Christensen graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in the 1960s but now lives in New York City. He has been the recipient of a National Endowment Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship Theodoran Award and Gottlieb Foundation Grant. His paintings are in the collections of such prominent museums as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His solo and group exhibitions include galleries in cities in Canada, Germany and the United States. This large colorfield painting typifies works created by Christensen during the 1970s. The title literally means ?a large crater,? and when you look at the varying textures on the surface you begin to see some resemblance to volcanic craters. Caldera engages the viewer?s interest as the eye traverses the surface of the canvas seeking out the different textures. The varying textures throughout this alluring work prevent the viewer from getting lost in its overall composition.
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Daffodil
Born in Washington, D.C. in 1920, Davis led an exciting life before pursuing an artistic career. During the 1940’s he published poems, worked as a White House correspondent during the Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman administrations and covered local sports news for the Washington Daily News. After entering psychoanalysis in 1949 he began painting and by the late sixties he could afford to pursue art as his full-time career. Known for his stripe paintings, Davis remarked that the stripe as a subject was the same as a painter?s use of a model for a subject. His obsession with the simple stripe led to his manipulating it in all its variations. He considered himself to be a fanatic in the way that he made a special program out of not deviating from the stripe during his career. He likened his own fanaticism to that of Mondrian, a painter who favored rectilinear grids. ?Actually, I?m interested in color to define intervals, in somewhat the same way a map maker uses color to define states or countries. It?s for definition instead of decoration.? – Gene Davis
Lock
Early in Dill?s career he was employed as a printer at the infamous Gemini G.E.I. in Los Angeles. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were some of the people he encountered during the time that he worked there. In fact, when Dill moved to New York in the early 70s he lived with Jasper Johns for a few months. He learned from Johns to never discard anything. He discovered from this that when things from his older pieces were left lying around his studio, the energy from these works just seemed to seep into the new pieces he was working on. His first break came in 1971 when he was asked to do a one-man show at the legendary Illeana Sonnabend Gallery in New York. Since this time Dill has exhibited in cities as diverse as Paris, Nogoya, Japan, Helsinki, Finland, New York , Seattle and Kansas City. His work is included in the collections of Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Chicago Art Institute, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and many more museums throughout the United States and abroad. Dill developed a dialogue amongst artists during the 70s that resulted in experiments formerly not used traditionally to make art. His influences were Rauschenberg, Keith Sonner, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Irwin, all of whom were using materials from the earth to make their pieces as opposed to easel painting. This abstract triptych by Dill was created from non-traditional art materials. He placed a board right into the work and then removed it. The mark left behind after the removal leaves an expressive mark similar to the gestural markings made by the color field painters. Metaphors associated to the earth can easily be found in this triptych since the materials it is composed of imply the effects of time.
Grosso
This large colorfield painting by Dzubas reflects his early artistic interest in landscape painting. In his early days of painting landscapes he painted with watercolors. When he switched to oils his family frowned upon this because of the expense of the oil paints. Dzubas admits that this attitude by his family fired his drive to succeed at his chosen vocation. In 1965 he began painting with acrylic because he found this type of paint to be more resistant to being manipulated around on the canvas than oil. This characteristic of acrylic allowed the unexpected to emerge in his creations. ?If I can predict the effect too much, then I probably am not supposed to be doing it. I function better if my footing is not too sure, so to speak.? – Friedel Dzubas
Low March
Dzubas narrowly escaped the Gestapo when he moved to London just one week before England declared war on Germany in September 1939. His real destination was New York City so after saving enough money he immigrated to America. After a series of jobs as a fieldhand, delivery man and a house painter, Dzubas met a publishing executive at a party who hired him as a designer for his office in Chicago. After the war, he headed back to New York and worked free-lance at whatever he could in order to spend time on his painting. While living in Manhattan, Dzubas rented a summer home in Connecticut in 1948. He possessed the good fortune of subletting part of his rental house to Clement Greenberg, writer and influential art critic. Greenberg introduced him to Wilhelm de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and many other painters living in New York during that period. In 1951 he met Helen Frankenthaler who was looking for studio space near her own apartment. Dzubas found a loft near her apartment and the two of them shared the space for about a year in 1952. During this same year Helen painted her breakthrough painting, Mountains and Sea. Low March shows evidence of Dzubas? early interest in landscape painting with its colors coming directly from nature. Quoted in an interview in 1982, Dzubas said that ?When I make what they call art, when I?m up at my studio and work away, I?m in one piece.
Gray Plateau
The youngest daughter of a New York State Supreme Court Justice, Helen made her own mark in the world early in her career as a painter. Influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, Helen experimented with techniques of staining a canvas after watching Jackson Pollock using his drip method. In 1952 she made her breakthrough into the art world when she painted Mountains and Sea. In this painting she used her own method of staining an unprimed canvas with paint. In 1958 she married fellow Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell but the marriage ended in 1971. She made sets and costumes for the ballet in the past and taught art over the years. Today she is recognized as one of the most important female artists of the second half of the twentieth century. This painting by Frankenthaler contains the atmospheric quality of her stained works on canvas. Her technique of brushing, blotting, and rubbing paint on unprimed canvas permitted her to achieve this atmospheric and lyrical quality in her work. Rather than sitting on top of the canvas, the paint is in the raw canvas and lays flat. Gray Plateau was exhibited at the opening of the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1977.
Trespass
The youngest daughter of a New York State Supreme Court Justice, Helen made her own mark in the world early in her career as a painter. Influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, Helen experimented with techniques of staining a canvas after watching Jackson Pollock using his drip method. In 1952 she made her breakthrough into the art world when she painted Mountains and Sea. In this painting she used her own method of staining an unprimed canvas with paint. She used this same technique to paint Trespass but by the 1970’s the colors on her canvases became denser. In 1958 she married fellow Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell but the marriage ended in 1971. She made sets and costumes for the ballet in the past and taught art over the years. Today she is recognized as one of the most important female artists of the second half of the twentieth century.
All is in All
Freed received his B.F.A. degree in 1967 and his M.A. degree in 1968 from Fort Hays State University in Kansas. He was the founding director of The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. Freed was also the head of the art department at State Fair Community College from 1968 to 2002 and served as the Director of Goddard Gallery in Sedalia, Missouri. Freed has been an advocate for the arts for many years. As a result of his active participation in the arts, Freed received a gubernatorial appointment to the Missouri Arts Council Board from 1984-1988. He also served as the legislative liaison for the Missouri Citizens for the Arts/Senate and Legislature. Besides receiving a National Endowment for the Arts in 1987 for a Design Arts Project Special Project Grant and a ?Creative Artist Project Grant? from the Missouri Arts Council in 1990, Freed has received several other grants and fellowships. His works appear in numerous collections such as the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Newark Museum in New Jersey, the Steinberg Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. During the past twenty years he has exhibited extensively throughout the United States. Freed is represented by galleries on the east coast, west coast, and the heartland.
Column Structure #2, Shrine
Freed received his B.F.A. degree in 1967 and his M.A. degree in 1968 from Fort Hays State University in Kansas. He was the founding director of The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. Freed was also the head of the art department at State Fair Community College from 1968 to 2002 and served as the Director of Goddard Gallery in Sedalia, Missouri. Freed has been an advocate for the arts for many years. As a result of his active participation in the arts, Freed received a gubernatorial appointment to the Missouri Arts Council Board from 1984-1988. He also served as the legislative liaison for the Missouri Citizens for the Arts/Senate and Legislature. Besides receiving a National Endowment for the Arts in 1987 for a Design Arts Project Special Project Grant and a ?Creative Artist Project Grant? from the Missouri Arts Council in 1990, Freed has received several other grants and fellowships. His works appear in numerous collections such as the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Newark Museum in New Jersey, the Steinberg Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. During the past twenty years he has exhibited extensively throughout the United States. Freed is represented by galleries on the east coast, west coast, and the heartland.
Column Structure #4, Harbor
Freed received his B.F.A. degree in 1967 and his M.A. degree in 1968 from Fort Hays State University in Kansas. He was the founding director of The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. Freed was also the head of the art department at State Fair Community College from 1968 to 2002 and served as the Director of Goddard Gallery in Sedalia, Missouri. Freed has been an advocate for the arts for many years. As a result of his active participation in the arts, Freed received a gubernatorial appointment to the Missouri Arts Council Board from 1984-1988. He also served as the legislative liaison for the Missouri Citizens for the Arts/Senate and Legislature. Besides receiving a National Endowment for the Arts in 1987 for a Design Arts Project Special Project Grant and a ?Creative Artist Project Grant? from the Missouri Arts Council in 1990, Freed has received several other grants and fellowships. His works appear in numerous collections such as the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Newark Museum in New Jersey, the Steinberg Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. During the past twenty years he has exhibited extensively throughout the United States. Freed is represented by galleries on the east coast, west coast, and the heartland.