Marcus Reichert

Marcus Reichert is having an exhibition at the Adelson Galleries Boston - opening this Friday, June 19th and running through August 2nd.

Les Fleurs - Pink
Marcus Reichert
35" x 23"     oil on paper

Marcus has been a good friend since 1966 when we were freshman students at R.I.S.D., and I've written about his paintings before on this blog. He's always worked with integrity and passion, and I find his paintings have the wonderful quality of being simultaneously simple and complex - something that I believe is a fundamental found in life and nature, and by extension a fundamental quality shared by all great art, whether abstract or figurative.

For a number of years now, Marcus and his wife, Sally, have lived in the south of France and perhaps its warmth and sunlight have influenced this series of poetic and lyrical flower paintings. I hope my readers in the Boston area will take the time to see this exhibition.

Les Fleurs - Orange
Marcus Reichert
35" x 23"     oil on paper

Les Fleurs - Blue
Marcus Reichert
35" x 23"     oil on paper

Les Fleurs - Green
Marcus Reichert
35" x 23"     oil on paper

Interior at Night

Interior at Night

52" x 50"     oil on linen     2013

After three months on the easel, Interior at Night is finished and awaiting its frame. This painting is a very different composition for me because the interior space is as visually dominant as the figure; I haven't taken this road in many years and it proved to be a very interesting journey.

The simplicity of the composition and its basic abstract elements -- large areas of "empty" space,  relatively few curved lines to play against the many strong horizontal and vertical lines, hardly any diagonals, and the limited palette -- all made it very challenging to paint. I've also found that relatively simple compositions are often much more demanding than complex compositions ... the latter can have an abundance of colors and forms with which to create a rich visual experience, while the former may have only a few components.

Hopefully the triangular movement of the black notes locked in tightly with the L shape of the reds, together with the nuances and rhythms of the whites, create a complexity out of the painting's apparent simplicity, and combine well with the narrative of the moment.

A last thought: I've always said I'm fundamentally an abstract painter, that the narrative is an important level to be enjoyed or contemplated, but that it's not the only level to see. This painting is perhaps a good example of that point.

simple/complex

Andrew, I’d like to add a painting by Marcus Reichert to your post about how life and nature and great paintings all share the property of being simultaneously simple and complex. 

Tree
22" x 22" 1994
Marcus Reichert
Private Collection, France

This painting by Reichert is like that: deceptively simple and yet extremely complex. His image certainly reduces the tree to a basic shape; one that pretty much anyone anywhere would recognize as a tree.  Simple enough, but it’s also not so easy; as one looks, one finds it’s also incredibly complex and multi-layered. A great painting.

I’d like to add this painting to Grace DeGennaro’s to make the point that this quality is not bound to one way of working, but crosses the entire range of painting styles. As you wrote, from Memling to Pollock.

S.A.

simple/complex

Vestment Series #2
30" x 22"     watercolor     2011
Grace Degennaro

This afternoon, I saw Grace DeGennaro’s exhibition at the Aucocisco Gallery in Portland, Maine. I think her work is extremely beautiful and has the profound quality of being both simple and complex at the same time. That quality reflects a basic truth found in life and nature, and (in my opinion) is also a fundamental property of great art, whether abstract or figurative.

Giotto, Memling, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Gauguin, Degas, Mondrian, Pollock and Motherwell painted in totally different ways, in different times and places, yet their amazing paintings all have this important property of being simultaneously simple and complex. Without that property, a painting can still be charming or well-made, pleasing to look at, but to my way of thinking, it will not have the timeless depth that's a commonality to all great paintings. 

Grace’s exhibition runs until May 4th and is highly recommended.

Here’s a link to her web-site: 
http://www.gracedegennaro.com/

To the Aucocisco Galleries:

http://www.aucocisco.com/