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Oils, Gouaches, Drawings and Pastels by Ary Stillman at Bertha Schaefer Gallery

January 15-February 3, 1951

Excerpted from Reminiscences, by Frances Stillman, 1988

"...It was in the fall of 1947 or perhaps the spring of 1948 that Bertha Schaefer opened her gallery on 57th Street. She had been widely known for years as an interior decorator, but for some time she had been eager to widen the scope of her work and to gather around her a group of representative painters. She wanted to advance the idea that one shouldn't choose a painting to fit in with the decor of a room, that one should choose a painting or paintings he or she would want to live with, and then build the tone of the room around the painting or paintings. She talked with Ary about this a number of times — they had been friends for years — and when she was prepared to exhibit her first group show she asked Ary to send in a painting. Milton Avery was in that show I recall, and Will Barnet, Ben Zion, Sue Fuller, Ary and others I can't remember. From this came a continued association for Ary with Bertha's gallery — many group shows, and a series of five one-man shows, beginning in February 1949 through 1954, until we left New York for Paris..."

Press Clippings

"Order and organization predominate in Ary Stillman’s paintings of abstract form at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, where he continues to consolidate in oil, gouache, drawing and pastels the direction his art began to take in the recent past. Emotional values are introduced chiefly in respect to color and in the rippling cadences with which he defines amass of form eliciting a sensation of movement. Much concerned with this idea, his work relates to the dance, to arabesquerie and geometry of form, as in Facets I, a decidedly sensitive re-employment of the cubist convention in subdued colors. It is a largely cerebral art but a sensitive one that the artist carries through its various developments, with just enough feeling to give it poetic implication."

Carlyle Burrows
The New York Herald Tribune
Sunday, January 21, 1951

"Ary Stillman, in his oils, drawings and gouaches at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, manages many different kinds of abstract design. The shapes – now tall and flame-like, and again sinuous and interweaving – do not lead separate lives but contribute to thoughtfully planned overall formal schemes. Color has a subdued and refined quality…"

The New York Times
January 19, 1951

"Ary Stillman, in his current showing of his past year’s work at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, is still concerned with richly orchestrated abstractions in which there is almost a classical feeling of balance in the space and form relationships, in the counterpoint of color values and textural qualities, and in the overtones of mood and atmosphere. This all adds up to emotional rewards and stimulation so often absent in abstract work. 1950 was also a year of new experimentation for Stillman; the latest paintings in the exhibition are based on rhythmic arabesques suggested by human forms in movement. This is also discernible in the gouaches with their linear movements in fluent white outlines played against pearly-toned backgrounds. Abstract drawings in charcoal, beautifully transparent and glowing, round out the exhibition."

Charles Z. Offin
Pictures on Exhibit
January 1951

"Ary Stillman paints quiet but satisfying gouaches and oils. Using soft browns, grays and blues into which linear black and white rhythmic variations are introduced, he avoids close contact with objects. A gouache called 'Space Rhythms' contains the most successfully controlled spaces. Of the oils, 'Rhythms in Gray' moves the eye pleasantly through a curving labyrinth and is more intense than the large Metamorphosis where some areas are hazy but where less dependence on line gives greater ease to its visual qualities."

R.G.
Art News
January 1951

Some Exhibited Artwork Titles:

Rhythms in Gray, Metamorphosis, Fire Dance, Interlacing Colors, In the Beginning, Dancing Forms, Between the Land and the Sea, Vistas, Sarabande, Radiations I, Radiations II, Ritual, White Accents, Rhythms in Space, Sonnet, Arabesque, Orbit, Nocturne, Reliques, Earthbound, Solitude, Undulations, Facets I, Facets II.

 

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