Richard Pousette-Dart: 1930s » The Drawing Center
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October 2 through December 20, 2015
Main Gallery
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 1, 6–8pm
The Drawing Center will present Richard Pousette-Dart: 1930s the first in-depth consideration of Richard Pousette-Dart’s drawings from the 1930s, a period when the artist pursued directly-carved sculpture, yet also painted, experimented with photography, and created numerous works on paper. These early drawings explore Pousette-Dart’s concerns about sculpture and working three-dimensionally, and many reference the figure through full-frontal or profile views as they consider space, orientation, and volume. Additionally, numerous studies allude to dance, animal forms, masks, and heads, and many examples offer an accumulation of abstract and geometric forms, particularly for his brasses—small sculptures meant to be “held in the hand.” The exhibition will include approximately eighty works from the 1930s including drawings, notebooks, and brasses. Curated by Brett Littman, Executive Director.
Best known as a founding member of the New York School of painting, Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992) initially pursued a career as a sculptor. The son of Nathaniel Pousette, a painter, art director, educator, and art writer, and Flora Louise Dart, a poet and musician, Pousette-Dart was raised in an environment surrounded by music, poetry, and the visual arts, and began drawing and painting by the age of eight. Introduced to African, Oceanic, and Native American art by his father, Pousette-Dart made frequent visits to the Museum of Natural History as a young man. In 1938, he forged a close friendship with John Graham, whose writings were closely aligned with his own interests in spiritual concerns and so-called primitive art. Throughout the 1930s, Pousette-Dart was most entranced by the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, whose abstract sculptures, drawings, and forms in brass greatly informed the orientation of the young American artist.
ABOUT RICHARD POUSETTE-DART
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on June 8, 1916, Richard Pousette-Dart was raised in Westchester County, New York. He briefly attended Bard College but left to pursue art on his own in New York City where he became part of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. During his career, Pousette-Dart created a lexicon of biomorphic and totemic forms that provided rich visual and symbolic sources that he would explore throughout his long career in a multitude of painterly approaches. In 1982, Pousette-Dart was chosen by the International Committee of the Venice Biennale to exhibit in the main pavilion. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions including the Whitney Museum of American Art (1963, 1974, 1998); Museum of Modern Art (1969); Metropolitan Museum of Art (1997); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy (2007), and most recently, Full Circle: Works on Paper by Richard Pousette-Dart at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2014).
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Thursday, December 10 at 6:30 pm
Catalog essayists, Charles Duncan and Lowery Stokes Sims, discuss the works of Richard Pousette-Dart from the 1930s.
PUBLICATION
To accompany Richard Pousette-Dart: 1930s, The Drawing Center will produce an extensively illustrated four-color Drawing Papers featuring an introduction by Drawing Center Executive Director Brett Littman and essays by Charles Duncan, Executive Director of the Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation and Lowery Stokes Sims, Curator Emerita of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. The catalogue will be sold through The Drawing Center’s bookstore and website, and be distributed by Distributed Art Publishers.
CREDITS
Richard Pousette-Dart: 1930s, is made possible by the support of The Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart and Pace Gallery.
ABOUT THE DRAWING CENTER
The Drawing Center, a museum in Manhattan’s SoHo district, explores the medium of drawing as primary, dynamic, and relevant to contemporary culture, the future of art and creative thought. Its activities, which are both multidisciplinary and broadly historical, include exhibitions; Open Sessions, a curated artist program encouraging community and collaboration; the Drawing Papers publication series; and education and public programs.
LOCATION, HOURS & ACCESSIBILITY
35 Wooster Street between Broome and Grand Streets in SoHo, New York.
Gallery hours are Wednesday-Sunday 12pm–6pm, Thursday, 12pm–8pm.
Tickets: $5 Adults, $3 Students and seniors, Children under 12 are free, and free admission Thursdays 6-8pm.
The Drawing Center is wheelchair accessible.
212.219.2166 | info@drawingcenter.org | drawingcenter.org
