Ocula Conversation Almine Rech-Picasso Goes Global French gallerist Almine Rech-Picasso opened her first space in Asia on Shanghai's historic Bund in July this year, bringing her eponymous gallery's total locations to five. The Shanghai gallery occupies roughly 4,000 square feet on the second floor of the three-storey Amber Building, a beautiful warehouse space, originally occupied by the Central...
Ocula Report From the Gallery to the Streets: Home Works 8 in Beirut 8 Nov 2019 : Nat Muller for Ocula There's an inside joke amongst the team of Ashkal Alwan, The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts: that every time an edition of its biennial forum on cultural practices is planned, a national crisis happens. The eighth edition of Home Works was no different: it opened on 17 October amidst the most devastating wildfires that Lebanon had witnessed...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, and arrived in the United States in 1926 via Hoboken, where he worked as a housepainter. After his move to New York the following year, the artist quickly became part of the city's vibrant art scene, forging friendships with artists and critics such as Arshile Gorky, Thomas Hess, Robert Motherwell, and Harold Rosenberg. In 1963, de Kooning took up full-time residence on the east end of Long Island, New York, a rural location that significantly impacted his painting from that point forward. As part of the New York School, de Kooning painted in a highly gestural and expressive manner using vigorous brushstrokes and vivid colour. He frequently used the female figure as inspiration, although painted it in a way that referenced primitve African art. In 1964 he received one of the greatest distinctions awarded in America, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1970 he began working in sculpture, creating works using bronze. His work is included in The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. He died in Long Island in 1997.
Gagosian 
Related Press Gagosian to go off-piste with first pop-up show during Art Basel The Art Newspaper : 4 June 2019 Last year, Gagosian introduced an innovative virtual online viewing room during Art Basel. This year, the gallery is creating another sales platform during the Swiss fair, this time taking a bricks and mortar approach with an off-site pop-up exhibition titled Continuing Abstraction (10—16 June).
Related Press Painting’s Patriarchal Spirit Hyperallergic : 20 October 2018 LONDON—In 1981, the Royal Academy of Arts in London put on an exhibition of 20th century painting that changed the art world. A New Spirit in Painting was 'a manifesto,' the accompanying catalogue said; it showcased a set of contemporary, mostly European painters, whose work possessed qualities—figurative, narrative, emotional,...
Related Press Tumultuous Absorption Aesthetica Magazine : 13 February 2017 Two or three muted, but skillfully executed, pieces of portraiture slowly lead the viewer to paintings with the merest hint of figures, before dissolving entirely into realms of line, colour, light and rhythm. This is just the first room of the major Abstract Expressionism show at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, fresh from a groundbreaking run at...
Related Press There hasn’t been a major group show of Abstract Expressionism in Europe since 1959 Independent : 22 September 2016 In 1959, New York's Museum of Modern Art sent an exhibition to eight European cities—concluding at London's Tate gallery—with the calmly self-assured title of The New American Painting. It featured 17 artists, most of whom were associated with Abstract Expressionism, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz...
