Emily Mason - Lyrical Abstraction

 

 "When I start a picture I like to use the medium as directly as I can . . . [this] puts me in a state of mind which avoids pictorial constraints. I try to use paint for its brilliance, transparency, opacity, liquidity, weight, warmth and coolness. These qualities guide me in a process which will determine the climate of the picture. All the while I work to define spatial relationships, resulting in certain kinds of places. I cannot name them but know intuitively when they appear.  — Emily Mason
Born and raised in New York City, Emily Mason’s art education began at home with her mother Alice Trumbull Mason, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists. A graduate of New York City’s High School of Music and Art, she attended Bennington College and the Cooper Union. In 1956 she was awarded a two-year Fulbright grant to paint in Venice, Italy. There she studied at the Accademia delle Belle Arti where she first experimented with blotting and transferring paint onto the surface of the canvas. Afterwards, Mason moved into her own studio in the Giudecca. During her time in Venice, she married the painter Wolf Kahn. They have two daughters, Cecily and Melany.
Mason has spent more than six decades exploring her distinctive vein of lyrical, luminous abstraction. Robert Berlind wrote in Art in America, “Mason works within the improvisational model of Abstract Expressionism, though notably without angst or bravado. Her oil on canvas paintings are distinguished by a sense of intriguing intimacy combined with uncompromising, though gentle, intensity. They evince a sense of structure within open, luminous space and juxtapose robust color harmonies with vivid contrasts that create an engaging optical vibration.”Since her first solo show in 1960 at the Area Gallery, Mason has exhibited regularly in New York City. In 1979 she was awarded the Ranger Fund Purchase Prize by the National Academy. She taught painting at Hunter College for more than 25 years. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections."(emilymasonstudio.com)

Chu Teh-Chun - Lyrical Abstraction

  Chu Teh-Chun or Zhu Dequn (1920 –2014) was a Chinese-French abstract painter acclaimed for his pioneering style integrating traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western abstract art. Chu and his schoolmates Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki were dubbed the "Three Musketeers" of modernist Chinese artists trained in China and France. He was the first ethnic Chinese member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France.
In 1945 Chu became a faculty member of the architecture department of the National Central University in Nanjing, then China's capital. With the communist victory in mainland China, Chu moved to Taiwan in 1949, joining the National Taiwan Normal University where he taught Western-style painting. He moved to Paris in 1955, where he lived for the rest of his life.He became a French citizen in 1980, and a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1997.
In April 1956, Chu painted an oil on canvas portrait of his wife Tung Ching-Chao, which won the silver medal at the Paris Salon. Chu called the painting his "lucky star", after which his career became increasingly successful. Wu Guanzhong praised the painting as the "Mona Lisa of the East".
Inspired by Nicolas de Staël's abstract landscape paintings, Chu abandoned figurative painting and adopted a unique style using bold strokes of colour which evoked Chinese calligraphy. His new style was immediately successful. In 1964, an exhibition of his works at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh brought him international fame. His paintings are now in the permanent collections of more than 50 museums all over the world. Major exhibitions of his work were held at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2005 and Beijing's National Art Museum of China in 2010.
In 2003, Chu donated an oil painting to the Shanghai Grand Theatre for its fifth anniversary. The painting now decorates the theatre's central lobby. At the unveiling ceremony, Chu called the painting his biggest and best work.Wikipedia

 

Key Sato - Japanese Contemporary Art - Lyrical Abstraction

Key Sato 1906 – 1978) was a Japanese artist who spent most of his life living and working in France. He was a part of the second wave of lyrical abstraction.
The key innovations formed in the early years of the 20th century were developed further in the 1920s and 1930s. This period began the careers of many innovative and inspiring practitioners in the pictorial arts. However it was a period of reflection following the horrors of the First World War, and major shifts in politics took place across the world. The philosophy of Marxism was widespread among artist communities and groups. Founded in 1919, the Bauhaus became an essential place for the development of ideas concerning the unification of art, craft and design – an idea which became known as the Gesamtkunstwerk.
Sato attended the Académie Colarossi in Paris where he remained until 1934. Upon his return to Japan, he co-founded the New Creation Association (Shin-Seisaku Kyokai) with Kayama Matazō (1927–2004). In 1952 Sato moved back to Paris, where he was inspired by Cubism and Abstraction. He returned to Japan in 1978 and died later that year. The Ōita Prefectural Art Museum (Ōitakenritsu Bijutsukan) held a retrospective exhibition of Sato’s oeuvre in 1979.
Sato exhibited works at the Salon d'Automne in Paris 1931-33, the Carnegie International Exhibitions in Pittsburgh 1952 and 1964, the Salon de Mai in Paris 1956-59 and the 30th Venice Biennale in 1960. In 1963 he participated in the Japanese Avant Garde Art Exhibition in Milan and the Sao Paulo Biennale [remove e from Biennale]. He staged solo shows at the Sanmaido Gallery in Tokyo in 1934, the Tokyo Gallery in 1951 and 1954, the Galerie Mirador in Paris in 1954, the Galerie Jacques Massol 1959-61 and 1964 in Paris, the Hamilton Galleries in London in 1964, and the World House Galleries in New York in 1965.

Yehezkel Streichman - Israeli Abstract Painting

Yehezkel Streichman (1906 – 1993) was an Israeli painter.He is considered a pioneer of Israeli modernist painting. Among the awards that he won were the Dizengoff Prize and the Israel Prize.
Yehezkal Streichman was born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1906. Streichman emigrated to Palestine to begin his art education at the influential Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. There he would study art and architecture, and continue his studies in Paris and Florence.
His painting style involved using successive thick layers of paint.He was an acclaimed painter in what was known as the modernist "New Horizons" (Ofakim Hadashim) group in 1950s Tel Aviv, which he founded in 1948 along with Joseph Zaritsky and Stematsky.It painted in a French "lyrical abstraction" style
Yehezkal Streichman taught art throughout his life, starting in the Kibbutz’s in the 1930s and 40s, and then at the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv until 1979.