LOUIS STONE
The Path to Abstraction, 1928-1945
November 3–December 22, 2006
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2006 / 2:00-5:00pm
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present its second solo exhibition
featuring the work of Louis Stone (American, 1902-1984). This exhibition
includes thirty oil paintings dating from 1928 to 1945, offering a
comprehensive overview of the artist’s evolution from a traditional
landscape and still-life painter to a bold, avant-garde modernist. Attracted
to vibrant colors in tonal and spatial harmony, his abstract images evoke
figures and suggest objects which become traceable motifs across a
distinctive body of work. In the fully illustrated exhibition catalogue,
Joseph Jacobs writes “Stone’s work absorbs, transforms, and reflects the
social, historical, and aesthetic concerns of his period. Today, we examine
his work not just because it has been uncovered and brought to light, but
because postmodern aesthetics is willing to look at those artists ignored by
the modernist critique.”
Louis King Stone was born in Findlay, Ohio and received formal art training
at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (1919-20), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts summer sessions (1926), and New York’s Art Students League (1926-27).
While painting in Gloucester, Massachusetts during the summer of 1927, Stone
met artist Carolyn Hoag, whom he married later that fall. Following their
marriage, the Stones lived in Europe for five years, spending most of their
time in Southern France. While abroad, Stone studied with Hans Hofmann at
the Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Munich, the Academie Colorossi in Paris,
and with André L’hote at the artist’s summer school in Mirmande, France. He
also lived and painted in Paul Cézanne’s former home/studio in
Aix-en-Provence. Stone’s studies in Europe laid the foundation for his early
non-objective work. Stone returned to the United States in 1933 and lived
for a brief period in Woodstock, New York before traveling to Florida where
Stone and painter James S. Morris co-founded the Stone-Morris School of Fine
Arts in Jacksonville.
In 1935, Stone settled in Lambertville, New Jersey, a town near New Hope,
Pennsylvania that was home to an active artistic and intellectual community.
Stone reunites with close friend Charles Evans, and becomes a leading member
of the recently formed Independents, a modernist artist’s collective founded
by Charles F. Ramsey. Like other associations of American artists during
this period (i.e. the American Abstract Artists and the Transcendental
Painting Group), the Independents were struggling to gain recognition in a
culture that was not particularly receptive to abstract art. Stone exhibited
regularly with the Independents and worked to establish the Cooperative
Painting Project. Inspired by the performances of improvisational jazz
musicians, the Cooperative Painting Project held visual “jam sessions,”
where the three artists would work together on a single painting, signing
their finished artwork with the combined name “Ramstonev.” Stone frequently
collaborated and exchanged ideas with other members of the Independents, but
his work from the mid-1930s and 1940s retains a distinctive style that
demonstrates a mastery of the modernist lessons he learned in Europe, while
asserting an innovative use of flat color to suggest three dimensional
space. Stone once remarked that he wanted “to keep his colors alive,” and
consequently, his work contains visually complex color harmonies that
demonstrate his willingness to break the stylistic conventions of the School
of Paris in favor of a more idiosyncratic palette. In addition to his
association with the Independents, Stone exhibited in the New York Worlds
Fair in New York City (1939), as well as in museums and galleries throughout
New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. He also worked for the WPA easel
project (c.1935-1938). Stone continued to paint and travel extensively
throughout North America until his death at the age of 82 at his home near
Lambertville, NJ.
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is the exclusive representative of the Estate of
Louis Stone and this exhibition has been organized with their cooperation.
To view this exhibition in its entirety, visit
www.michaelrosenfeldart.com.
Visuals available upon request.
For additional information, please contact Marjorie Van Cura at (212)
247-0082 or [email protected].
