Artist Seven: Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin was a Canadian-born American painter, born in 1912; she was often referred to as a minimalist painter, however she considered herself to be an abstract expressionist.  In 1931 Martin moved from Vancouver to the United States.  Before becoming a citizen in 1950 she studied at Western Washington University College of Education, then received her B.A. from Teachers College at Columbia University, she then studied at the University of New Mexico before returning to Columbia University to earn her M.A.  After her education Agnes Martin moved to New York City where she held exhibitions in the late 1950s at Betty Parsons Gallery.  Her first works included a few self-portraits and watercolor landscapes among biomorphic paintings in subdued colors, but later she did her best to seek out these works and destroy them.  Rothko was one of the artists that Martin regularly praised, in her eyes he had “reached zero so that nothing could stand in the way of truth”, she too created art with the most reductive elements to encourage a perception of perfection and to emphasize transcendent reality.  Her work is characterized by an emphasis on line, grids and fields of extremely subdued color.  Although her work was placed among the minimalists of the time she had no intension of being among the intellectualism of minimalism but favored instead the personal and spiritual aspect of her work.  After 1967 the spiritual element was much more prevalent which allowed her to classify her work as abstract expressionism.  Martin’s work was only done in black, white and brown before her move to New Mexico, but after that she introduced small amounts of color to her work.  She died at the age of 92 in 2004, and although she is no longer creating art, her art continues to influence and inspire younger artists. 

Artist Six: Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi is an American architect, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the 25^th of June 1925; he is the true founder of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, as well as one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century.  His wife, Denise Scott Brown, is his partner and together they have worked to shape the way that other architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and how it relates to the American built environment.  He attended Princeton University for his undergraduate studies and also received his Masters in Fine Arts from Princeton University in 1950.  The program at Princeton during his years there where a large factor in Venturi’s development to approach architectural theory and design from an analytical stand point rather than a stylistic one.  He worked both in Michigan and Philadelphia before studying in Rome and traveling Europe for two years.  In the mid 1950s Venturi began to teach at the University of Pennsylvania and later at the Yale School of Architecture and in 2003 he was a visiting lecturer with his wife at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.  Although he is also a well know writer, Venturi’s architecture helped to redirect American architecture.  At a time when American architecture was focused on modernism, Venturi introduced a style more focused on the exploratory designs that took from architectural history and allowed the builders and buildings respond to the American city, rather than the city responding to the buildings.  His buildings are based on a simplistic design.  By the 1960s Venturi’s architecture had become a worldwide influence.  He allowed for new ways to embrace and transform the simplistic, typical buildings of the past and created new, decorative and abstract architecture of the future.

Artist Five: Naum Gabo

Naum Gabo, also known as Naum Neemia Pevsner, was born in Russia in 1890.  He grew up one of six children in a Jewish family.  His older brother, Antoine Pevsner was also an artist of the constructivist movement, to avoid confusion Naum changed his name.  Gabo was fluent in German, French and English on top of his native Russian, this allowed him to travel more and become known worldwide.  In 1910 he entered Munich University to study medicine, then the natural sciences, while attending art history lectures.  Two years after starting in Munich he transferred to an engineering school in Munich.  While there he discovered abstract art and met Wassily Kandinsky, by 1913 Gabo joined is brother in Paris.  Due to Gabo’s training in engineering he was able to develop sculptures that had machined elements.  In 1928 Gabo taught at Bauhaus and it was during this time that he designed a fountain in Dresden.  From 1932 to 35 Naum and his brother lived in Paris as members of the Abstraction-Creation group to escape the rise of the Nazis in Germany.  Gabo then moved to England and eventually immigrated with his wife and daughter to America, where he lived until his death in 1977.  The sculpture that Gabo created showed his imaginative and passionate vision through an emotional power.  Because of his experiences living through a revolution, both world wars and having been a Jew fleeing the Nazis, his work was peaceful and ideal.  He looked past the chaos and fear in his life to create art that was fragile and balanced.  His sculpture Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital in London is a perfect example of how he brought together all of his schooling and life experiences to create a piece that shows the beauty in the created.

Artist Four: James Turrell

James Turrell, an Arizona artist, works mainly with light and space.  By age 16 he had his pilot’s license and flew supplies into remote mine sites, he also worked as an aerial cartographer.  In 1965, Turrell received a BA from Pomona College in perceptual psychology.  While in college he also studied mathematics, geology and astronomy, in 1966 he also received a MA degree in art from Claremont Graduate School.  After getting his degree from Claremont, Turrell began to experiment with light.  This was during the time when the Light and Space group of artists was growing in recognition.  He is best known for his work in the Roden Crater, this is different than most of his work because in the crater he has created a naked-eye observatory.  Most of James Turrell’s work encloses the viewer to control their perception of light.  He is also known for his light tunnels and projections that seem to have mass and weight.   His art is not the conventional paint on canvas or pencil on paper, he plays with light and how the viewer perceives it.  This style of art is not what many art enthusiasts expect when going to a gallery, but I find it to be a refreshing break from the norm, allowing a different and new experience each time.

Artist Three: Julian Stanczak

Julian Stanczak, born in Poland in 1928, is now living in Ohio and is seen as an American painter and printmaker.  During World War II Stanczak was put in a Siberian labor camp, while there he permanently lost the use of his right hand, he was right handed.  In 1942 he escaped the labor camp and joined the Polish army-in-exile in Persia, once he deserted the army he lived in a Polish refugee camp in Uganda.  While at the refugee camp he learned to write and more importantly to paint left-handed.  He moved to the United States in 1950 and moved to Ohio.  He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1954, after that he studied at the School of Arts and Architecture at Yale University.  While at Yale, Stanczak studied under Josef Albers and Conrad Marca-Relli, and in 1956 he received his Master of Fine Arts.  In 1964 Julian Stanczak had his first major show in New York at the Martha Jackson Gallery.  His show, Julian Stanczak: Optical Paintings, was when the are movement, Op Art, was coined.    Through his time with Albers, Stanczak uses the structures of color along with repeating forms and geometric structures.  More recently he has been creating large-scale work that consists of square panels on which he looks at variations of hue and chroma in color modulations.  Julian Stanczak’s work is an amazing combination of color and line play.  They are not always easy on the eyes because the interactions between the different colors, hues, and chromas, as well as the position of the forms, makes his art play with the eyes of the viewer.  All of this makes his art so much more visually interesting.