NEW YORK CITY – Salander-O’Reilly Galleries announces an extended public viewing of three Ronnie Landfield paintings in the main lobby of Tower 49 at 12 East 49th Street through July 15.
No stranger to midtown exhibits, Ronnie Landfield had four of his large-scale abstract paintings from the private collection of architect Phillip Johnson displayed in The Four Seasons between 1975 and 1984. There are three monumental works on view at Tower 49 now. “After the Deluge” and “New Day Dawning,” both painted in 2001, and “For William Blake” painted in 1968. Although painted decades ago, “For William Blake” has never been exhibited before – this Landfield painting will make its public debut at Tower 49.
Landfield recalls the impact William Blake’s art and poetry had on his early work: “As a young artist, I was drawn to a search for content and a universal language – in Blake I saw content that went beyond the literalness of his fierce depictions.”
If Blake was one of the authors of Landfield’s inspiration, it was Jackson Pollock who galvanized his technique. In the late fall of 1968, Landfield began to paint large acrylic unstretched canvases using a stain technique on the floor of his studio in lower Manhattan.
“I thought Pollock’s to be the most compelling, enigmatic and inspiring. He relied on spontaneity and his inner aesthetic to guide him. Pollock’s style was completely his own… but his approach and attitude and process, which seemed so logical and natural to me, had a big impact on the way I paint.”
Born in the Bronx in 1947, Landfield attended both the Kansas City and San Francisco Art Institutes and currently teaches at The Arts Students League. Since the early 60s, Landfield has been an integral part of the New York art world and has held 56 solo shows.
The critic Mark Daniel Cohen describes Landfield’s best known abstract landscapes as a unique blending of American romanticism, Mediterranean color and Asian aesthetics. His paintings can be seen in numerous public and private collections including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Hirshhorn Museum, the National Gallery and The Art Institute of Chicago.