Force of Nature
February 17, 2012 – April 22, 2012
Force of Nature features two new exhibitions inspired by the natural world. Elaine Kurtz: A Retrospective celebrates the Philadelphia-born
artist's geometric works and nature-based abstractions.
Elemental: Nature as Language in the Works of Philadelphia Artists brings together a diverse group of artists for whom nature has spurred creativity in form, style, and composition.
Elaine Kurtz: A Retrospective
Kuch Gallery and Balcony Gallery
Elaine Kurtz's works from the 1970s are geometric abstractions that explore
perception, optical effects, and the illusions of color. With her Alluvial paintings
from the 1990s, Kurtz began creating dense canvases with tumultuous
surfaces, conveying the energy and forces of nature. Loaded with layers of
paint, sand, mud, pulverized mica and quartz, Kurtz's works shimmer and
possess an intense physicality.
About the Artist: Elaine Kurtz
Born in Philadelphia in 1928, Elaine Kurtz graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial
Art (now the University of the Arts) and studied modernism at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pa.,
before enrolling in Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran College of Art and Design. In the 1970s she began
exhibiting solo works at acclaimed Philadelphia galleries such as the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Gross
McCleaf Gallery and Locks Gallery, as well as multiple spaces in New York, where she would later
relocate with her husband, Jerome, in 1988. She died in 2003.
Along with her studies in color theory, grid patterns and ambiguity through atmosphere, Kurtz spent her professional career incorporating natural elements into her clean, meticulous works of art. For Kurtz and for many artists, there is joy in the density, elegance, crudity and infinite variety of natural materials and the treatment of paint as a natural substance. This investigation continues in the work of numerous contemporary artists in Philadelphia who are also committed to exploring the degree to which nature can be compromised.
Image top: Elaine Kurtz, 1928 – 2003. X Extended, 1976. Acrylic on canvas, 51 x 51 in. Collection of Jerome Kurtz. Image middle: Elaine Kurtz, 1928 – 2003. Untitled, 2002. Sand, pebbles, mica, copper, and acrylic on vinyl-backed cotton, on canvas, 44 x 34 in. Collection of Jerome Kurtz. Image right: Courtesy of Jerome Kurtz.
Elemental: Nature as Language in the Works of Philadelphia Artists
Antonelli I and II Galleries, Corridor
Gallery, and Schnader Gallery
Elemental brings together works
by Philadelphia artists for whom
nature is an inspiration. Elegant,
minimal, controlled, and sometimes
austere, the works of art in
the exhibition offer a variety of
potent evocations of the natural world.
Artists include Edna Andrade, Steven
Baris, Helen Bershad, Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz, Astrid Bowlby, Frank
Bramblett, Diane Burko, Thomas Chimes, Michael Ciervo, Murray Dessner, Stephen
Estock, Kevin Finklea, John Formicola, Neysa Grassi, Ana B. Hernandez,
Charles Kaprelian, Elaine Kurtz, Samantha Mitchell, Elizabeth Osborne, Keith
Ragone, Warren Rohrer, Kevin Strickland, and Dina Wind.
Image: Elizabeth Osborne (b. 1936). White Pond, 2006. Oil on canvas, 36 x 38 in. Courtesy Locks Gallery.
