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 25 - February 13, 1954
Press Clippings
"Ary Stillman, whose journey away from impressionist
realism through the mazes of abstraction at times seemed confused
and convictionless, has at last found his way. His newest paintings,
at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, have an assurance and control
earlier efforts have lacked. His palette is much lighter and
fresher; his forms more magnetically integrated; his handling
of space lyrical rather than mathematical; his textures sensuously
transparent. Once in a while, as in 'Door to the Sea,' there
are signs of the old unresolved tension."
New York Herald Tribune
January 30, 1954
"On the other hand, Ary Stillman, whose paintings
are at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, finds artistic salvation
in writhing patterns, in which linear convolutions are most prominent.
Back and forth they weave, now sleepy in color and now bright,
coiling like snakes in a basket, to create designs whose contracts
of light and dark both ride on the surface and suggest infinite
pictorial depths."
The New York Times
January 30, 1954
"In the earlier paintings in this show Stillman
tackles a problem posed but not resolved in his work of two years
ago: the integration of line with amorphous color. The problem
is solved, most impressively perhaps, in Door To The Sea, a large
painting with an air of confused reverie about it, a sense of
overlapping visual memories of sea and coastline. That there is
no confusion in the painting itself is due to the artists
successful handling of bold arabesques of black line which sweep
across the canvas, weaving in and out, over and under passages
of dimly luminous color. Others among the earlier paintings suggest
forest clearings in which thick coiling lines, like trailing vines,
tie clumps of space together.
With the more recent paintings Stillman enters
on a new phase, abandoning line temporarily and working with sharply
defined undulant shapes painted in pale transparent colors. Here
there is a sense of constant movement and transformation. When
line reappears (in Galaxy and Interplay No. 2, two unusually good
paintings), it is white and a function of color."
JAMES FITZSIMMONS,
Art Digest
February 1, 1954
"Ary Stillman's abstractions at the Bertha
Schaefer Gallery are more lyrical, more abstruse than his earlier
work. Color is muted and the artist seems to take a new interest
in the play of varied textures. Less immediate in impact, these
canvases are ultimately more profound.
The largest canvas here,
Door To The Sea, is a rhythmic constellation of forms moving
horizontally- and softened forms which suggest the interactions
of sea and shore. This painting and a few others hint that the
artist has become interested in the metamorphic possibilities
of organic shapes. The most recent compositions depend on heavy
linear overlays on delicately transparent grounds, illuminating
his paintings from within. "
by D. A.
Pictures on Exhibit
January or February, 1954
|
Door to the Sea
1953
oil on canvas
44 x 36
Private Collection, CA |
|
Interplay #1
1953
oil on canvas
24 x 20
Foundation Collection, TX |
"Ary Stillman, abstractionist whose elements of
calligraphy and arabesque overlying grayed, atmospheric color
are both romantic and intimate, has been searching for a more
decided direction since his last one man show two years ago.
Looking for a future in terms of the recent past, Stillman revisited
Paris and, upon his return, painted several much more decisive
pictures in which the figures and the space were related to the
Cubist idiom. From this came the last, most successful works
here. Some, notably 'Abstraction of an Expanse,' are relaxed,
looser, in transparent luminous color; others combine white geometric
figures with pleasingly textured grounds. In painting more vital
pictures, Stillman has also found a subject—the crystallization
of the interaction of space and light. It adds up to his best
show yet."
by L.C.
Art News
February 1954