Exhibition News: Moskowitz at Peter Freeman, Inc (Mar 14)
Robert Moskowitz, “Wrigley Building (Chicago),” 1975, acrylic and latex on canvas, 90 x 75 in (228.4 x 190.5 cm)
Robert Moskowitz: Paintings and Drawings from Four Decades
curated by Dieter Schwarz
14 March – 16 May 2024
Opening reception Thursday, 14 March, 6–8pm
Peter Freeman, Inc. is pleased to present Robert Moskowitz’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, curated by Dieter Schwarz, who writes: Robert Moskowitz has created an oeuvre that is painterly through and through, and at the same time possesses immense pictorial power. The selection of paintings and drawings in this exhibition makes it possible to trace some of Moskowitz’s motifs over an extended period of time.
In contrast to the imagery of Pop Art, Moskowitz’s images have a completely private character. Even the twin towers of the former World Trade Center, which he first painted in the late 1970s and revisited over the years, became a personal metaphor for him. Through his painterly treatment, Moskowitz reduces the image to its essential form and to its essential content, creating a particular physicality. This can be seen, for example, in the relationship between the image transformed into a silhouette to the color and format of the horizontally or vertically expanding picture surface. The image is embedded in it, waiting to be discovered by the viewer.
Moskowitz’s images possess a density and intensity that allows him to reproduce them in ever new forms over the years—be it on paper or on canvas. The subtle variations of medium—oil paint, pastel, graphite—and format express subtle variations of mood through the same image. In his studio, Moskowitz installed a large number of drawings, which mainly show iterations of the twin towers and the Flatiron Building. This wall of drawings, which is impressive due to the range of tonalities, has been reconstructed for the exhibition.
The room of paintings features a small selection of motifs: the Wrigley Building from Chicago, which Moskowitz painted from an advertising image, the Red Cross he glimpsed in a film with Bill Murray whom he admires, the Tsunami wave, and finally the man jumping into the depths from a mural in Pompeii. Moskowitz chose these images intuitively. In the course of his practice, which takes on obsessive traits through repetition and duration, both their physical presence and their enigmatic appearance become clearer. But the material beauty of the surfaces is only an attractive illusion because, as Moskowitz said in an interview, the images are existential: “what the picture is saying is not beautiful. It’s about being here.”
Robert Moskowitz (b. 1935, Brooklyn) lives in New York City. Moskowitz started to show in 1962 with Leo Castelli Gallery, later showing with, among others, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco; Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles; Blum Helman Gallery, New York; and Lawrence Markey, San Antonio, Texas. Notable solo exhibitions include The Clocktower, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York (1977); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1981, touring to: Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York); Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (1981, with Susan Rothenberg and Julian Schnabel, toured to: Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany; Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Humlebæk, Denmark); University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley (1986), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (1989, toured to: La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, California, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York); and Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (1989). Group exhibitions include The Art of Assemblage, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1961); Black, White, and Grey, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (1964); New Image Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1978); and An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1984).
Dieter Schwarz (b. 1953, Zürich) was the director of Kunstmuseum Winterthur from 1990 to 2017. He is now an independent curator and author, based in Zürich.