Sirolli Fine Art announces its Spring show, The Artist's Mark: Then & Now, at the 2/20 Gallery - in Chelsea at 220 W 16th Street, between 7th & 8th Avenues in New York City.

The Artist’s Mark: Then & Now is an exhibition of historical work that focuses on the artist's use of automatic drawing, calligraphic adaptation, impulse and accident as they marked and created a new explosive style of painting in post-war America. Mark-making becomes the preferred grammar for these young American artists as they embarked upon creating art which would impact all visual arts for decades to come. 

Paintings and works on paper by noted artists such as John Hultberg, Deborah Remington, Ernest Trova, Richard Wengenroth and James Brooks illustrate the use of materials, techniques and stylistic preferences chosen by these artists as they interpreted and generated a means by which to express an existential authenticity - thus the content of the work. 

Broad colorful strokes of pink and red provide a fluid backdrop for drips of raised color in James Brooks’ 1951, Number 13 painting.  A 1955 seminal work by John Hultberg titled Surreal Landscape is replete with the familiar angst, fractured perspectives, fragmented windows and elements of a world torn asunder. These works by Brooks and Hultberg, both of whom were formerly represented by noted New York dealer Martha Jackson, utilize the iconic “marks” associated with their oeuvres. 

Ernest Trova’s Untitled Composition of 1958, an early automatic surrealist work, resonates with energy heightened by his sparse use of color on a palette of varied earthen browns. 

Richard Wengenroth’s use of interlocking calligraphic symbols in a 1959 pen and ink drawing titled Round-Up is presented alongside Deborah Remington’s 1959 scratched ink drawing titled Grasses. An early 1952 San Francisco period petite monoprint also by Remington, lends the appearance of a bold, monumental abstract expressionist canvas.   

Related work by Robert Goodnough, Stephen Greene, and Julio Girona are present in the exhibition with masterful marks that result in some of the period's more quixotic paintings. Pastel and charcoal works on paper from the mid-1960's represent Pulitzer-nominee and Washington Post syndicated conceptualist, Geoffrey Moss. Noteworthy is the Fellini-inspired piece titled And the Ship Sails On.

Careful study of the works individually, then collectively, reveal that the subject of painting often becomes the act of painting itself.

The Artist's Mark: Then & Now is on view through April 12th at the 2/20 Gallery, 220 West 16th Street, New York, NY. There will be a reception on Thursday evening, March 27th, from 6 to 9 pm.