JERRY ZENIUK
HOW TO PAINT
curated by cura Flaminio Gualdoni
with critical contribution by Claudia Rajlich
Opening: thursday 15 dicember 2022
15 december 2022 – 01 march 2023
ABC-ARTE, Genova
Jerry Zeniuk is one of the key figures in the international Fundamental Painting movement: he showed in Geplante Malerei at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster in 1974, and in the following year he was a protagonist in Fundamental Painting at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
For this special occasion, the first significant presence of Zeniuk in Italy, which also marks the start of the official representation of the artist by ABC-ARTE, we have decided to take the emblematic and incisive title of the most striking series of recent works, How to Paint. Presented in 2017 at the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop, accompanied by a fundamental monograph edited by Heinz Liesbrock published by Sieveking Verlag Munich, the series represents Zeniuk’s current reflection, based on colour and on its physical and mental capacity to generate spaces at a high qualitative level. From the first monochromes of the 1970s, well represented in the exhibition with extraordinary incunabula, to the current works, sequences of circles and dots that with the support variously create situations with a strong chromatic and luminous valency, Zeniuk confirms and broadens his concept of the primacy of the painterly elements in their infinite capacity to qualify vision.
Colour is essential to the painting of Jerry Zeniuk, and “Beauty”, philosophically and visually, is the ultimate goal in his paintings. According to Zeniuk, colours are not only the bearers of emotion, but their interaction reflects social and human relationships in general as well.
His more recent canvases use different coloured circles or dots or forms to create colour interactions that create a specific pictorial space. They float on a whitish coloured or raw canvas, but suggest space that is occupied by the retained light. The edges of these dots are in some cases sharp, in others vague and atmospheric, brought into a harmonious equilibrium and have a strong spatial effect.
The exhibition in ABC-ARTE is accompanied by a new bilingual monograph published by ABC-ARTE editions, with an essay by the curator Flaminio Gualdoni, a critical appreciation by Claudia Rajlich and a rich documentary apparatus.
Artist biography
Born in 1945 in Germany in Bardowick (DE) as a son of Ukrainian refugees, he emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1950, where he grew up in Colorado. After his study he moved to New York, where he had his first solo exhibition in the Paley & Lowe gallery in 1972.
Since the seventies he has stayed regularly in Germany, participating in several exhibitions. He now lives in Munich and regularly shows at the Konrad Fischer Galerie Düsseldorf/Berlin, and at Annemarie Verna Zürich. He taught at the Akademie der Bildende Künste from 1992 to 2010.
Zeniuk became known in the seventies, when he participated in the landmark Fundamental Painting exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1975. Since then his paintings have developed from a monochrome plane, in which several coloured layers have been superimposed, towards compositions of juxtaposed contrasting colour planes.
After participating in Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977, in 1999 he held his first large-scale retrospective in the Lenbachhaus in Munich, as the Kunstmuseum Winterthur and the Kunstmuseum Kassel. In 2004 a retrospective of his watercolours was held in Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
In recent years his works are exhibited in relevant public institutions such as Augsburg Museum, Wiesbaden Museum, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Brema Kunsthalle, Amburg Kunsthalle, Louisiana Museum, Staatliche Museen Humlebaek, Neue Galerie, Kassel Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern Museum Ludwig, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Cologne, Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus Munich, Sammlung Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung in the same city, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond and the Maslow Collection in Shaverton have exhibited his works.
Public collections:
Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Kunstmuseum Winterthur; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop; Hamburger Kunsthalle; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Kunsthalle Bremen;
Lenbachhaus, Munich; AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam; Virgina Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France; The Maslow Collection, Shaverton, PA; Lousiana, Humlebaek; Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz; Daimler Art Collection; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Neue Galerie Kassel; Kunstmuseum Wiesbaden; Kunstmuseum Augsburg; Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern; Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen.
Via XX Settembre 11/A, 16121, Genoa
T. 010.86.83.884
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Jerry Zeniuk. How to Paint
15 December 2022 – 01 March 2023
Tue-Sat: 09:30-13:30 e 14:30-18:30
Sun-Mon: by appointment
