ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT
Bowery Gallery’s Radical Notions Persist Exhibit features work from artist-run co-op’s founders
Courtesy of the artist
Nancy Beal: “Melo Mel Red Tub” or “Cat on the Porch” (1977, oil/canvas, 28 x 21 in.).
BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC Fresh out of Cooper Union, the School of Visual Arts, Pratt and the New York Studio School, a network of young artists banded together to start a co-operative. Nearly 45 years later, their legacy is being highlighted in an exhibition that showcases work from the late sixties to the present. The 23 young artists who founded Bowery Gallery first met through their professors, neighborhoods and various drawing classes. There was also a gathering called the Alliance of Figurative Artists, which took place for every Friday night on East Broadway, recalled original Bowery Gallery member Anthony
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Santuoso. The Jewish organization that owned the building, which was called the Educational Alliance, let the artists use the space for free. There would be dialogues, discussions, panels and critique of work, which would sometimes get very savage, he said. “It was like an Italian opera. If they don’t like it, they would throw rotten tomatoes at you,” said Santuoso, who paints, in a phone interview. The Bowery Gallery was an outgrowth of those meetings, and several members said that Lawrence Faden was the catalyst, the connector who got the group together to found Bowery Gallery in 1969.
November 20 - December 03, 2014
Courtesy of the artist
Lawrence Faden: “Wild Bird” (1971, oil/linen, 40 x 30 in.).
“He basically gathered people together and made it seem like it was possible,” said Santuoso, who grew up in New Jersey. It was an idea whose time had come, Faden told Chelsea Now in a phone interview. Faden, who grew up in Brooklyn, was working at the docks with another founding member, Howard Kalish. Another member, the late Tony Siani, once told him that there was a wealthy benefactor who would back a new gallery for the artists. But Faden, who paints, grew tired of waiting. “One day I got disgusted and I just said ‘I’m starting a gallery,’ “ he said. “I
invited other people to participate.” For young, still-evolving artists, said Faden, it was hard to get the art world interested. “We wanted to have this place to examine our work in public,” said Faden. “We got a place in the Bowery that was a total wreck.” The space had no floor. The artists had to patch up and paint the walls, put in lights and install a floor. Several of them were working in construction while they pursued art. Faden said Richard Uhlich, who was a painter and watercolorist, also had carpentry skills.
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