October 30, 2014
New York Times Review
DC Moore Gallery mourns the loss of Jane Wilson, who died on January 13, 2015.
Click here to read her obituary.
Opening Reception: October 9, 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Gallery Talk
Wednesday, October 22, 6:15 PM
Inner and Outer Landscapes
Elisabeth Sussman & Mimi Thompson in conversation about the work of Jane Wilson.
DC Moore Gallery is pleased to present paintings by Jane Wilson in celebration of her sixty-year career. The exhibition will feature a group of rarely seen 1960s cityscapes inspired by New York’s Tompkins Square Park, as well as her recent work, which has brought her recognition as one of the leading landscape painters of our time.
Wilson’s recent paintings are luminous landscapes that hover between abstraction and representation, inspired by the sky, sea, and land of the East End of Long Island, New York. She focuses on events of the natural world—seasons of the year, times of day, and the many moods of the weather. Evoking these constant occurrences, Wilson directs her energies to making the most passing phenomena visible, to capturing the effects of shimmering light, heavy air, and passing thunderstorms. In many of her paintings, the sky, which can just as easily be taken as an abstract field of pattern and color, is anchored by the barest rudiments of recession and a low horizon that is a juncture of light and substance.
Wilson has been exhibiting steadily since 1952, when she was a founding member of the legendary Hansa Gallery on East 12th Street in New York City. A few years after moving to 317 East 10th Street, across from Tompkins Square Park, in 1958, she shifted from abstraction and expressionist landscapes to New York cityscapes, particularly atmospheric views of the park and surrounding neighborhood. In her Tompkins Square paintings, she continued her interest in tonal effects of trees, foliage, and grey skies, sometimes streaked with sunlight breaking through the clouds, while at times introducing strong contrasts through primary colors of stoplights, traffic markings, and other features of urban life.
In the early 1980s, Wilson returned to landscapes and began creating the distinctive works for which she is best known today. Her radiant paintings of the past three decades evoke the rhythms of the natural world, marked by constantly changing dynamics of everyday events of the sky.
Jane Wilson’s paintings are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Art Institute of Chicago, IL, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, as well as other museums across the country. In 2002, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY. In 2009, Merrell Publishers released the major monograph, Jane Wilson: Horizons, with an essay by Elisabeth Sussman and an interview with the artist by Justin Spring. Jane Wilson is married to the writer and photographer John Gruen. Their daughter Julia Gruen is executive director of the Keith Haring Foundation.