James Kelly: "Tubes and Radiators: Paintings from 1964 – 1967"

JAMES KELLY Tubes and Radiators: Paintings from 1964 - 1967Â

DAVID RICHARD GALLERY

On the occasion of the exhibtion James Kelly: Tubes and Radiators: Paintings from 1964 – 1967 at David Richard Gallery October 16, 2019 - November 16, 2019

Published by: David Richard Gallery, LLC, 211 East 121st Street, New York, NY 10035 www.DavidRichardGallery.com 212-882-1705 | 505-983-9555 DavidRichardGalleries DavidRichardGallery Gallery Staff: David Eichholtz and Richard Barger, Managers

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AArtwork: © James Kelly Estate 1964-1967, Catalogue: © 2019 David Richard Gallery, LLC, New York, NY Catalogue Design: David Eichholtz and Richard Barger, David Richard Gallery, LLC, New York, NY Images: © 2019 David Richard Gallery, LLC, New York, NY Images: Yao Zu Lu

DAVID RICHARD GALLERY

JAMES KELLY Tubes and Radiators: Paintings from 1964 - 1967

ONLINE EXHIBITION James Kelly Paintings from 1964 - 1967 James Kelly: Tubes, Filaments and Connectors 2

The series of Tubular paintings presented in this exhibition date from 1964 to 1967.

While the series did continue into 1970, these are the only Tubular paintings remaining in the artist’s estate and were stored at his West Village studio in New York until now. During this same period, Kelly was making a move away from his well-known gestural abstraction of the 50s and early 1960s. Influenced by the myriad changes in the 60s, Kelly saw Abstract Expressionism in his rearview mirror along with many other artists who were creating their own visual voice and imagery, exploring new forms of expression, materials and supports, and engaging in an era of cultural awareness and social protest. Pop Art, Op Art, hard edge painting, geometric abstraction, the California Light and Space movement, rock and roll, heavy water light shows, Greenwich Village, acrylic and fluorescent DayGlo paints were the rage. It is not a stretch to see how this Tubular series emerged out of the mix of art and cultural influences in New York combined with Kelly’s existing vocabulary of fluid, curved shapes, lush eye-popping colors and painterly surfaces. While the outer boundar-ies of the “tubes” were mostly hard edge with a clearly defined border, it is interesting that many of the color transitions within the tubes did not have sharp demarcations. Instead, Kelly often feathered the edges between the two colors, a subtle painterly touch. These are wonderful paintings full of nuance. They read hard edge at first glance, but up close, the artist’s hand is there, adding depth and an additional layer of interest to engage the viewer from afar and close in. Master works from a modern master.

In his early New York years, Kelly’s paintings, drawings and lithographs began to incorpo-rate defined shapes, mostly curvaceous and tubular, like large bent pipes that transport-ed unknown substances and matter—maybe imaginary heat, steam, water, jazz music or thoughts— from one part of his compositions to another.

Such structures can be seen in the works below: Untitled, 1963, Lithograph and oil stick, Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Nightshade from the Suite 8 from 9, 1963, Lithograph, Tamarind Lithography Workshop, and Xochimilco, 1963, oil on canvas.

The Tubular series became an extension of these glyphs and forms, organized into their own vocabulary and canvas-filling compositions.

At the time, these structures and paintings seemed very different from Kelly’s previous work. However, stepping back now and considering his oeuvre and stylistic shifts, they are very consistent with his career-long approach to painting. Kelly loved color, he also liked geometry, shapes and forms as well as figuration. Painting in the moment with then cur-rent artistic and cultural influences determined the visual language and his compositions at any given time. While there were long passages of time, generally a decade or so, for each major formal shift that ranged from geometry in the 1940s to gestural painting in the 1950s, the addition of curvaceous forms in the 60s that ultimately acted as a catalyst and bridge back to geometry in the 70s. Kelly’s final transition in the 1980s was back to a loose form of gestural abstraction with a lot of color, broad brush strokes, representational and figurative elements. But, above all else, humor and subtle playful twists in his composi-tions were an early and ever-present component of Kelly’s work.

Although, present only as a subtext, minor element or even obfuscated, these

James Kelly, Nightshade from the Suite 8 from 9, 1963, Lithograph, Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Edition of 20, 19” x 13.5” James Kelly, Untitled, 1963, Lithograph, Edition of 20, 21” x 15” James Kelly, Xochimilco, 1963, Oil on canvas, 66” x 77”

additions of dry wit made his work more authentic, heartfelt and genuine, but mostly noticeable to and for the benefit of only those closest to him or who take the time to study his work deeply.

James Kelly, along with his wife, Sonia Gechtoff, moved to New York in 1958, after having lived in San Francisco since 1950. In San Francisco, Kelly studied at the California School of Fine Arts from 1951 to 1954 under the GI Bill. There, he further developed his love of oil paint and mastered thick, impasto applications of the medium on canvas using palette knives and brushes. His sur-faces were tactile, physical and rhythmic from the long visible strokes gently sculpting the medi-um like rolling waves of pigment. Building lush surfaces layer over layer, color upon color, often with mysterious overlays of black pigment to conceal the colorful treasures below, earned him his place as a talented and respected second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter.

By David Eichholtz New York, 2019

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James Kelly Profile, 1965 Oil on canvas 66” x 77”

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James Kelly Profile, 1965 Oil on canvas 66” x 77” Detail views; left and right

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James Kelly Navajo, 1964 Oil on canvas 30.5” x 26” Framed size - 31” x 26.75”

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James Kelly Navajo, 1964 Oil on canvas 30.5” x 26” Framed size - 31” x 26.75” Detail views: left and right

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James Kelly Silence, 1964 Oil on canvas 34.5” x 26” Framed - 34.75” x 26.5”Framed - 34.75” x 26.5”

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James Kelly Silence, 1964 Oil on canvas 34.5” x 26” Framed - 34.75” x 26.5” Detail views: left and right

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Night Dreams, 1966 Originally presented as a triptych comprised of two independent compositions and a solid blue connecting piece approximately 12 inches in height between them. The two major components were similarly sized horizontal compositions like the one in this presentation, which is marked as “I� on verso, and the only one that remains.

James Kelly Night Dreams, 1966 Acrylic on canvas 48” x 80”

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James Kelly Night Dreams, 1966 Acrylic on canvas 48” x 80” Detail views: left and right

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James Kelly Blackfoot, 1965 Oil on canvas 49.5” x 47.5”

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James Kelly Blackfoot, 1965 Oil on canvas 49.5” x 47.5” Detail views: left and right

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James Kelly Filaments, 1965 Oil on canvas 48.5” x 37” Framed size - 50” x 38.25”

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James Kelly Filaments, 1965 Oil on canvas 48.5” x 37” Framed size - 50” x 38.25” Detail views: left and right

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James Kelly Morocco Blue, 1967 Collage 21” x 15” Framed - 21.25” x 15.25”

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Crossing Over, 1964-1983-1990 The painting, Crossing Over, was begun in 1964. However, Kelly worked on the painting again in 1983 and finally completed the work in 1990. This work is very unique and documents more than a transitional period in the artist’s career. Clearly, from the combination of hard-edge tu-bular structures and gestural passages with impasto application of paint and the mix of repre-sentational shapes—combined with the leading title—this painting chronicles in a single compo-sition Kelly’s transition back to a gestural and free-form style of painting. The painting literally compresses three decades of thought, aesthetic imagery and changes in process into a single composition.

James Kelly Crossing Over, 1964 Oil on canvas 77” x 66” Framed size - 76.5” x 66.5” reworked 1983 & 1990

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James Kelly Crossing Over, 1964 Oil on canvas 77” x 66” Framed size - 76.5” x 66.5” reworked 1983 & 1990 Detail views: left and right

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James Kelly Xochimilco, 1963 Oil on canvas 66” x 77” Framed - 66.5” x 77.5”

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James Kelly Car Crash, 1963 Lithograph 17” x 19.5” Tamarind edition of 20

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James Kelly Untitled, 1950 Lithograph 15” x 21”

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James Kelly Untitled, 1950 Lithograph 21” x 15” Tamarind edition of 20

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James Kelly Untitled, 1950 Lithograph 21” x 15” Tamarind edition of 20

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James Kelly 8 From 9 Suite, 1963 Lithography on Rives BFK paper 18.75” x 13.5” Tamarind edition of 20

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JAMES KELLY (1913 – 2003) Drawing with pencil, ink, charcoal and oil stick as well as painting on paper and lithog-raphy were an integral part of James Kelly’s artistic practice. Most works on paper were conceived as unique works, not studies for larger paintings. Early in his career he fo-cused heavily on lithography and worked at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. Many of his lithographs are held in prominent collections, including the Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art, both in Washington, D.C. James Kelly was known as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter.

He was born and raised in Philadelphia. Kelly studied at the School of Industrial Arts (which is now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia) in 1937 and then in 1938 at the Pennsylva-nia Academy of the Arts. In 1941 he was awarded a scholarship to the Barnes Foundation where he studied before enlisting in World War II. After the war, he moved to San Fran-cisco and studied at the California School of the Arts under the GI Bill from 1951 to 54. There he met and married artist Sonia Gechtoff. They lived on Fillmore Street and be-came part of the Beat Scene and friends with Deborah Remington, Jay DeFeo, Madeleine Diamond, Ernest Briggs and Wally Hedrick, among others.

Early in Kelly’s career, in the 1940s, influenced by paintings by Piet Mondrian and later Pablo Picasso, his work was geometric with references to Modernism and Cubism. Fol-lowing the move to California, Kelly’s work changed and was more gestural, with long smooth strokes and thick layers of impasto paint from generous use of the palette knife. He layered the pigment and worked the surfaces to reveal layers of colors under a heav-ily textured surface of black paint. Kelly also took up lithography and enjoyed making prints, working at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop numerous times through the 1960s and 70s.

The 1970s saw a bit of shift back to geometric work for Kelly, using grids and systemic approaches, a lot of ink with black and white reductive compositions.

However, short lived and in the 1980s Kelly returned to sweeping broad gestures of bright color across the canvas with iconic spins, swirls and a dose of representational elements and hidden / camouflaged figures. His work was lyrical and playful, spontaneous with periods of hu-mor. This maturity in his work from the 1980s and through the rest of his career became a reflection of him as a person, how he really thought and what made him happy.

DAVID RICHARD GALLERY