporary Religious Imagery in American Art, Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL 1976 Changes, University of Massachusetts Harbor Campus, Boston, MA 1977 Art in Transition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 1978 Modern and Contemporary Masters, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA 1980 Three Decades, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1981 Art New England, Danco Gallery, Northampton, MA 1983 Boston Now, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA 1986 Expressionism in Boston, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1987 Drawings from Boston, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1989 Our Wider Selves, Artists Foundation, Boston, MA 1995 Boston’s Honored Artists, Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA 1998-99 Abstract Expressionism/Figurative Expressionism: Common Ground, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 2002 New England Currents, Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA 2009 The Odysseus Project, online exhibit sponsored by the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequence, UMB, Boston, MA 2012 Refocus: The Art of the 1960s, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1952 Jack Wolfe-Paintings, Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, MA 1953 Jack Wolfe-Paintings, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1954 Jack Wolfe-Paintings, Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, MA 1955 Jack Wolfe-Oils, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1955 Recent Paintings by Jack Wolfe, Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, MA 1957 Jack Wolfe-Paintings, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1957 Jack Wolfe, Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, MA 1958 Art and Man, Jack Wolfe’s Crucifixion painting is hung in the National Cathedral, Washington, DC 1959 Recent Paintings by Jack Wolfe, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1960 Traveling Fellow, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 1961 Jack Wolfe, Joan Peterson Gallery, Boston, MA 1965 Abstract Paintings, Obelisk Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1965 Painting Encounter on display, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA 1966 Jack Wolfe/Recent Paintings, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1967 Four Paintings, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 112

1970 New Paintings by Jack Wolfe, Cary Memorial Library, Lexington, MA 1973 Jack Wolfe-Selected Paintings, The Art Complex, Duxbury, MA 1976 Changes, University of Massachusetts Harbor Campus, Boston, MA 1978 Paintings and Drawings by Jack Wolfe, Ondine Gallery, Boston, MA 1979 Paintings by Jack Wolfe, Copley Society of Boston, Boston, MA 1980 Jack Wolfe-Paintings, Schlein Gallery, Boston, MA 1982 Jack Wolfe-Paintings and Portraits, The Art Complex, Duxbury, MA 1983 Jack Wolfe-Recent Work, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1995 Jack Wolfe-Paintings from a Decade, Watson Gallery, Wheaton College, Norton, MA 1999 Jack Wolfe-Outside the Mainstream, Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA 2005 Jack Wolfe-Major Political Work from Six Decades of Paintings, Harbor Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 2006 Honoring the Native American: Portraits by Jack Wolfe, Reilly Gallery, Providence College, Providence, RI 2019 Roxbury Portrait and two Lincoln portraits exhibited, Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater, MA 2020 Black Voice- Freedom Summer exhibited, Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater, MA 2020 Native American Paintings (digital exhibition), Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater, MA 2021 Jack Wolfe: Beyond the Known, CK Contemporary, San Francisco, CA

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA

Fro m th e S ch o o l o f th e

Fuller Art Museum, Brockton, MA

M u s e um o f F i n e A r ts , B o sto n ,

The Art Complex, Duxbury, MA

S tu d ent R e c o rd s . P rovi d e d by

Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA

Tu f ts U nivers it y A rchive s .

Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA Harvard University, Cambridge, MA University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA Boston University, Boston, MA Tufts University, Boston, MA Boston Public Library, Boston, MA

REPRESENTATION The estate of Jack Wolfe is exclusively represented by CK Contemporary, San Francisco, CA 113

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Jack Wolfe: Beyond the Known November 2021 Exhibition organized by CK Contemporary Exhibition curated by Lauren Ellis With special thanks to the estate of Jack Wolfe, Laurie Wolfe, Twyla Wolfe, Jen Wolfe, Ben Kou, Robert Cozzolino, Laurie Lingham, Travis Wilson, Kendall Murphy Artwork Photography by Ben Kou and Michael Bennewitz Historic images provided by the estate of Jack Wolfe Catalog design by Lauren Ellis and Michael Bennewitz Foreword © CK Contemporary and Lauren Ellis Extreme Eclecticism © Robert Cozzolino Jack Wolfe: Recent Work © deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Trustees of Reservations Biography © CK Contemporary © 2021 CK Contemporary All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from CK Contemporary.

CK Contemporary 246 Powell Street San Francisco, CA 94102 415.397.0114 ckcontemporary.com