Wolfgang Paalen: Implicit Spaces

Join Frey Norris Gallery for the most comprehensive exhibition of this major Surrealist artist and thinker in the United States since Paul Kantor Gallery exhibited his work in Los Angeles in 1954. Several of the finest works of his short career, oil and fumage paintings, such as the large "Taches Solaires" (1938) and "Ciel de Pieuvre" (1938) will exhibit for the first time in this country in over half a century - both paintings hung in Paalen's American debut at the historic Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1940. Other paintings range from the intimate abstraction "Les Cosmogones" (1943) to the gargantuan "Hamnur Trilogy" (1947), along with small works on paper, pure fumages and simple drawings beginning with his "Brothers Karamazov" (1922).

Born in 1905 in Vienna, and last exhibited in San Francisco at the landmark "Dynaton" exhibition of 1950 at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Paalen's influential, volatile and emotional journey would end in suicide in Taxco, Mexico in 1959.

In his essay in the accompanying catalogue, Andreas Neufert, author of an intellectual biography and the catalogue raisonné on Paalen (Im Inneren des Wals, Vienna/New York (Springer) 1999) and co-curator of the retrospective exhibitions in Vienna (MMK 1993) and Mexico-City (MACC 1994), makes the case that Paalen was one of the most important and influential of the exiled Surrealists in New York during World War II. More specifically, it was Paalen who introduced new concepts of space in painting as a resonant expression of metaphysics. These ideas exerted a strong influence on those who would later become America's first generation of Abstract Expressionists, particularly artists like Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. This was Paalen's Promethean gift, heralding the next dominant chapter of 20th century art history.

Wolfgang Paalen
Implicit Spaces
Kurator: Andreas Neufert