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..."
January 24 - February 12, 1949
Press Clippings
"Ary Stillman is perhaps one of our most serious
and patient researchers in the field of abstract painting, and
one feels keenly that exploratory esthetic sense in each of the
oil paintings and drawings in his current exhibition at the Bertha
Schaefer Gallery.
"I use colors like a composer uses musical
notes," he says, and although he has no actual system of
color-and-sound counterparts, as some extreme theorists have attempted,
Stillmans paintings do remind one of the emotional overtones
of certain musical compositions. He began his new direction about
three years ago, and considerable clarification and force have
been acquired since. "House And Cliff," and "Three
Figures" are evocative works when you have absorbed them
sufficiently; and the drawings and small gouaches are especially
eloquent."
Pictures On Exhibit
February 1949
"Each painting is an experience of a different
kind: explains Ary Stillman of his new work at the Bertha Schaefer
Galleries. Surely that is the main impression. As non-objective
expressions of melodic color, there is little repetition either
in space elements or emotional impact. Like dreams, each canvas
takes different form, and also like dreams, Stillman concerns
himself with inner reality rather than surface ideas.
New World, the largest painting in the group, is
fiery in reds and warm tones; "Ritual," suggestive of
some animal form, is of yellows and blues and flowing lines against
spatial areas which are well-contained within the canvas. One
of the most interesting, "Hieroglyphic," seems a Talmudic
theme in which violet and white notes combine with more definite
patterns. Six or seven "drawings" add, as well as lead,
to the significance of these thought-provoking paintings; they
are as finished as the oils, and as texturally complete."
The Art Digest
February 1, 1949
"When Ary Stillman so arbitrarily changed
his style a few years ago from those provocative, airy interiors
to unfathomable non-objectivity, his followers were not only disconcerted
but utterly confounded by the change, lacking cohesive organization
and purpose as it then seemed. The canvases did have a certain
beauty, for Stillman has the gift of color. But then pigment in
itself has an intrinsic quality of beauty, though it offers nothing
more than eye pleasure, and that was all that could be said of
Stillmans paintings. Now after three years absence he appears
at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery with a collection of paintings
that more than justifies the change in style.
In the interval a compromise has been made. Fundamentally
still abstract, the painting is now builded around a definite
form of reality, fugitive as an after image though it may be.
Elusive as the figure of the "Goosgirl" is, emerging
from a background of subtly manipulated minor notes brilliantly
accented, that figure recaptures the very essence of Japanese
figure painting. Stillman not only has found himself, but has
something to say that will be heard."
The New York Sun
January 28, 1949
|
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House and Cliff
1948
oil on canvas
20 x 24
Portland Art Museum, OR |
Cinematography
1948
oil on canvas
30 x 24
Berkeley
Art Museum and
Pacific Film Archive, CA |
"Ary Stillman's latest exhibition of abstract paintings
at Bertha Schaefer Gallery shows progress and sensitivity in
a non-representational linear handwriting. Since his last show
Stillman has clarified his compositions considerably and simplified
his main movements.
The work is still somewhat eclectic, with the evidences
of some John Marin's and Jackson Pollock's mannerisms not always
assimilated. But expression is generally less ornamented and
more decisive than heretofore, and the soft, melting colors newly
introduced have a lyric intensity."
The New York Times,
January 28, 1949