Berry Campbell is pleased to announce, Albert Stadler: Deliberate Variations, featuring paintings from the 1960s. A leading figure in the rise of color abstraction in the mid-1960s, Albert Stadler addressed the nature of optical experience in his art. Creating both hard-edge and more ethereal paintings, Stadler united directions in Color Field and Minimalist art, often bridging the gap between the intellectual and sensual and the conceptual and spiritual. Representing Stadler’s estate, Berry Campbell is pleased to bring this significant body of work to light.

Born in New York City, Stadler attended the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1950. His first solo exhibition was held in 1962 at Bennington College, Vermont; it was among the important shows of modernist art organized at the college by art department director Paul Feeley. 1964, Stadler was included in the landmark exhibition, Post-Painterly Abstraction, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and curated by the noted critic Clement Greenberg. His three paintings on view were lent by Poindexter Gallery, New York, where he had one-man shows that year, as well as in 1965, 1968, 1970, 1974, and 1975.

In 1967, Kermit Champa, then assistant professor of art history at Yale University, published a long article on Stadler in Artforum. To Champa, Stadler’s ability to maintain individual components of color while creating a final effect that was one of absolute visual unity, constituted a breakthrough. Seeing Stadler as mediating between the emphasis of painters of the day on either surface (for example, in the work of Jules Olitski) or structure (for example, in the works of Walter Darby Bannard), Champa stated that his “work has become increasingly unique and important over the past few years, and on the basis of his most recent paintings it seems destined to become even more so.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Stadler participated in prominent showcases including the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual of 1967, Color and Field, held at the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York, in 1970, and biennials at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., held in 1973 and 1975. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1968 and lectured and taught art at Rutgers Douglass College, New Brunswick, New Jersey; The Brooklyn Museum, New York, and Hunter College, City University of New York. Stadler’s work is included in numerous public and private collections worldwide.

The opening reception will take place on Thursday, September 11 from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition will run through Saturday, October 11, 2014. Berry Campbell is located in the heart of Chelsea at 530 West 24th Street on the ground floor.