A L I S S A B L U M E N T H A L : 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 7 0 s
SMALL ABSTRACTIONS
Opening Reception: Friday, September 11th, 2015, 6-8pm
Exhibition runs through October 24th, 2015.
The exhibition presents a group of paintings by Alissa Blumenthal, an American modernist artist of Russian descent working in New York in the 1930-1980s. Although she was a prolific painter, Blumenthal had failed to attract the critical and public attention she deserved, remaining in the periphery of New York art scene among the scores of other obscure artists, many of them female. A one-time student of Russian avant-garde theorist, Kazimir Malevich, Blumenthal believed in the metaphysical significance of abstraction, and attempted to represent the non-objective reality of the world through basic geometric forms – but in her own eyes invariably failed, unable to reconcile her actual artistic achievements with the ideal of geometric perfection.
The exhibition is presented by New York-based artist, Tatiana Istomina, who works with painting, drawing and video; Istomina’s projects have been featured in multiple exhibitions in the US and Europe, including the Drawing Center and the Bronx Museum (New York,) Gaîté Lyrique (Paris,) Haus der Kulturen der Wel (Berlin,) and Moscow Museum of Modern Art, among other venues.
