Andres 2.0: Selected Works 1975-1990

Richard Andres 2.0 (1927-2013)

Richard Andres 2.0: Selected Works 1975-1990 April 12 - June 29, 2024 Introduction

by Michael Wolf

23645 Merchantile Road, Cleveland, OH 44122 info@wolfsgallery.com | 216-721-6945 wolfsgallery.com

Avis Johnson Andres Portrait of Richard (detail), 1950 oil on canvas

Andres 2.0 introduction by Michael Wolf

In June of 2022, WOLFS exhibited the first of the two large troves of Andres’ abstract expressionist work, offering an exciting introduction to this talented painter. And with this, our second exhibition, featuring lush, powerful and mature paintings done mostly after 1975, we are proud to present a complete and comprehensive examination of Richard Andres the artist.

After hanging the pictures for Andres 2.0, one clearly recognizes Andres’ hand, but surely with a different, more colorful story to tell. It is about this time Andres, like some of his contemporaries, began painting on large sheets of thin, translucent paper, then cutting and strategically applying the work to the larger canvas, apparently with great difficulty. The result is quite rewarding, creating large compositions with a magical, subtle, compartmentalizing of many smaller compositions within.

Bathing these new pictures in a dazzling color palette, Andres has created a stunning body of work that offers the sensation of looking through stained glass windows or even a kaleidoscope as he guides us through each journey. Upon entering the exhibition, Andres’ colors excite, while the compelling compositions remain mysterious until one takes a closer examination. Here, faint lines reveal some of the secrets to the intriguing juxtaposition and overlapping, culminating in the success of Andres’ masterful works.

Andres 2.0 is a big statement. WOLFS is honored to present the work of Richard Andres.

We truly hope you enjoy the exhibition!

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55. Untitled (Avis), c. 1949 oil on board, 20 x 16 inches

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56. Untitled, 1950 ink, gouache and conté crayon on paper, 16 x 11.5 inches

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57. Untitled, c. 1950 oil on canvas, 10 x 7 inches

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58. Untitled, c. 1950 oil on masonite, 8 x 10 inches

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59. Untitled, c. 1955 oil on canvas, 16 x 18 inches

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60. Reading II, c. 1965 acrylic and ink on paper, 10 x 10 inches

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61. Untitled, c. 1965 gouache and ink on board, 43 x 28 inches

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62. Fragment II (Photographer’s Studio), c. 1970 oil on canvas, 19.5 x 24 inches

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63. Untitled, c. 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted to canvas, 12 x 10 inches

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64. Untitled, c. 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted to canvas, 12 x 10 inches

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65. Untitled, c. 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

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66. Fragments, c. 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

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“He [Andres] finds new excitement in his work every day by painting abstraction in a paint-onpaper collage technique that he learned from COBRA painter Pierre Alechinsky. He’s equally at home in black and white, gentle hues and dazzling color (in stained-glass-like conformations). The format of his work substantially varies at different times.”

- Helen Cullinan, Art Critic Plain Dealer, February 2, 1990 “Abstract endures as his style”

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67. L. S. F., 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 48 x 65 inches

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68. Untitled, c. 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 30 x 34 inches

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69. Aviary Series, 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 32.5 x 40.5 inches

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70. The Challenge, c. 1982 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 60 x 41.5 inches

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71. Interior, 1982 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 44.5 x 54.5 inches

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72. The King of Diamonds Accepts Challenges, 1982 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 47.5 x 47.5 inches Exhibited: The Cleveland Institute of Art: 100 Years, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1983 26

“It is hard to talk about what you do when you never figure out what you are doing ahead of time,” he said. “I often start with a drawing and use it as a basis for something bigger. Sometimes the element is movement.

I have always wanted to do something with speed and flow. Sometimes there is a figurative basis. Sometimes still life.

Sometimes landscape.”

- Richard Andres Helen Cullinan, Art Critic Plain Dealer, February 2, 1990 “Abstract endures as his style”

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73. Mirror, 1984 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 12 x 12 inches

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74. Untitled, c. 1984 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 19 x 16 inches

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75. Inky, c. 1984 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

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76. Mirror, c. 1984 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 20 x 18 inches

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77. Reflections, 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 52.5 x 72.5 inches

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78. Summer Idyl, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 44.75 x 62.75 inches

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79. Visitors, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 58.25 x 62.25 inches

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80. Pool, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 49 x 48 inches Exhibited: The Butler Institue of American Art’s 58th Area Artists Annual Exhibition 36

81. Magic Act, 1986 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 41 x 71 inches

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82. Windows, 1986 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 60 x 70 inches

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83. North Sea I, 1986 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 32 x 48 inches

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84. February, 1986 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 50.5 x 71.5 inches

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85. Circus Lights & Shadows, c. 1986 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 37 x 32 inches

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86. North Sea, 1987 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 53.5 x 73.5 inches Exhibited: Cleveland Museum of Art, May Show 1987 42

87. Encounter, c. 1987 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 44.75 x 58.5 inches

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88. Hurry, c. 1987 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 39 x 49 inches

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89. Escape, c. 1987 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 58 x 62 inches

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90. Calypso, 1989 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 61 x 57 inches

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91. Little Ange, 1989 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 37 x 41 inches

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92. Studio, 1991 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas, 24 x 34 inches

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Left: 93. Untitled (Avis), c. 1985 ink on paper mounted on board, 20 x 17 inches Right: 94. Untitled (Avis), c. 1985 ink on paper mounted on board, 20 x 17 inches

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Left: 95. Figure at Night, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on board, 14 x 11 inches Right: 96. Untitled, c. 1985 ink on paper, 16.5 x 14 inches

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97. Untitled, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on board, 11 x 13 inches

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Top: 98. Untitled, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on board, 12 x 16.5 inches Bottom: 99. Girl and Boat Variation, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on board, 16.5 x 22 inches

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Top: 100. Moonlight & Shadows, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on board, 10 x 12.5 inches Bottom: 101. Untitled Landscape, c. 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on board, 14 x 17 inches

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102. Three Dancers, c. 1988 acrylic and ink on paper, 17 x 14 inches

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Left: 103. Untitled (Avis), c. 1988 ink on paper mounted on board, 17.5 x 13.5 inches Right: 104. Adolescents Back-to-Back, c. 1988 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on board, 17 x 14 inches

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Top: 105. Guardian, c. 1988 ink on paper mounted on board, 13.5 x 17 inches Bottom: 106. Stream, c. 1988 ink and watercolor on paper mounted on board, 14 x 11 inches

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Top: 107. Untitled, c. 1988 acrylic and ink on paper, 10 x 12.5 inches Bottom: 108. Untitled, c. 1988 gouache and ink on paper, 18 x 24 inches

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Richard and Avis, one man show, Canton Art Institute, 1980 59

Richard Andres 1927-2013 Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 1927.

A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1949, he was immediately drafted and served for two years in the army as a mural painter. He received his Master of Arts from Kent State in 1961. A frequent exhibitor at galleries and museums and winner of multiple May Show prizes, Andres taught art in the Cleveland Public Schools for 28 years, as well as teaching the University of Buffalo, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Western Reserve University.

Very little in Richard Andres’ childhood would have predicted his love of classical music, mid-century modern architecture and certainly not his lifelong passion for art and in particular abstract art. Richard’s father, Raymond, had no more than a third-grade education, and his mother, Clara, was one of thirteen children — only three of whom lived into adulthood and none of whom attended highschool.

They lived, when Richard was a boy, in a dingy area of Buffalo, NY in a walk-up apartment situated above a tavern. Raymond and Clara supplemented the income from their factory jobs in the bar downstairs with Raymond playing ragtime on the piano and Clara serving drinks. This often left Richard and his two older brothers at home alone to fend for themselves. The two older boys, Raymond and Russell, were — unlike Richard — rather rough and tumble and entertained themselves with stickball, boxing and the like. Richard, on the other hand, from a very young age liked to draw, or better yet even, to paint with the small set of watercolors he received for Christmas one year. Paper, however, at the height of the depression, was hard to come by. Luckily, Clara used paper doilies as decoration for the apartment and Richard would contentedly paint and then cut up doilies, gluing the pieces together to create collages.

Peter, Max and Mark Andres, Kent State University, 1961

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At eight-years-old, he discovered the Albright-Knox Museum (then known as the Albright Art Gallery) and spent several hours a week there studying the paintings.

He was particularly fond of Charles Burchfield‘s landscapes, enamored with their ‘messiness’ and thinking that they somehow captured more ‘feeling’ than works he was previously familiar with. For his tenth Christmas, he asked for and received a ‘how-to’ paint book by Elliot O’Hare. Through this self teaching, he assembled the portfolio needed for acceptance to Buffalo Technical High School where he studied Advertising Arts. In his Junior year, he was encouraged to enter a watercolor painting, “Two Barns,” in the national 1944-45 Ingersoll Art Award Contest and was one of twelve grand prize winners — each one winning one hundred dollars. More importantly the painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute Galleries, which resulted in his winning a national scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art (The Cleveland Art Institute).

He flourished at the art school under the tutelage of faculty members such as Carl Gaertner, as well as that of visiting artists such as William Sommer and Henry George Keller. He would say in later years that Gaertner, in particular, influenced his attitude toward life as well as art. “Gaertner,” Andres said, “believed that there was no need to be a ‘tortured artist’, that an artist should rather enjoy beauty, family, and life in general.” Free to spend his days as he chose, he wandered the Cleveland Art Museum for most of the hours he was not attending classes or painting; the remaining time was spent drinking coffee at a local hangout with art school friends — which is where he met fellow Henry Keller scholarship winner, Avis Johnson. Richard was immediately smitten with Avis, but being rather shy, it took him the entire summer

of 1948 to build up his courage to ask her out. Over that summer he ‘thought about Avis’ and worked in a diner to save money. He also used the hundred dollar prize money won in High School to visit the first Max Beckmann retrospective in the United States at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. Over a half century later he spoke of that exhibit with a reverence usually reserved for spiritual matters, “I walked in and it was like nothing I had ever seen before… the color..

It just glowed.”

Returning to campus in the Fall, the first thing he did was go to the coffee shop in hopes of finding Avis. He did, and she, upon seeing him, realized that she was also smitten with him. They quickly became known as ‘the couple’ on campus, and a year later, with Richard being drafted for the Korean war, they were quickly married by a Justice of the Peace, celebrating after with family at Avis’s Cleveland home. As a gift, faculty member John Paul Miller designed and made the simple gold wedding ring Avis wore for their 65 years of marriage. During those 65 years neither wavered in their mutual love, nor in the respect they shared for one anothers’ art.

The couple lived in a converted chicken coop in Missouri while Richard was in boot camp. At the camp, he would volunteer for any job offered and one of those jobs ended up being painting road signs. His commander noticed how quickly and neatly he worked and gave him more painting work to do - eventually recommending him for a position painting murals for Army offices in Panama. Until her dying day, Avis remained angry that “The army got to keep those fabulous murals and they probably didn’t even know how wonderful they were.” In Panama, their first son, Mark, was born.

After Richard’s discharge in 1953, they moved back to the Cleveland area and used the GI bill to attend Kent State gaining his BA in education. The small family then moved briefly to Buffalo, where Richard taught at the Albright Art School and the University of Buffalo — and their second son, Peter, was born. Richard had exhibited work in the Cleveland May Show and the Butler Art Museum during his art school years, and during the years in Buffalo, his work was exhibited at the gallery he had so loved as a child, the Albright Art Gallery.

School during the day while working toward his MA in art at Kent State in the evenings. Avis and Richard, with the help of an architect, designed their first home - a saltbox style house in Hudson, Ohio, and in 1958, their third son, Max (after Max Beckmann) was born.

Richard enjoyed the consistency of teaching highschool as well as the time it gave him to paint on the weekends and during the summer months. In 1961, he received his MA and his daughter, Claire, was born. With a fourth child, the house was much too small, and Avis and Richard began designing their second home. An admirer of MCM architecture, Richard’s favorite example of the style was the Farnsworth house – he often spoke of how the concepts behind this architectural style, particularly that of Mies van der Rohe, influenced his painting.

Andres described himself as a 1950’s painter, not fully accepting the designation of ‘Abstract Expressionist’ or ‘Abstract’ he saw his work as an extension of those styles, but rooted in the wider mid-century architectural concept of immersing the individual with nature, and the breakdown of the barrier between interior and exterior spaces. The house Avis and Richard built in 1967, with its open concept, and large glass curtainless windows reflected that concept, and the influence of living in that type of space can be seen in his later works. As Avis liked to say, “The idea is to have the walls be glass, but you need some real walls to have somewhere to hang paintings.”

In this house, Richard developed a style of painting that harkened back to his early years. In his studio, a room in the house with a large window, he would roll out large thin paper - the type used for architectural blueprints on the floor and paint on it. The large rolls of paintings would then be cut into pieces and then glued onto canvas, creating that ‘glow’ of color he admired in Beckmann’s exhibit. These paintings, often with titles such as “Windows” or “Gardens” have transparency that reflects the breaking of interior/ exterior boundaries of mid-century architecture as well as a joy realized in those early words of Carl Gaertner.

In his late life Andres was fond of saying, “I am the wealthiest man in the world, look around, I have everything anybody could want. Look at my wife, my house, and all this art.”

In 1956, the family moved back to the Cleveland area and Richard began teaching art at Lincoln West High 61

Education

Kent State University, M.A. (Art) 1961 Kent State University, B.S. Ed., 1954, Magna Cum Laude U.S. Army, March 1951 to March 1953 Cleveland Institute of Art, B.F.A., 1950 Buffalo Technical High School, 1945, Honors

Teaching

The Cleveland Public Schools, 1955-1983 The Albright Art School of the University of Buffalo, 1954-1955 Classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Western Reserve University and Western Reserve Academy

Awards

Kaleidoscope, Akron, Ohio First Place, Acrylic, 2004 Honorable Mention, 2005 Cleveland Museum of Art - May Shows Special Jury Mention - 1967, 1968, 1974, 1979, 1981, 1984 Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio Fine Arts Exhibition - 1982 Canton Art Institute, All Ohio Shows Second Prize, Painting - 1979 Honorable Mention, Painting - 1977 Canton Art Institute, Fall Shows Honorable Mention, Oil - 1969 Best in Show, Oil - 1968 Honorable Mention, Water Color - 1968 Honorable Mention, Water Color - 1967 Honorable Mention, Oil, Water Color, Drawing - 1965 Best in Show - 1961 Honorable Mention, Prints - 1961 Massillon Museum Purchase Award - 1969 Canton Jewish Community Center Best in Show - 1967 Chesterfield Purchase Award - 1967 Honorable Mention, Graphics - 1960 Akron Art Institute, Spring Shows Two Honor Awards - 1966 Three Honor Awards - 1965

Student Awards

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Kent State University, Independent Student Show Purchase Prize, Oil - 1953 Third Prize, Drawing - 1953 Cleveland Institute of Art Henry G. Keller Award for Excellence in Drawing - 1949 Cleveland Institute of Art, Student Independent Shows First Prize - 1948 Second Prize - 1947 National Scholastic Scholarship Award, 1945 Ingersol Award - 1945

Shows *Richard Andres: Select Works 1950-1975, WOLFS Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio, 2022 12th Annual Juried Exhibition Double Exposure, Pleiades Gallery, New York, NY - 1994 **Avante Gallery, Cleveland - 1990 Andres–A Family Show, The Cain Park Art Gallery, Cleveland Heights - 1986 Cleveland Museum of Art May Shows - 1947-1954, 1956, 1957, 1959-1961, 1964, 1967-1977, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1984 Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cleveland Institute of Art 100 Years - 1982 Erie Fine Art Center, Spring Show - 1982 Canton Art Institute, All Ohio - 1977, 1979, 1981 Beck Center, Lakewood, Ohio, Work by the Andres Family - 1981 Canton Art Institute, The Andres Family Show - 1980 ** Staircase Gallery, Hudson, Ohio - 1976 Blossom Music Center - 1976 ** Dobama Theater, Cleveland, 1972, 1974 * Cleveland Institute of Art, Distinguished Alumnus - 1974 Cleveland Institute of Art Alumni Invitational - 1973 Kent State Alumni Invitational - 1973 Arts International, Cleveland - 1971 Cuyahoga Community College Invitational - 1970 Akron Area Artists Invitational, Massillon Museum - 1970 Cleveland Museum of Art Traveling Shows - 1947-1951, 1960-1961, 1966-1969 * Intown Club, Cleveland - 1967 * Maione College, Canton - 1966 Akron Art Institute - 1965, 1966 * Canton Art Institute - 1964 Contemporary American Water Color Invitational, Grand Rapids, Michigan - 1963 *Kent State University - 1961 Cleveland Institute of Art Faculty Shows - 1956-1958 Albright Art Gallery, 21st Western N.Y. Exhibition - 1955 Albright Art School Faculty Exhibit, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo - 1954 Butler Art Institute, New York Show, Youngstown, Ohio - 1950 **Karamu Theater, Cleveland - 1950 *0ne Man Shows **Two Person Shows

Works Represented in the Following Collections Cleveland Museum of Art Massillon Art Museum ARTneo: The Museum of Northeast Ohio Art Kent State University Western Reserve Academy Central National Bank of Cleveland Cleveland Trust Company U.S. Time Corporation Ferro Corporation The Chesterfield of Cleveland Samuel Moore & Company - Eaton Corporation Hiram College

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Acknowledments WOLFS

The Andres family Professor Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University WOLFS staff: Megan Arner Arianne Flick Kristen Newell Christopher Richards, Context Fine Art Clara Wolverton, Cerulean Conservation, LLC Matthew Nunes, Videographer Art Etc. Picture Framing To all those, anonymous and otherwise, who have selflessly contributed to this worthy endeavor – thank you.

Claire Andres, 1962

“There are people who do art, but [Andres] was an artist in his being. His entire persona was that…”

- Claire Andres