2col Amons Orchard

Neil Welliver, “Amon’s Orchard,” 1964, oil on canvas, 80 by 83¼ inches.

 ellen sent cut e-m 10-5 / typesetting copy

FOR 10/12

ALEXANDER GALLERY PRESENT NEIL WELLIVER ‘FIGURES’ w/1 cut

avv/gs set 10/4 #714761

NEW YORK CITY — “Neil Welliver: Figures 1955–1965” is on view at Alexander Gallery through November 10. A reception will take place October 25, from 6 to 8 pm.

Featuring early figurative work by Neil Welliver dating from 1955 through 1965, these works have not been exhibited since they originally were shown at Stable Gallery in the 1960s. This exhibition extends a reexamining begun in 2001 with a gallery show of Welliver’s figurative work from the 1970s. Included will be 22 works, both paintings and watercolors.

During the ten-year period that his show examines, Welliver’s interests were twofold: the nude and the landscape. At the time representational work was considered philistine and out of step with the current modes of abstraction. For Welliver the challenge was to paint the figure and the landscape from direct observation, as a modern, post 1950s American painter. Among his concerns were creating a new balance between image, ground, materials and surface, while moving away from his teachers’ abstraction toward a new figurative style.

In the early 1960s Welliver moved to a farm in rural Lincolnville, Maine. This move in many ways supported Welliver’s mode of working. Welliver is exploring the conventions of portraiture and the work has a homey quality with the images dominated by solid figures that are loosely painted, lush and seductively tactile.

There is an intense symbolism present in these works. Huge hands hover above figures, skeletons bathe in a stream, marching bands converge. Also present are overt art historical references, notable in “The Beautiful Gabrielle and the Marechale de Balagny” after the 1594 painting attributed to the Ecole de Fontainebleau.

The gallery is in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street. For information, www.alexandregallery.com or 212-755-2828.