The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum Exhibition Making It Last: Sustainable Fashion in Victorian America
May 19 – November 6, 2022
295 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT
www.LockwoodMathewsMansion.com

Florence Griswold Museum Presents Dana Sherwood:
Animal Appetites and other Encounters in Wildness
May 21 – September 18
96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, Connecticut
FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org

860.434.5542
Dana Sherwood, The Confectionery Lives of Artists and Other Organisms, 2021.
Resin, clay, glass bell jars with snails, natural material, and cake.
Courtesy of the artist and Denny Dimin Gallery, New York.
Photograph by Paul Mutino

Wolfs Gallery – Richard Andres Selected Works 1950 – 1975
June 09 – August 20
wolfsgallery.com

CLEVELAND, OHIO — Wolfs will present the exhibition and sale “Richard Andres: Selected Works 1950-1975,” featuring the early works of American abstract expressionist Richard Andres (1927-2013). The show will be on view June 9-August 20.

Richard Andres was an odd combination of an artistic hermit and a figure on top of the latest developments on the contemporary scene. After studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art on a National Scholastic scholarship, Andres immersed himself in painting, spending off-hours at the Cleveland Museum, focusing on artists such as Van Gogh and Matisse. When asked to describe his art, Andres struggled. “It’s hard to describe art. Art is something that’s there, to look at. So, words are very difficult. Essentially, the closest I can come is to say I’m a 1950s painter. The ‘50s was sort of an attitude toward art. It was going to be big. It was going to be strong. This great big group of painters had this attitude toward painting and it’s hard to pin it down because each painter was different. It really is a style that’s hard to define but the term ‘abstract expressionism’ is often used.”

According to 60’s critic Helen Borsick, “Technically, his paintings are abstractions, but that is only part of the story. Andres’ complex style of composition — strong in design and drawing — involves compartmentalizing the canvas with favorite signs, figurative allusions and symbols. Any degree of familiarity with his canvases develops recognition of his painting language and repeated forms as well as of the endless nuances of color tints and overpaint and underpainting methods.”

Some of Andres’ inspiration came from other artists, once stating that Edward Munch, Emile Nolde and Max Beckmann ranked within his top ten most admired painters. While often being his own worst critic, Andres grew content and more relaxed later in life, saying, “For years, I’d do a painting and say, ‘But it’s not good enough. You try to achieve something and you overachieve it but it’s still not good enough. I finally did a painting and looked at it and said, That is good enough.’ From that point on, the older paintings got better in my own mind.”

While with his finger always on the pulse of his more famous contemporaries, Andres was content to simply produce, preferring to avoid the limelight.

Director Michael Wolf of Wolfs describes his discovery of this trove of “masterful abstraction expressionist works” as “a rare and wondrous event,” and comments that it evokes “the heady times of the midcentury American art world.”

A fully illustrated catalog with more than 50 works, including an essay by Dr Henry Adams accompanies the exhibition and can be purchased for $20 post-paid.

For additional information, www.wolfsgallery.com or 216-721-6945.

Richard Andres (American, 1927-2013) L.S.F., acrylic on canvas, 48.5 x 70 inches

2022 DownEast Art & Antiques Show
August 3 – 5
George Stevens Academy Blue Hill, Maine
www.georgestevensacademy.org/PreviewParty
Preview Party on August 2