Abstract Expressionism
COUR T H O U S E G A L L E R Y FINE AR T
Abstract Expressionism
THREE MAINE ARTISTS
Harold Garde
Stephen Pace
George Wardlaw
Although it was soon to be superseded by an accelerating
succession of artistic movements, Abstract Expressionism, to
which these ar tists were initially drawn, was a watershed in
20th centur y ar t in that it broke down previous constraints,
put a premium on individual expression, and set in motion
the “no holds barred” trajector y of recent ar t.
–Maritca Sawin
HAROLD GARDE Winter Evening, Urban 1968 acr ylic on board 48 x 48 inches
NEXT PAGE GEORGE WARDLAW Color in the Hills 1960 oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches
Abstract Expressionism
THREE MAINE ARTISTS
Harold Garde Stephen Pace George Wardlaw
Essay by Martica Sawin
AUGUST 29
-
SEPTEMBER 25, 2010
cour t str e e t e l l s w o r t h m a i n e 0 4 6 0 5
c o u r t h o u s e g a l l e r y. c o m
207 667 6611
Abstract Expressionism by Mar tica Sawin
The three artists whose abstract works are shown in this exhibition,
were a par t of the fabric of American society, had established
Harold Garde, Stephen Pace, and George Wardlaw, are representative
the Federal Art Project to provide employment for artists. This
of a generation that grew up in the Great Depression, ser ved in
enabled thousands of artists all over the country to continue their
the armed forces in World War II, and, thanks to the veterans
work and resulted in a new solidarity in the artists’ community as
educational benefits provided by the G.I. Bill of Rights, were able
they worked together on public projects and formed organizations
to attend art school and make art their lifetime profession.
to negotiate with the Works Progress Administration.
Coincidentally all three, in different locales, responded to the
challenge of the adventurous new development in American ar t,
To a certain extent then, the post-war artist could be experimental
emerging in the later 1940s, that became known as Abstract
and adventurous, yet feel par t of a network of similarly daring
Expressionism.
individuals who might work alone in their studios but could find
suppor t via the Ar tists Club, the Cedar Tavern, cooperative
They entered into an art world that had felt the impact of the
galleries, and dozens of proliferating college art departments
European refugee artists in the U.S. during the war years, among
across the United States. Thanks to the exponential increase in
them Mark Chagall, Fernand Leger, the non-objective painter
the practice of awarding college and university degrees for studio
Mondrian, and the reconstituted Surrealist group, including Max
art, each of the three veterans included here was able to support
Ernst, Andre Masson, and Yves Tanguy, as well as a half dozen
himself by teaching while continuing to develop as an artist.
knowledgeable ar t dealers who had fled Europe before the
outbreak of war. Equally impor tant was a legacy from the
1930s when the Federal government, recognizing that ar tists
Untitled Abstract 52-50
1952
oil on canvas
30 x 16 inches
Harold Garde
A native New Yorker and the son of immigrant parents from
Central Europe, Harold Garde (b. 1923) graduated from the
prestigious Stuyvesant High School and attended City College
where he was a science major with little familiarity with art. He
enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1942 and was stationed in the
Philippines. During his three years in the army he felt that his
horizons broadened as he met and gravitated toward people
interested in the arts. Learning that the G.I. Bill would provide him
with an opportunity to continue his education, he decided to enroll
at the University of Wyoming in Laramie with the intention of
becoming a teacher. Since he had already accumulated a number
of academic credits in his pre-war education, he signed up for a
studio ar t course. It happened that the chair of the ar t depar tment was George McNeil, a veteran of the Hans Hofmann School
and the Federal Art Project and a forceful expressionist painter.
The encounter with McNeil determined Garde’s commitment to
ar t and star ted him on the way to becoming an expressionist
himself. After a year McNeil was replaced by the non-objective
painter Ilya Bolotowsky from whom Garde learned about structure
and composition, something that still underlies even the most
wildly gestural of his works. In 1948 Leon Kelly joined the faculty,
1903
bringing with him strong surrealist tendencies and a first-hand
1959
acr ylic on board
36 x 48 inches
Scaped 1959 oil with fabric on board 36 x 47 inches
Private Garde in the army during World War II.
Strappos
knowledge of the Surrealist refugee artists who showed at the
Julian Levy Gallery where Kelly also exhibited. This meant that
compressed into Garde’s studio experience were three of the
major forces in the art of the day: expressionism, abstraction, and
surrealism, all of which can be seen interacting in his uninhibited
approach to painting. To complete his teaching credentials, Garde
then attended Columbia Teachers College where he was very
much in touch with the new vigorous, open-ended approach to
painting that was on the rise at mid-century. His painting of the
1950s is instantly recognizable as belonging to that period of
Late Summer
artistic upheaval. The strong, angular brushstrokes, warring darks
1971
acr ylic on board
48 x 72 inches
and lights, scrawled letters and numbers, ephemeral figures, and
sustained intensity of execution all are hallmarks of that time
when artists faced an empty canvas and followed where the
OPPOSITE
impulsive action of their brushstrokes led. Now retired after a long
Stillife
1967
teaching career Garde continues to paint with expressionist force
acr ylic on board
in his studios in Belfast, Maine and New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
48 x 24 inches
Morning
1969
Standing
1973
acr ylic on board
acr ylic on board
48 x 24 inches
48 x 72 inches
Stephen Pace
Stephen Pace (b. 1918) was born in Missouri and grew up on
subsistence farms there and in Indiana. There were no books or
art works in their homestead nor was blank paper available, but
he painted with coffee on the glass panes of the barn windows.
His mother whose colorful patchwork quilts, made from worn out
clothing, still embellish his home, saw a notice for WPA ar t
classes in nearby New Harmony, and convinced fifteen year old
Stephen to enroll. He proved to be adept at drawing as well as
skilled in architectural rendering which landed him work in an
architect’s office, and his accomplished watercolors were
exhibited in New Harmony in 1939. Pace and his three brothers
were all in the army by 1942 (“That’s when Dad finally got a
tractor,” he recalled) but even overseas, stationed in England, he
managed to make watercolors of local surroundings and show
his work on the base. Landing shor tly after the first Normandy
beachhead, his division was fighting its way across France when
he was in an accident and ended up with a broken leg and pleurisy
in a hospital in Paris. Painting by the Seine one day he met
Gertrude Stein who took him to visit Picasso. Released from the
army he cast about for an alternative to going back to work on the
farm and decided to take advantage of the new G.I. Bill and attend
Untitled Abstract 55-25
detail, 1955
oil on canvas
22 x 30 inches
Untitled Abstract #61-100 1961 oil on canvas 48 x 64 inches
Stephen at his studio
in Stonington, Maine.
Untitled Abstract 1953 oil on canvas 16 x 27 inches
an art school about to open in San Miguel Allende, Mexico. There
he met Milton Aver y who was to remain a close friend and
impor tant influence. While painting the local scene in Mexico he
found that he was more interested in the shapes emerging on
his canvas than in realistic detail and abstraction took over.
Returning to the United States he tossed a coin in a New Orleans
bus station to decide whether to head east or west. East won
and Pace entered into the downtown New York scene, becoming
friends with Franz Kline, and registering at Hans Hofmann’s
School. With time still left on the G.I. Bill he enrolled at the
Academie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and traveled in Italy.
Untitled Abstract 57-07
1957
oil on canvas
50 x 36 inches
The large gestural abstractions that he produced in the 1950s fit
The large gestural abstractions
that Pace produced in the
1950s fit right in with the
ethos of the New York School,
yet among the torrent of
brushstrokes there were
occasional intimations of
a landscape experience in
qualities of light, density,
and color.
Untitled Abstract 60-A21 1960 oil on canvas 48 x 72 inches
Pam with Wine 1984 oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches
right in with the ethos of the New York School, yet among the
torrent of brushstrokes there were occasional intimations of a
landscape experience in qualities of light, density, and color. After
a decade of exhibiting with the Abstract Expressionists in major
New York galleries Pace found nature forcing its way back into his
paintings and since that time his colorful gestural works have
been devoted to recollected scenes from his Indiana childhood on
the farm and activity on the Maine water front. For many years he
Untitled Abstract 57-08 1957 oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches
divided his time between Stonington, Maine, Manhattan, and
Washington D.C. where he taught at American University. Now in
his nineties and still painting he has returned to the locale of his
youth and lives in New Harmony, Indiana.
George Wardlaw
Like Pace, George Wardlaw (b. 1927) grew up poor on a
Mississippi farm without any exposure to art either at home or in
school. Two vivid memories that have stayed with him are of
watching his mother lay out patchwork quilts, obser ving color,
pattern, and the process of organization, and watching his father
who, in addition to digging roads on the WPA, bred dogs for quail
hunting, fill out the dogs’ registration papers, adding spots in the
right places to give them identity. Wardlaw served in the Navy
medical corps, completing the core medical training program, and
was stationed at a number of different locations in the U.S.
“Being in the Service got me off the farm,” he recollects. “It opened
my eyes and head as I traveled around the country.” Evidently he
must have done some drawing earlier in his schoolbooks because
right after leaving the service he ran into a friend who asked, “Are
Hospital Corpsman George Wardlaw
at the Naval Medical Center in San
Diego, California.
you still drawing?” His friend’s suggestion that he study at the
Memphis Academy of Art sent Wardlaw off to the Veteran’s
Administration and in two weeks he found himself enrolled at
the Academy. The faculty took an interest in him and were very
supportive; he read Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art
which influenced him profoundly, and when an abstract painter
from New York joined the faculty, he turned to non-objective art,
winning an award for both his representational and his abstract
Mountain Man
1960
oil on canvas
42 x 48 inches
Limb with Four Apples 1966 oil on canvas 29 x 90 inches
In his series Apples Works II, Wardlaw began using simple, flat shapes paintined with
primary colors. “The paintings were simplified, the shapes were flattened, the painterly
brush disappeared and the dominant issues became solid shape and unmodulated color.
The outlines of the apple were in biomorphic silhouette, like an echo of Matisse cutouts
or Arp.” –Hugh Davies, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
work. “I wanted to do something different in my life. I’ve always
been a spiritually concerned person and for me abstract art is an
embodiment of the spiritual.” In 1951 he moved to the University
of Mississippi where he was teaching. He later enrolled in the
MFA program and studied with Jack Tworkov in 1954 and with
David Smith in 1955. Asked whether he did sculpture with Smith,
he replied that he had always worked three dimensionally as well
as in two dimensions and that he had become skilled in metalsmithing and had established a program in metal working at the
University of Mississippi. Through Tworkov he became familiar
with Abstract Expressionism and his painting of the 1950s
reflects that movement’s forceful gestural paint application and
all-over energizing of the canvas surface. Another significant factor in his formation was living in Oxford, Mississippi, devouring
Faulkner’s writing and admiring his ability to focus on the local
and regional while giving it universal resonance. Wardlaw feels
George Wardlaw working on a
large canvas for his Apple Series
during the late 1960s.
Yellow Sunset 1997 acr ylic on wood panel 48 x 72 inches
Wardlaw’s shaped paintings from 1999-1980 are abstract paintings primarily
about a coastal environment.
that Maine, where he has spent many summers and has made
many photographs of its coast, has served something of the
same purpose for him, “as a spiritual magnet” and a visual theme
which can be used to point to other meanings. After teaching and
at the same time earning a degree at the University of
Mississippi, Wardlaw taught at Louisiana State and was at the
State University of New York in New Palz when Tworkov invited him
to join the faculty at Yale. In 1968 he moved to the University of
Massachusetts where he chaired the art department until his
retirement in 1990. His works in the present exhibition are landMountain Climb
scape-inspired, but the compositions reflect an abstract underpin-
1960
oil on canvas
ning and the paint is loosely brushed on in shimmering color
42 x 47 inches
areas that recall Philip Guston’s abstractions of the 1950s.
Hudson Hills
1959
oil on canvas
67 x 61 inches
Across the River and to the Sea
1959
oil on canvas
64 x 59 inches
OPPOSITE
Hill and Sea
1959
oil on canvas
58 x 64 inches
Although it was soon to be superseded by an accelerating
succession of artistic movements, Abstract Expressionism, to
which these ar tists were initially drawn, was a watershed in
20th century art in that it broke down previous constraints, put a
premium on individual expression, and set in motion the “no
holds barred” trajectory of recent art. And it drew worldwide
attention to previously ignored American ar t, as befitted the
countr y that had emerged from World War II as a pre-eminent
power.
How does one account for the attraction that a free-wheeling
approach to painting held for this generation of veterans? First
of all hundreds of thousands of Americans had been taken from
rural and small town life and sent across oceans to wage all-out
war in places they had never heard of, dislodging traditional
Untitled Abstract 55-25
assumptions and expectations. Secondly, two terrifying visions
1955
had opened before them—the absolute evil humans were capable
oil on canvas
of when the grim evidence of the Holocaust emerged and the
22 x 30 inches
knowledge, brought home by Hiroshima, that the human race now
Untitled Abstract 59-08
held the capacity for its total destruction. Along with the latter
detail, 1959
went an awareness, brought home by the atom bomb, that matter
oil on canvas
was synonymous with energy. These factors were not necessarily
68 x 40 inches
uppermost in consciousness, but they mitigated against a return
to the mentality and the artistic styles of the 1930s.
HAROLD GARDE Tower detail 1967 acr ylic on board 72 x 48 inches
Critic and art historian Martica Sawin attended the University of Iowa when the art department
was filled with returning veterans. In the 1950s she covered the New York galleries as a contributing
editor of ARTS and correspondent for Art International. For thirty years she taught and chaired the
art history department at Parsons School of Design. She is the author of Surrealism in Exile and
the Beginning of the New York School, and of many monographs on contemporar y artists, among
them Stephen Pace.
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