Spanierman Modern is pleased to present a selection of works on paper by a distinguished group of artists, including Steven Alexander, Harry Bertoia, Carolyn Marks Blackwood, Susan Grossman, Felrath Hines, Lois Mailou Jones, Sam Middleton, Erin Parish, Hilla Rebay, Louise P. Sloane, Ouattara Watts, and Tom Wesselmann.

This exhibition offers a captivating survey of diverse artistic approaches, showcasing the dynamic range of styles, techniques, and personal expressions these artists have brought to the medium of works on paper. Through their use of drawing, printmaking, collage, and other methods, the selected artworks reveal a dialogue between tradition and innovation.

Susan Grossman approaches landscape through a minimalistic palette of black, white, and gray with the occasional appearance of a primary color. Her process begins with reference photographs of subjects and locations. After a return to the studio, painting begins and draws directly from the source materials before Grossman allows the artistic process to take over and create a unique narrative world. Elements of the original location are repositioned, created from nothing, or eliminated to achieve the final product. The physicality of the technique saturates the final product with a sense of action that feels as though one is witnessing something completed only moments before. Grossman’s landscapes are created to be intentionally ambiguous and allow each viewer to form an unbiased reading of the work. Although one can assume where the source material came from, there are no identifying factors– such as street signs or even faces– that allow for a singular conclusion. Her open and non-specific narratives leave the viewer with a sense of unease as it is clear that much is implied throughout the image, yet the viewer walks away without any sense of resolution.

Susan Grossman graduated from Bennington College and received her Master’s in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College. She has taught at Wesleyan University, the City College of New York, and the National Academy of Design School. Her work can be found in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States, including the Mint Museum in North Carolina, and the New York Historical Society. She currently works in Brooklyn, New York.

Sam Middleton (1927-2015) was one of the leading 20th-century American artists living and working in the Netherlands. A mixed-media artist, Middleton grew up in Harlem at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. He was immersed in the vibrant cultural and musical scene of the era. He became acquainted with jazz music through performances at the Savoy Ballroom, which would remain a primary influence on his art throughout his career. Middleton left New York briefly at the height of World War II, joining the Merchant Marines in 1944, but returned to New York in the early 1950s.

He immersed himself in the growing artistic scene of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. Middleton initially frequented the Cedar Tavern and formed close friendships with New York School artists including Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell. His circle soon gravitated to The Five Spot Café on the Lower East Side where jazz greats Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker performed nightly. During this decade, jazz, the music that inspired him, was changing. Compositions were never played the same way twice. Musicians emphasized improvisation, spontaneity, and creativity of sound. Middleton found inspiration in this new sound and worked to find his own creative voice. He said: “For me, improvisation is a galaxy of color. When I listen to music I feel like a soloist.” In his search to “paint sounds” Middleton was challenged by the changing tempo, the hint of melody, and the speed and dexterity of the music.

In 1955, Middleton made his first artistic trip outside of New York. Following the lead of other African American artists such as Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett who were in search of a more open-minded atmosphere than pre-Civil Rights United States, Middleton settled briefly in Mexico City. He had traveled there under a grant from the John Hay Whitney Museum that Franz Kline had helped him secure. In Mexico City, Middleton began working in collage and transforming his artistic viewpoint from social realism to expressionism. He had his first one-man exhibition in Mexico City in 1957. By 1959, Middleton had left the United States permanently. He moved to Spain, then Sweden and Denmark, before finding his permanent home in the Netherlands, settling in Schagen in January, 1962. He began teaching (at Atelier 63, the Royal Academy of Art in Hertogenbosch) and exhibiting regularly, with exhibitions across Scandinavia through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and, more recently, a retrospective at the Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst in 2003.

His circle of friends – a considerable group of African American expatriates living in Europe – included Herbert Gentry, James Baldwin, and Ted Joans, among others. Although Middleton never returned to live in New York, he continually drew upon his youthful memories of Harlem and the lively Greenwich Village music, literary, and art scene. In his later works he expanded his themes to incorporate his Dutch surroundings and embraced a larger body of music.

Middleton’s work is included in the Whitney Museum of American Art, Columbia Museum Of Art, The St Louis Museum of Art, The Amistad Research Center, The Studio Museum, Fisk University Galleries, the Hampton University Museum, the Howard University Museum, and the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. His work is further included in international museum collections in Australia, Israel, and The Netherlands, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Venlo’s Van Bommel Van Dam Museum. His collages were included in the pivotal 1962 exhibit at the Whitney Museum, Forty Artists Under Forty, and, twenty years later, in the Studio Museum’s exhibition An Ocean Apart: American Artists Abroad. His work continues to be shown in major exhibitions in both the United States and Europe, including the Whitney Museum’s 2015 exhibition America Is Hard to See. Every scholarly publication on African American art after the War mentions Middleton’s elegant and lyrical collages.

As a successor to The Hudson River School, Carolyn Marks Blackwood introduces an abstract lens through which to view the ephemeral nature of the Hudson Valley. She presents the viewer with a detailed perspective of the various elements of nature, including, air, ice, and water, as they are affected by seasonal change, time of day, and the weather. The photographs contain an undeniable painterly aspect as she re-presents details of nature that typically go unnoticed. Through her focus on color fields, geometric abstraction, and flattened motifs, the viewer is confronted with an image that is altogether familiar and unfamiliar.

Her photographs depart from the traditions of The Hudson River School in that they concentrate on a singular subject –such as light reflecting on the water, birds, or pieces of ice– as opposed to the sprawling, all-encompassing landscapes of her predecessors. The prioritization of the singular, abstracted fragment allows for the exploration of the isolated subject as it is transformed through the constant shifts of the conditions of nature.

Carolyn Marks Blackwood was born in Anchorage, Alaska. In addition to fine art photography, Carolyn is a screenwriter and film producer with her partner Gabriel Tana for their production company, Magnolia Mae Films and for Brouhaha. Blackwood's work has been exhibited extensively in California, Spain, and New York. She currently lives on a 120 foot cliff, overlooking the Hudson River, in the Hudson Valley, New York.

Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Hiram College in Ohio from 1949 to 1951 before transferring to the University of Cincinnati. In 1953, his studies were interrupted by a two-year enlistment in the army, where he began drawing cartoons. After his service, he returned to the university in 1954, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1956. During this time, he decided to pursue a career in cartooning and enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After graduating, Wesselmann moved to New York City, where he was accepted into the Cooper Union. There, his focus shifted toward fine art, and he received his diploma in 1959.

Wesselmann became one of the leading figures of American Pop Art in the 1960s, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape. He created collages and assemblages incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera, seeking to make images as impactful as the abstract expressionism he admired. He is perhaps best known for his Great American nude series, featuring voluptuous forms and vibrant colors.

In the 1970s, Wesselmann continued to explore the themes and media that had preoccupied him in the previous decade. His Standing still life series, which featured free-standing shaped canvases, depicted small intimate objects on a grand scale. In 1980, using the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth, Wesselmann wrote an autobiography detailing the evolution of his artistic journey. He also continued to experiment with shaped canvases, which he first exhibited in the 1960s, and began creating works in metal. He played a significant role in developing a laser-cutting technique that allowed him to transform his drawings into cut-out metal art.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Wesselmann expanded upon these ideas, creating abstract three-dimensional images that he described as a return to the aims he had pursued in 1959. In his final years, he revisited the female form in his Sunset nudes series, a collection of oil paintings on canvas. These works, with their bold compositions and abstract imagery, evoke the sensual odalisques of Henri Matisse.

Wesselmann spent more than four decades working in New York City.