Opening Reception: Friday August 3rd, 5-8pm

With a continuing emphasis on mid-century American painting, Peyton Wright Gallery presents the works of Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painter, Jack Roth (1927 - 2004).

Roth was an extraordinarily gifted man who attained significant achievements both as an artist and an academician. Born in 1927 in Brockway, Pennsylvania, Roth entered Penn State University with the intention of studying chemistry, mathematics and science. At the tail end of World War II, Roth entered the army where he held a variety of stateside assignments.

Discharged from service in 1948, Roth eventually moved to San Francisco and enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts where he studied painting with Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park and Elmer Bischoff. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the State University of Iowa in 1952, and a doctoral degree from Duke University in 1962. In 1954 Roth exhibited paintings in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum "Younger American Painters" exhibit alongside Morris Louis, Richard Diebenkorn, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and William M. Baziotes. One of the first major American museum exhibitions of Abstract Empressionism, and as a traveling show with stops at museums throughout the country, this ground-breaking exhibit formally introduced the nation to a unique and powerful new American-born art movement.

Roth painted his way through the major developments in postwar American art, from Abstract Expressionism, through pop, and ultimately through color field abstraction. His bold paintings of the 1970's and 80's are crisp, fresh, revealing his breadth and brilliance as a highly inquisitive mathematician, scientist, and a poet. His idiosyncratic colors and forms remain fluid in dynamic alchemical conversation and interaction.

Highlights of his accomplishments include; New Talent Graphic artist of the year in 1963, a Guggenheim Fellowship and representation by Knoedler & Co. Gallery in New York City.The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York purchased several works by Roth for its permanent collection and he exhibited there in 1963.

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