“My artistic life has been a search for a seamless resolution, or synthesis, of the paradox in painting between structure and freedom.” – Albert Kresch
Alice Gauvin Gallery is pleased to present a retrospective of works by the late New York School artist, Albert Kresch (July 4, 1922 – March 13, 2022). An innovative painter and a generous mentor, Kresch was once referred to by Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times as “a painter’s painter, almost indecently reticent about showing his work.” He is best known for his rhythmic, jazzy landscapes that pack a chromatic punch despite their diminutive scale, and that have been compared by critics and art historians to the works of Andre Derain, Gustave Courbet, and Georges Rouault. Yet for Kresch, Piet Mondrian and Jean Arp were guiding lights: the yin and yang of what Kresch himself referred to as the “abstract armature” behind his paintings, while his friendship with painter Jean Helion sparked his return to representational painting after a period of pure abstraction.
Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Kresch moved to New York City at age 8 with his family, which would remain the artist’s home until his death. In the 1940s, Kresch studied at the Hofmann School in New York, and—along with several of his fellow Hofmann pupils—became an early member of the Jane Street Gallery, New York City’s first artists’ cooperative. Many of his peers at the Hofmann School and Jane Street cooperative would remain close friends, as well as sources of artistic inspiration, throughout Kresch’s life, most notably Nell Blaine, Leland Bell, Lousia Matthiasdottir, Paul Resika and Robert De Niro Sr.
Over the course of his career, Kresch exhibited paintings at Salander O’Reilly, Lohin Geduld, and Tibor de Nagy Galleries, as well as the Center for Figurative Painting. His works are held in collections at the National Academy of Design, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Wright State University Galleries, and the Everhart Museum. In 2020, critic and curator Karen Wilkin included Kresch in a ten-artist exhibition at the Brattleboro Museum entitled “Figuration Never Died,” alongside Alex Katz, Lois Dodd, Wolf Kahn, Grace Hartigan, and other pillars of post-war representational painting.
Kresch’s connection to Maine, and to the Gallery, is—true to his amiable disposition—borne out of the close friendships he maintained over the course of his life. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, he made yearly visits to friends in Temple, Maine, where he painted many of his most famous and best-loved landscapes. He taught and befriended several of the artists affiliated with Alice Gauvin Gallery early at early stages in their careers. The Gallery is delighted to offer this exhibition of his paintings, which presents a wide chronological range from Kresch’s oeuvre, and which coincides with the artist’s 100th birthday on July 4th.