Peggy Guggenheim Collection
From Gesture to Form. Postwar European and
American Art from the Schulhof Collection
At the Peggy
Guggeneheim Collection, until March 18, From Gesture to Form. Postwar European and American Art from the Schulhof
Collection is curated by Grazina
Subelyte and Karole P. B. Vail. In
2012, the late Rudolph B. and Hannelore B. Schulhof bequeathed eighty
works of their postwar European and American art collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to be
housed at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. This exhibition is a unique opportunity
to view the Schulhof Collection nearly in its entirety.
Carl Andre - The Way West (Uncarved Blocks) – 1975
Copyright Estate
of Joan Mitchell – courtesy PGC - Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York,
Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection, bequest of Hannelore B.
Schulhof, 2012
Peggy Guggenheim
Collection
From Gesture to Form.
Postwar European and American Art from the Schulhof Collection
Privileging formal artistic developments, this
presentation provides insights into the art movements and styles that evolved
and matured towards the end of World War
II through to the 1980s. Abstract imagery,
as a quest into issues of color, form and space as well as their
interrelationships, characterized the postwar decades, becoming the foundation
of the Schulhof Collection.
Joan Mitchell – Composition – 1962
oil on canvas
oil on canvas
Fondazione
Palazzo Albizzini-Collezione Burri, Città di Castello - copyright SIAE 2019 – courtesy PGC - Solomon
R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof
Collection, bequest of Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012
Alberto Burri – White B –
1965
plastic, acrylic paint, vinavil, “combustione” on cellotex
plastic, acrylic paint, vinavil, “combustione” on cellotex
“Art is almost like a religion for me. It is what I believe in. It is
what gives my life a dimension beyond the material world we live in. I look for
the work and the commitment of the artist, someone who speaks for me, or
expresses and interprets something of our time that reaches me”.
Hannelore
B. Schulhof
Hannelore and Rudolph Schulhof with
Alberto Burri - Rome 1965
Karole P. B. Vail
co-curator and director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Eduardo Chillida – Meeting Place – 1964
Carl Andre - The Way West (Uncarved Blocks) – 1975
co-curator and director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Marino Marini –
Gertrude – 1952
Afro Basaldella – Yellow
Country – 1957
Tidbit – Afro: The
Schulhofs first met Afro at the Venice Biennale
in 1956, when he received the Grand Prize for best Italian
painter. Afro deployed post-Cubist aesthetics, indebted to collage
compositions. The forms in Yellow Country (1957) linger on the border between pure abstraction and traces of
figuration. Its underlying luminosity and title were probably inspired by the
radiant atmosphere and pictorial tradition of Venice, where he studied
art and later taught mosaic.
Tidbit – Marini: The triumphant horse in Gertrude (1952) symbolizes an uncontrollable
life force, stronger than humanity itself. It was named after the art collector
Gertrude Bernoudy, a friend of Marini and an ardent supporter of
his work.
Photograph and copyright - Manfredi Bellati
“What is picturesque disturbs me. It is where the
picturesque is absent that I am in a state of constant amazement.”
Jean Dubuffet - 1945
Jean Dubuffett –
Logogriph of Blades – March 31 – 1969
Tidbit – Dubuffet: For Dubuffet, such altered images of
commonplace items stands for how they appeared in one’s mind. He experimented
with this decorative style in
architectural projects and sculpture, as in Logogriph of Blades (1969).
As in a word puzzle (logogriph), the ‘blades’ in this sculpture are scrambled,
resembling proliferating cells.
Jasper Johns – Three Flags – 1960
Tidbit – Johns: In 1990, J. Carter
Brown, Director of the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., wrote to Hannelore and Rudolph
Schulhof: “Your drawing is exceptional for both its unique composition and
calligraphic beauty. It is, perhaps, Johns’ most exquisite ‘portrait’ of our flag.” Before
entering the Schulhof Collection, Three
Flags belonged to the art dealer and collector Ileana Sonnabend.
Agnes
Martin – Untitled #16 – 1960 ca.
Agnes
Martin – Untitled #31 – 1960
Tidbits – Martin: Once at a reception, Martin approached Mrs. Schulhof
and asked her whether she owned any of her works. Mrs. Schulhof replied:
“Yes, ten of them.” “Then you must be Mrs. Schulhof,” responded Martin,
attesting that the Schulhofs were well known for their admiration of Martin’s
works. They visited Martin in Cuba, New
Mexico, where she had settled for the remainder of her life. “You
understand her paintings when you go down there, because of the flatness,” Mrs.
Schulhof once remarked.
Anselm
Keifer – Thy Golden Hair – Margarethe – 1981
painted gelatin silver print
with straw
acrylic -emulsion –
charcoal and straw on burlap
Tidbits – Keifer: Kiefer, based his
painting Thy Golden Hair Margarethe (1981) on a poem entitled Death
Fugue by the Romanian Paul Celan, written in 1945 while he was imprisoned
in a Nazi concentration camp. In this work, he contrasts two women: Margarethe,
an Aryan mistress of
the presiding Gestapo officer, with her cascade of
“golden hair,” and Shulamith, a Jewish worker whose black hair
has turned ashen from burning. He evokes their spirits by alluding to their
hair through straw, set like jail-bars, and black charcoal respectively. Yet,
straw eventually disintegrates, or, when set on fire, turns to ashes. By
suggesting that Margarethe and Shulamith will become the same substance in the
end, Kiefer seems to question Margarethe’s Aryan superiority and purity. The
two women become inextricably and eternally linked. The straw is set against a
bleak German landscape, as if scarring it and obliterating its grandeur.
Kiefer believed that Germany
wounded its civilization by destroying its Jewish population. He considered art
a healing process, and, by alluding to both women, he sought to make the
country united again. With this painting, therefore, Kiefer draws on Celan’s poem as a means to explore
the complex relationships between German self-identity and world history.
Photograph and copyright - Manfredi Bellati
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
From Gesture to Form. Postwar European and
American Art from the Schulhof Collection
The Schulhof
Collection celebrates how, crossing continents and traversing cultures, reflects
a multitude of postwar artistic tendencies and a polyphony of voices. In
addition to examining the art of postwar decades, the display also shed light
on the Schulhofs’ collecting vision and history.
Co-curator Grazina Subelyte
Eduardo Chillida – Meeting Place – 1964
Carl Andre - The Way West (Uncarved Blocks) – 1975
Tidbits – Chillida: Chillida’s training as an architect informed his artistic practice, as he
translated spatial possibilities into lyrical abstract forms, both primordial and modern. In Meeting
Place (1964) several oak columns meet. The emphasis on their surface,
volume and structural complexity reveal Chillida’s architectural sensitivity.
For him, instead of occupying space, each sculpture constitutes a space of its
own, challenging the notions of void and solid and where the two intersect,
which is another likely interpretation of Meeting Place.
Tidbit – Andre: The Way West - Uncarved Block (1975) by the American artist challenges the traditional nature of sculpture: it has the fundamental components of mass, volume and gravity, but it is reduced to two identical cuboids. Any trace of the artist’s creative hand is missing. Its banality and the absence of a base negate the monumentality that has historically been one of the vocations of sculpture. The title reminds us of the epic American western novel by A. B. Guthrie, Jr., turned into a film. The supine trunk of wood in fact ‘points’ westwards.
Tidbit – Andre: The Way West - Uncarved Block (1975) by the American artist challenges the traditional nature of sculpture: it has the fundamental components of mass, volume and gravity, but it is reduced to two identical cuboids. Any trace of the artist’s creative hand is missing. Its banality and the absence of a base negate the monumentality that has historically been one of the vocations of sculpture. The title reminds us of the epic American western novel by A. B. Guthrie, Jr., turned into a film. The supine trunk of wood in fact ‘points’ westwards.
John Chamberlain – Tiny Piece #1 – 1961
Tidbits – Chamberlain: The artist
assembled, bent and compacted colored sheets of steel and other metals from automobiles or, as seems to
be the case here, from a manufactured domestic object. Tiny Piece #1 represents or narrates
nothing; it is inherently poetic—the artist’s personal choice in selecting the
parts he felt “fit” together, determining the aesthetically carefully balanced
outcome.
Alexander
Calder – Red Disc – White Dots on Black – 1960
Ellsworth
Kelly – Black Curve IV – 1972
Tidbits – Kelly: The initial stimulus for the clearly defined
abstract forms of the paintings of the American artist Ellsworth
Kelly stemmed from the primitive, convex and concave, polished shapes of
archaic banner stones and bird stones from the American Midwest. Their
distilled design and their sacred meaning for Native Americans impressed
Kelly, who wanted his art to emanate a comparable mystery and spirituality for
the modern world. Sensitive to his surroundings, Kelly caught visual fragments
and condensed them to pure colors and forms.
Bridget Riley –
Untitled Study for Loss – 1964
Bernd Becher – Hilla Becher
– Framework Houses – Siegen District Germany – 1988
Tidbits - Becher: The husband-and-wife-team strove to highlight the
individuality and sculptural qualities of the buildings they photographed. They
made systematic photographic images, or typologies, of old, often industrial,
architecture and constructions, and referred to them as “anonymous sculptures.”
The houses in Framework
Houses Siegen District, Germany (1988) are from the Siegen
district in South Westphalia, where Bernd Becher was born. The
frontality of the image instills it with minimalism and clarity akin to
diagrams and engineer’s drawings.
Donald Judd – Untitled – 1976
Tidbits – Judd: Judd’s progressions’ develop according to mathematical sequences. The Fibonacci
series, embodied in Untitled
(1976), occurs in natural processes, such as the branching of trees or leaf
patterns. Each number is the sum of the preceding two. When translated into
volume here, the small yellow forms increase rapidly in size. The interstices
follow the same pattern in the opposite direction. Each element has a symbiotic
relationship with other parts and with the whole. While a progression can
develop infinitely, the physical limitations of sculpture define and complete
it. Although Judd’s works are considered Minimalist, he disliked this
label, describing his work as “the simple expression of complex thought.”
Tony Cragg – Bottles on
a Shelf – 1981
“The thing is color, the thing in painting is to find
a way to get color down, to float it, without bogging the painting down in
surrealism, cubism, or systems of structure.... In the best color painting,
structure is nowhere evident, or nowhere self-declaring.”
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland – Birth – 1961
Tidbits – Noland: With controlled use of color, Noland conveyed
a sense of physical space on a flat surface in Birth (1961). He gave this work to art critic Clement Greenberg
upon the birth of Greenberg’s child.
