MATERIAL WORLD:

Thomas Hayes, the enterprising furniture sleuth and founder of Noho Modern, has reopened his Hollywood branch under his own name. The inaugural show features a typically Hayesian assortment of rare design gems and pieces by Brazilian masters Joaquim Tenreiro, Sergio Rodrigues, José Zanine Caldas and Caldas’ fetching—and fetchingly named—son Zanini de Zanine. The exhibition also includes contemporary paintings by Art Ellsworth, Jason Fitzmaurice and Grant Wiggins and a selection of work by 1960s Hard-edge artist John Barbour. Hayes’ former partner, Jeremy Petty, has retained the Noho Modern name and the space on La Cienega. 6162 Santa Monica Blvd., 323-463-4434, thomashayesgallery.com.

Read more at losangelestimesmagazine.com

“The opening exhibition of Thomas Hayes Gallery in Hollywood embodies the showroom’s renewed focus on art, with works by artists representing an array of generations, backgrounds, mediums and styles, accompanying the modern Brazilian, European and American furniture Hayes is already known for. The current show, which runs through May 10, includes sketches by Oscar Niemeyer (with a minimalist drawing of his iconic Congresso Nacional building in Brasilia) hung with a piece by color field painter Donald Kaufman and several paintings by 1960s designer Arthur Ellsworth. Photographs and geometric paintings by the late California artist John Barbour accompany a 1965 minimalist work by June Harwood, with the central areas of the gallery hung with abstract paintings by Los Angeles artist Jason Fitzmaurice and hard-edge paintings by Arizona-based Grant Wiggins. Furniture by Sergio Rodrigues, Joaquim Tenreiro, Jose Zanine Caldas, Lina Bo Bardi, Zanini de Zanine Caldas and Jorge Zalszupin round out the exhibition, and give a decorative context to the artwork.”

Read more: http://www.dwell.com/articles/thomas-hayes-gallery-opening-spotlight.html

“Stryyka”
by Grant Wiggins, 2006

“Faire”
by Jason Fitzmaurice, 1995

“Extensions” Color Study
by Art Ellsworth, 2005

The opening exhibition of Thomas Hayes Gallery in Hollywood embodies the showroom’s renewed focus on art, with works by artists representing an array of generations, backgrounds, mediums and styles, accompanying the modern Brazilian, European and American furniture Hayes is already known for. The current show, which runs through May 10, includes sketches by Oscar Niemeyer (with a minimalist drawing of his iconic Congresso Nacional building in Brasilia) hung with a piece by color field painter Donald Kaufman and several paintings by 1960s designer Arthur Ellsworth. Photographs and geometric paintings by the late California artist John Barbour accompany a 1965 minimalist work by June Harwood, with the central areas of the gallery hung with abstract paintings by Los Angeles artist Jason Fitzmaurice and hard-edge paintings by Arizona-based Grant Wiggins. Furniture by Sergio Rodrigues, Joaquim Tenreiro, Jose Zanine Caldas, Lina Bo Bardi, Zanini de Zanine Caldas and Jorge Zalszupin round out the exhibition, and give a decorative context to the artwork.

Continue reading article from Dwell.com

View photos from the Opening Reception

View photos of the Gallery

View photos from the Opening Reception

View photos of his Work

NOHO Modern is proud to present the work of Brazilian artist and designer Zanini de Zanine Caldas. The exhibition will open October 23, 2009 and will run through December 18. An opening reception will be held on October 23 from 6-9 pm at 6162 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. All works in the exhibition have been executed within the last four years in Rio de Janeiro. This is the first major exhibition for Zanini in the United States, and his largest worldwide to date.

“Zanini’s work is a breath of fresh air in a world of new art design that has become infamous for high prices, false claims to ecological sensitivity, shabby quality and dysfunctionality. His work has a beauty and quality that is evident even upon meticulous inspection,” states co-owner Thomas Hayes. “Zanini continues the important ecologically-conscious tradition that his father began,” adds co-owner Jeremy Petty. “He uses only reclaimed materials for all his sculptures and furniture, and he never compromises his artistic ideals by finding an inherently beautiful piece of wood, sanding it, and calling it a table. You can actually see the hand of the artist in his work, as he releases the chair or table from the trunk or the stump of a tree.”

Zanini de Zanine was born in 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His childhood was spent with his father, the great Brazilian architect and designer José Zanine Caldas. Zanini was exposed to working with wood before learning to walk, and under the tutelage of his father, developed a keen sense of artistry. Zanini was in essence raised to be a furniture designer; he has been committed to this pursuit his entire life. In 2002 Zanini received his degree in Industrial Design from Pontifíca Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RIO), and in the following year opened his own atelier producing furniture and sculptures made out of the finest exotic hardwoods which are painstakingly salvaged, sometimes from his father’s architectural work. His talent for design and his appreciation for craftsmanship has led him to success early in his career and afforded him the opportunity to meet and work with some of the most respected names in Brazilian architecture and design, including Lúcio Costa, Sergio Rodrigues, and Sergio Bernardes. Sergio Rodrigues pays homage to Zanini: “Zanini de Zanine inherited all the artistic and artisanal qualities in addition to his moral and ethical virtues from his father. Zanininho, as I call him, served as an apprentice but collaborated with me like a veteran designer in my studio. All of his…designs contrasted with his humility.”

Zanini de Zanine was born in 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and spent most of his childhood with his father, the great Brazilian architect and designer José Zanine Caldas. Zanini was exposed to working with wood at a young age and, under the tutelage of his father, developed a keen sense of artistry. His talent for design and his appreciation for craftsmanship have led him to success early in his career and given him the opportunity to meet and work with some of the most respected names in Brazilian architecture and design, including Lúcio Costa, Sergio Bernardes, and an apprenticeship with Sergio Rodrigues.

In 2002 Zanini de Zanine graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RIO) with a degree in Industrial Design, and in the following year, opened his own atelier producing furniture and sculptures made out of the highest quality salvaged exotic woods. He is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards in Brazil including the Prize Artefacto in 2008 in Sao Paulo. Zanini de Zanine has also taken part in numerous exhibitions in Brazil, as well as several abroad including the International Design Biennial in Saint- Etienne, France in 2004 and 2006 and has also led workshops, such as the Ècole d’ Art Visuel de la Martinique, in the Caribbean in 2007.

TRAINING:

2000 – 2001 Apprenticeship under Sergio Rodrigues
1978 – 2000 Trained under his father, Jose Zanine Caldas

AWARDS and HONORS:

2009 First Place Salao Design (Bento Goncalves, Brazil)
2009 First Place XXI ARC DESIGN, New Brazilian Talent (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2008 Honorable Mention for de Museu da Casa Brasileira (Sao Paulo,Brazil)
2008 Prize Artefacto (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2008 First Place Planeta Casa-casa Claudia ( Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2008 Selected for Bienal International de Saint-Etienne (France)
2007 Led “Mobilier-Detournement,” a 10 day workshop on furniture design at L`Ecole d`Art Visuel de la Martinique (Martinique)
2007 First Place Planeta Casa-Casa Claudia (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2006 Selected for International Design Biennial (Saint-Etienne, France)
2004 Selected for International Design Biennial (Saint-Etienne, France)
2004 Honorable Mention for the Valansi-Museu de Cadeira award (Rio de Janiero, Brazil)
2004 Second Place Prize Liceu de Design (Bahia, Brazil)
2003 Honorable Mention Prêmio RioDesign (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
2003 First Place Premio Plasticidade DESIGN+PLASTICO (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
2002 First Place Student Prize Liceu de Design (Bahia, Brazil)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2009 NOHO Modern (Los Angeles, California)
2007 Mercado Moderno (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

2009 Brasil e Cosi (Milan, Italy)
2009 Casa Cor (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2008 Casa Cor (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2007 Casa Cor (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
2006 Morar Mais por Menos (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
2004 – 2005 Morar Mais por Menos (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
2004 Master CASA (Niteroi, Brazil))
2003 Abimovel (Sao Paolo, Brazil)
2003 ARTE DESIGN (Curitiba, Brazil)
2003 DesignBrasil (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

—

Essays by NOHO Modern Owners Thomas Hayes and Jeremy Petty

It would be impossible for me to write about Zanini de Zanine in an impartial or unaffected way. After seeing just two black and white photographs of Jose Zanine Caldas’s work three years ago, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro to learn about Brazilian design, as I was drawn to its materiality and craftsmanship. I had heard his son lived in Rio and through a friend who knew him as a child, we were introduced. His name is Zanini de Zanine, which means “Zanini, son of Zanine,” and true to his name, his father literally raised him to be a furniture designer from birth.

As the sons of our fathers, we all feel the weight of their accomplishments and expectations, and we derive our identity from either their influence or their absence. That weight has certainly defined my life, and I saw at once that this was also the case with Zanini. His father is lauded as one of the three masters of Brazilian modernist design (the other two being Joaquim Tenreiro and of course Sergio Rodrigues). Being born of him, named after him, and raised by him to be a furniture designer is a great gift, but Zanini’s struggle is not with this; he is at peace and ease with being an artist and designer. He has such profound respect for his father and his work that every decision in designing is aimed at two goals. The first is to respect the standards his father set about how to do things with the highest level of mastery, and the second is to create pieces markedly different from his father’s work, pieces that could never be confused with them. He feels, as I do, that his father’s work is completely unique and set apart from all who have followed, and Zanini himself does not wish to tarnish that.

Unlike his father who had no official training, Zanini has a degree in Industrial Design from the Pontifíca Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro and has considerable technical ability as a result. He uses extremely heavy and dense exotic hardwoods such as Ipe and Pequi (the giant trees of the Amazon). Some of this wood is salvaged directly from the floor of the previously cleared rainforest, and the size of this wood dictates what can be relieved from it. Zanini sketches constantly on paper and directly on the wood itself with chalk as well. Though his work is organic, all of his pieces also have geometric elements, and his signature is burned directly into the wood in a geometric font. Witnessing Zanini’s process, and even at times being a part of it, has been deeply moving, and I’ve learned much from him about unwavering focus and commitment to one’s art.

This focus and drive was apparent the first time Zanini took me to his workshop, which is nestled in the foothills of great granite mountains in a small favella (Brazilian word for “ghetto” or “slum”) in Barra de Tijuca. When I walked into the small workshop, or “galpao” in Portuguese, I was overwhelmed. I had stumbled across something truly amazing despite its small size and seedy location. The tools they used were archaic; they spent months scraping away at the wood with very old tools and pieces of metal they sharpened themselves.

This astonished me, as I work with wood most days and have the benefit of every modern tool at my disposal.
It was clear that to actualize his grand plans for larger, more complex pieces, Zanini needed a much bigger workshop and huge milling tools. Thankfully, his father’s master craftsman for over 30 years, Reduzino Vieira, owned a little plot of land not 100 yards away that was ideal. I helped plan and build the new workshop and shared in Zanini and Reduzino’s excitement about a future there of designing and crafting massive, ambitious designs out of one of Brazil’s most beautiful and valuable resources. Zanini is blessed to have the support and guidance of 60-year-old Reduzino, who now supervises the production of all Zanini’s work and has been a close friend ever since Jose Zanine’s death in 2001. In his father’s absence, Reduzino provides a strong connection to his father’s legacy and unwavering standards. He brings an element of the spirit of Jose Zanine Caldas to every piece. Reduzino also spends time restoring the sprawling mansions Zanini’s father built on the cliffs of Joatinga overlooking the ocean and Rio de Janeiro. This is also how Zanini acquires salvaged architectural lumber. Since Jose Zanine Caldas built his houses all out of salvaged materials as well, much of Zanini’s work is actually twice salvaged.

I believe success is not measured by profits or accolades. Instead it is the impact we have on others and how we help them achieve their dreams that have any lasting quantitative impact on our own success. I am privileged to have the opportunity to work with Zanini and curate his first show in the United States.
On a personal note, I want to thank my beautiful wife Tracy, who supported my many trips to Brazil. Without her support and love none of this would have been possible. You are my coracao. Josephine and Sophia, my little girls, you are the light of my life and my greatest accomplishment. You are with me every moment. Also I would like to thank Marcelo Vasconcellos, owner of Mercado Moderno in Rio de Janeiro. He has supported our efforts in Rio selflessly and helped overcome so many hurdles in attempting to do business in Brazil from afar. Both he and Zanini have become members of my family, and I love them both dearly as my brothers.

Thomas M. Hayes

—

With our first exhibition of paintings in 2003, and with shows in subsequent years, our gallery has shown its commitment to finding and exhibiting noteworthy talent that for some reason had gone overlooked or had received far too little attention.  For the most part, we have been fortunate to work with artists of “a certain age,” who were able to enjoy a rebirth of sorts, thanks in part to our exhibition, and enjoy unexpected attention and success in their later years. With time our focus has broadened, as has our geographic reach.
In the last three years, NOHO Modern has sought to aggressively seek out and understand Brazilian modernist art and design.

We have been fortunate, after much difficulty and many obstacles, to bring to the secondary market many fine examples of furniture and art from the 1940′s to the present from this country. In doing so, I have gained a greater understanding of Brazilian design while realizing that, as with the study of most subjects, the more I learn, the more I don’t know. My understanding of many things Brazilian took a giant leap upon meeting Zanini de Zanine Caldas in 2006. This unexpected encounter with Zanini led me to realize that I had run smack dab into the very essence of everything that Brazil, design history, ecological consciousness, and expert artisanship embodied. I also knew that we had to find a way to lug all this massively heavy wood furniture to Los Angeles and somehow put together an exhibition. It has taken a little more than two years, but the journey has been satisfying and I hope that you will marvel with us at the daunting artistry of his furniture and sculptures.

We met Zanini thanks to the graciousness and thoughtfulness of the artist Joao Machado and his mother Eliane Carvalho. Joao was acquainted with Zanini from adolescent years spent in Paris, and the two shared an artistic heritage from their fathers. Zanini’s path led him to assess his own desire to create from the same materials as his father, Jose Zanine Caldas, a process fraught with heartache and soul-searching. I think that he had a hard time reconciling his beloved father’s stellar reputation as an architect and artisan in Brazil and France with his own to continue working with the same materials. A long process of design education, often at the hands of Brazilian masters like Sergio Rodrigues, and many years of work and introspection led him back to working in the same way as his father. His eye and resolve are now clear. His style is his own.

Zanini shares a love of his native land with his father, and his desire to preserve it grew out of a childhood spent with his father in Bahia in ateliers with native Brazilians trained in carving canoes. The two share a skilled hand and tremendous eye, but Zanini has chosen a more precise and sculpted approach to many of his designs. He is careful not to suffocate the original form of the material, but unlike certain designers, he is not afraid to find the soul of the chair or table in a chunk of wood. Zanini is able to take a piece of wood, pare it down and fashion a functional piece of furniture while preserving the grace and beauty of the original material.

A similar passion had led Zanini’s father, after whom he is named, to design roughly 400 residential and commercial projects in Brazil and furnish a good many of them, all with wood salvaged mainly from old homes and rivers surrounding old logging sites. Zanine, as his father is known, was well-respected in Brazil despite a lack of formal architectural training. His prowess as a builder of architectural maquettes early on made him the go-to guy for the likes of Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa. He was revolutionary in his approach to furniture-making, as he took on the ideal of making ecologically responsible furniture before there was really even a term for such a thing. But the fact that it is “ecologically responsible” takes a backseat to the beauty of his formidable designs.

Although Zanine traveled worldwide, he seldom came to the U.S. and never completed any projects here, which perhaps helps to explain the lack of attention to his work here; the French, however, have taken great note. He was honored with a retrospective in 1989 at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs next to the Louvre. As I pored over materials in the extensive museum library in Paris last year, I was exhilarated to find many examples of furniture and sculpture that must have greatly influenced young Zanini. All of his formative training later on only served to bring him back to the roots, discarded trunks and branches of his youth. Yes, there has been innovation since his father was active as a designer, but in the late 60′s, it was the elder Zanine who realized that the innovations of his time would not suffice, and was led to native canoe carvers in Bahia. Their techniques had been honed over hundreds of years, and Zanini continues to benefit from their influence today.

I am overwhelmed by the scale of Zanini’s furniture, as well as the number of pieces that he has been able to produce for this exhibition. I am also grateful that he listened to us and had faith that the two American art dealers from Los Angeles weren’t just talking big. It might have seemed to him at times that this would never happen, but he has shown steadiness and patience throughout. His work ethic is tremendous and it has never waned. I hope that our efforts will be worthy of him and his works.

–Jeremy Petty

at the still point, there the dance is
~ T. S. Eliot

View photos from the Opening Reception

View photos from the Exhibition

I first encountered the work of Robert Hansen when I was an art student during the 1960s. Like others interested in the newly burgeoning art scene in Los Angeles, I attended the Monday night “Art Walks.” At the time, most of the art galleries in Los Angeles were located on or near La Cienega Boulevard. One Monday night each month, all of the galleries opened for patrons to walk from one gallery to the next. It was a smaller Los Angeles then and a smaller art scene.

Hansen’s career in Los Angeles began just before the legendary Ferus Gallery helped bring international attention to the area. In 1958, Ferus Gallery co-founders Edward Kienholz and Walter Hopps gave Hansen one of the gallery’s first shows. At the time of this early exhibition, Hansen had already embraced a subject and developed a technique that would occupy him until the mid-1980s. His subject was the figure, which he rendered in strands, drips and dollops of industrial lacquer.

The lacquer, called Duco, was an industrial paint used primarily to coat appliances and automobiles. For the purpose of making paintings, Hansen found that Duco worked best when it was poured onto pressed wood panels laid flat on the floor. Hansen began each painting by applying an overall back- ground layer of paint, often black.

Once the background was in place, Hansen defined shapes, usually figures, by dribbling outlines in paint and filling them in. He often loaded his brush with several inches of viscous paint, using it to deposit a puddle that he pushed out from the center to create a contour, like the sea advancing upon the shore.

Hansen controlled how slowly or rapidly the paint spread by changing the paint’s viscosity — allowing new cans of paint to sit open for extended periods while the paint thickened. The thicker the paint, the slower it spread on the panel. Once shapes were created, he sometimes brushed into them. As a result, some works are painterly (such as the Mirror series), with extensive brushwork, while others consist of plain, solid colors with hard edges.

It has long been recognized that to some degree the artist is a slave to his or her medium, accepting its limitations while exploring its possibilities, always searching for a marriage between imagery and technique. Using Duco, Hansen elected to keep the shapes in his paintings relatively simple. When he desired complex configurations, he divided them into sections with each part formed separately. Principally a draftsman, Hansen limited his palette to whites, blacks and browns. In the 1960s, he added rich reds and occasionally other intense hues.

Hansen introduced additional elements to widen his visual vocabulary. He cut panels into various non-rectangular shapes or notched pieces out of them. Some of these works have slanted or curving sides; some form figures. He also included textural elements (detritus) in some paintings, or he left the surface unpainted, the bare wood exposed. In others, he intentionally tore the sides of the pressed wood panels to create ragged edges.

The space Hansen created in his paintings is often ambiguous. Size relationships between figures seem arbitrary or fanciful (one small figure might be superimposed on another of gigantic proportions). As one attempts to peer into these paintings, as though through a window, the space appears to recede into infinity or, conversely, there is no sense of depth. Hansen chose not to employ the usual methods of depicting deep space. Linear perspective, for example, is absent from his work. Only a shallow field of depth was introduced by the use of overlapping shapes, thus giving the viewer the impression that some figures are positioned in front or behind others. The overall result is a flat, graphic space.

By way of contrast, while the depiction of the space is two-dimensional, the physical paint is three-dimensional. A slight shadow is cast at the edge of each shape, forming a subtle relief. This relief is one of the most compelling qualities of Hansen’s work.

In size, Hansen’s paintings range from small to large, up to 96” in length. He also produced several mural sized paintings. One work, done for an exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1964, consisted of 14 panels that formed a painting 12′ high by 25′ long.

Hansen adopted the use of Duco upon his return from a year spent in Mexico in 1948-1949, a place where many American artists have found inspiration. In Mexico, Hansen attended a lecture at San Miguel de Allende given by David Alfaro Siqueiros, the great Mexican muralist, and his technical assistant. 4 Siqueiros encouraged, even demanded, that artists use the newest materials of the industrial age. This included paints that employed a pyroxylin binder, the chemical basis for the product sold as Duco. The idea appealed to Hansen. He immediately obtained the lacquer and other industrial materials upon his return to the United States.

The experience in Mexico was so engaging that Hansen returned in 1951-1952 to study mural painting with Alfredo Zalce at the University of Michoacan. While there, he painted three murals in public buildings in Morelia, the state capitol, using mosaic, casein, ethyl silicate and colored cement. He returned again to San Miguel to teach during the summers of 1959 and 1960.

Hansen became steeped in the style and iconography of Mexican mural painting. The monumental figures and the muscular drawing style of the Mexican muralists are reflected in the paintings Hansen did after returning from Mexico. This can be seen in one of his most acclaimed series, entitled Man-Men. In these paintings, Hansen’s figures often appear large in scale and imposing, even in smaller paintings (typically 12”x24”).

There is another possible source for the imagery in his work. Hansen grew up in a tiny farm community, the son of the town butcher. Working for his father, Hansen learned various aspects of the trade. He observed the joints that divide body parts as he dissected carcasses and carved steaks and roasts for sale at his father’s meat market. Hansen believes that his stylized, fragmented – even dismembered – figures may have had their origin in these activities, as did his interest in the fundamentals of the human anatomy. Perhaps these experiences influenced his selection of the color red as his principal hue.

Hansen is fundamentally a figurative painter, and the figures that populate his paintings display an endless variety of postures. The figures are highly mannered (not classical in proportion). Sometimes they stand alone, squarely facing the viewer. They stare, often blankly. The figures can be passive or aggressive, humble or god-like. In some paintings, single figures seem to float or balance precariously. In other paintings, figures huddle in mass. Alone or grouped together, they are universal — the skin of individuality has been stripped from them.

The themes of Hansen’s work can range from the religious, as in a painting entitled Betrayal, Crucifixion, Entombment, Resurrection, to the dark recesses of the Marquis de Sade. (In fact, in 1964, he produced a livre deluxe, based upon selections from Guy Endore’s Satan’s Saint, featuring 17 lithographic images, as well as an independent suite of lithographs.) Hansen’s themes are never political, however, as are those of the Mexican muralists.

Hansen’s themes have to do with the fundamental elements of life (embryonic and phallic forms are present in many paintings), the paradoxes of the world, and the struggles of humanity, both singly and collectively. There is an overwhelming sense of spirituality and symbolism that pervades his paintings, even if one is hesitant to define those symbols in a precise manner. Hansen, in fact, regards his paintings as depictions of reality that transcend fixed interpretations. What Hansen depicts is primal and elemental, and the cumulative total of his work has the grandeur of a myth.

His interest in the primordial nature of existence may also originate, unconsciously, in the annihilation fears and existential angst that fueled much of American art following World War II. Some of Hansen’s early works of distorted figures, standing in front of black backgrounds, can be seen as apocalyptic. However, his work does not represent a doomsday, cautionary tale. Rather, it explores the fundamental nature of life, humankind and society in its base state. His skeletal figures are perhaps more closely related to the life-cycle representations associated with the Mexican celebration of Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos).

Beginning in the late 1950s, Hansen’s work was regularly exhibited and well received. His work was represented in fourteen solo exhibitions, half at Comara Gallery in Los Angeles, and in three retrospectives. His works were included in Painting U.S.A.: The Figure, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1961; the Whitney Annual, New York, in 1962 and 1964; and the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, in 1961 and 1966. Both the Whitney and MOMA acquired his work.

In 1961-62, Hansen received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Senior Research Grant. These awards allowed him to travel in India and to Southeast Asia. He was attracted to Asia, and India in particular, because the multi-limbed figures of Asian art were similar to the figures that he had produced prior to his travels. The trip, as Los Angeles Times critic Henry J. Seldis noted at the time, “…seems in no way to have altered his style or symbology, rather it added strength, since Oriental thought seems to be the source of his pictorial considerations.”

Even if Asian thought and practice was not the actual source of Hansen’s art, it had its influence. Often the figurative shapes in his paintings take on the appearance of mudras, the symbolic hand gestures of Buddhist art (some works are entitled Mudra). This can be seen clearly in a series of small, square shaped paintings (12”x12”) that Hansen made while living in Spain (1967-1968). These paintings continue his figurative focus, but the shapes have the appearance of calligraphy.

Adding to the ambiguities of his early work, many of these calligraphic paintings are filled with mystifying pictographs, sometimes human and sometimes animal, often transmuting from one to the other. These paintings present a world of suggested forms — anthropomorphic and biomorphic – that continue the primal themes of Hansen’s earlier work. These figure/shapes seem to move about, dancing, flying, falling, but rarely do they sit still.

Some paintings are reminiscent of Chinese scrolls, displaying rows of calligraphic figure/shapes. Therefore, it seems appropriate to borrow the words of a calligrapher, Lui-sang Wong, to aptly describe Hansen’s paintings: “The dynamic, asymmetric equilibrium of a well-written character can be better understood if it is thought of as a living form in motion, a skilled dancer or athlete, possessing head and limbs, direction and center of gravity.” Many of these thoughts — the ideas of equilibrium, dynamics, asymmetry, and living forms — are essential to Hansen’s art. Wong and Henry J. Seldis offer a fitting summation of Hansen’s accomplishments: “In his most ambitious work… Hansen achieves an astonishing projection of spirituality through his own ingenious amalgamation of influences which range from the Romanesque to the ritual art of India and the explosiveness of Mexican mural painting.”

In the early 1960s, DuPont ceased the manufacture of Duco. Hansen stockpiled large quantities of the material, which he used until the cans began to rust in the mid-1980s. He retired from his longtime faculty position in the Art Department at Occidental College, where he used a campus studio to execute many of his painting. Following his retirement in 1987, he ceased painting (but resumed in the 1990s, using acrylics and continuing his figurative interests). In spite of the considerable recognition his work once received, no significant showing has been seen since the late 1980s.

When Hansen’s career began in the late 1940s, Los Angeles painting was dominated by a tradition of figuration that is perhaps best epitomized by the work of Rico Lebrun. Lebrun was unquestionably a virtuoso, and Hansen admired his work. But by the 1960s, figurative painting seemed tired and outdated to many in Los Angeles. Progressive artists were pursuing other approaches. Many artists expunged representational or symbolic references. Examples abound: Hard-edge painting, Finish Fetish (ushered in chiefly by the Ferus Gallery in the 1960s), Minimalism, and Light and Space art were all prominent movements in Los Angeles during Hansen’s career.

In spite of this climate, much of it hostile to representation and symbolism, Hansen found a way to carry forward the tradition of figuration. He did so with a personal, unique and affecting style. I can think of no body of work, done in Los Angeles or elsewhere, that is its duplicate.

–Dennis Reed, November 2005

Dennis Reed is Dean of Arts at Los Angeles Valley College. He has written about artist Richard Pettibone, early Los Angeles abstraction, and the history of photography for such institutions as UCLA; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the J. Paul Getty Museum and The Huntington, among others.

ROBERT HANSEN

Born 1924, in Osceola, Nebraska

Education:
University of Nebraska; AB, BFA 1948
Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; MFA 1949
Studied mural painting with Alfredo Zalce — Executed 3 murals in public buildings
University of Michoacan, Morelia, Mexico: 1951-52
Guggenheim Fellowship: 1961-62 India and Southeast Asia
Fulbright “senior research” grant: 1961-62 India (Painting, bronze casting)
Tamarind Lithography Workshop Fellowship: 1965

Teaching:
Bradley University 1949-55
University of Hawaii 1955-56
Occidental College 1956 to 1987
Instituto Allende, Mexico: Summers 1959, 1960

Selected Solo Exhibitions:
14 solo shows in Los Angeles from 1957-1975:
Ferus gallery, Bertha Lewinson, Huysman, and Comara Gallery
Castellane Gallery, New York City, 1964
Graphics Gallery (drawing and lithographs), San Francisco 1975
Brand Gallery, Glendale, 1976
Oranges/Sardines Gallery 1981, 1982
Solo invitational, Kresge Art Gallery, Michigan State University, 1980

Selected Group Exhibitions:
Long Beach Museum of Art 1967
Los Angeles Municipal Gallery 1973
Bradley University 1976
Museum of Modern Art Painting USA: The Figure 1961
Carnegie (Pittsburgh) International 1961, 1966
USC Galleries 1982
Whitney Annual 1962, 1964
International Art Program of the U.S. State Department
The New Vein 1969-71 Toured museums in the capitals of Europe and South America
Tamarind-printed livre de luxe Satan’s Saint exhibited in UCLA’s Word and Image show, 1978

Permanent Collections:
Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, Princeton University, University of Nebraska, and numerous private collections.

View photos from the Opening Reception

View photos from the Exhibition

Modernist design is often derided by unsympathetic viewers as being “cold” and “sterile”. In truth, some images from the era do seem more concerned with minimalism than comfort. Some warmth was needed, and it developed in a quiet revolution of lifestyle and technique centered in California. This warmth was generated by craftsmen who were consciously rejecting the industrialization and, particularly, the homogenization of American culture. Their wares made both political and aesthetic statements. They created useful items with wood, metal, textile and clay and emphasized the organic, “natural” finishes of these materials. Many of these artisans did their work in remote outposts like Bolinas, Alta Loma, Potrero and Fresno. These were inexpensive places to live and their remoteness promised a relaxation of building and manufacturing codes. From the late 40′s through the mid 70′s, these craftsmen softened the severity of Modern Design.

In 1958, an 18 year old ceramist and sculptor named Brent Bennett (from the not-so-remote outpost known as Hollywood High) entered this milieu and planted himself under the wing of Raul Coronel. Coronel, well regarded for his ceramic murals as well as his work with Architectural Pottery, mentored Bennett during the young man’s summer breaks from UCSB (where he earned a BA in Art in 1962) and UCLA (where his work with Laura Andreson resulted in a 1964 Master’s Degree). A session at the legendary Pond Farm in Guerneville with Marguerite Friedländer-Wildenhain furthered his practical education.

But it is Coronel who gets Bennett’s deepest appreciation. Their association instilled a high level of discipline and control into the young Bennett’s work ethic. This control enabled him to envision objects and execute them without hesitation. Brent’s creativity increased in pace with his rising expertise. By 1965, Bennett evolved from acolyte to full partner. He, Coronel, and Walter Schneider formed Stoneware Designs. This relationship lasted through 1967. In 1969, Bennett decided to test his independence and formed Architectural Stoneware. Bennett eventually sold the successful company to pursue other interests. After a lengthy hiatus, Brent returned to his calling and formed BJB Design in 2002.

The lamps, vessels, tables, fountains and wall reliefs in this show represent nearly 40 years of creative output. The primitive shapes that often appear on Bennett’s surfaces suggest leaves, sunrays, fruits, and blossoms. There is something of the cave painter in his roots. But Brent consistently turns the cave inside out and warms the walls with his fertile vision. Brent’s work is a model distillation of the indoor/outdoor aesthetic that courses through California Modernism. Natural clay meets earthy glaze to form beautiful, useful objects. From the delicately latticed lamp bodies to the strong, sculptural wall reliefs, Brent Bennett’s ceramic art reminds the viewer that earth, water, and fire can be transformed by masterful hands. The by-product is beauty. That beauty is worth exploring.

–Damon Cardwell, May 2005

View photos from the Exhibition

Noho Modern is proud to present “James Prestini – Steel Constructions.” The exhibition focuses on James Prestini’s work in steel of the late 1960s. This marks the second venue for the exhibition, which represents the first exhibition of many of the featured works. All of the sculptures in the exhibition have been obtained directly from Mr. Prestini’s estate. An opening reception will be held on June 26, 2004, from 6 to 9 p.m., and the show will run through August 7, 2004.

“We are extremely pleased to continue to present the work of 20th century artists. James Prestini represents genius and innovation in art and design, and it is important that his work be seen in the context of 20th century design as a whole,” says gallery co-proprietor Thomas Hayes. Adds Jeremy Petty, co-proprietor, “Many ignore Prestini’s later work from his career, largely due to the fact that it has been inaccessible up until the present. This exhibition presents the unique opportunity to see what Prestini was striving for in his marriage of science with art.”

James Prestini is best known for his early work in turned wood objects from the 1930s and 1940s. He developed a vernacular of thin-walled wooden vessels that appeared as useful objects, but instead were conceived as works of art. Prestini believed that the artist’s use of technology and machines to create was not inconsistent with the traditional role of the artist as craftsman and technician. Instead, he believed that an artist for the industrial age must utilize science and machines to create an art that resonates with mankind.

The works in the exhibition, comprised entirely of standardized industrial structural elements (I-beams, H-beams, channels and tubes), are nickel plated, polished, and finished with great precision through industrial processes intended to obliterate entirely the hand of the artist from the work. Visually, the forms and surfaces are pure refinement. The highly polished planes define and reflect the space around them. They exhibit symmetry and surface perfection akin to Prestini’s most exalted wooden vessels, but with scale impossible to achieve in turned wood. The steel constructions that make up the current exhibition are the product of Prestini’s unique combination of skill and experience as artist, designer, engineer and scientist, the ultimate culmination of his lifelong fascination with the use of technology and machines in art.

NOHO MODERN is a gallery of 20th Century decorative and fine arts. Its proprietors, Thomas Hayes and Jeremy Petty, chose to locate the space in the NOHO arts district in late 2002 and are pleased to present the second major exhibition at the gallery. The first, an exhibition of the early work of Los Angeles hard-edge painter June Harwood, took place in late 2003. The gallery is intended to present the works of emerging and established artists from the 20th century through the present, and original modern furnishings and accessories.

View photos from the Opening Reception

View photos from the Exhibition

Out of the abstraction of Mondrian, Malevich and Albers, a pure abstraction emerged in the 1950s that was uniquely Californian in composition and color. Dubbed the “Abstract Classicists” by critic Jules Langsner in connection with the seminal Los Angeles County Museum 1959 exhibition of the same title, the California painters were distinct from the historical abstraction of New York in the 1940s.

They were not focused on their role in the struggle between representation and abstraction, the literal and the figurative. Their emphasis lay with the coherence of color and form in creating the whole, and the power and centrality of oppositions within a single work, rather than the gesture of the artist and the creative process. June Harwood, whose work was shown in the second large-scale California Hard-Edge Painting exhibit (Newport Beach Pavilion Gallery, 1964) alongside that of John McLaughlin and Lorser Feitelson, developed a remarkable language of abstraction during the pivotal decade of the 1960s. Not content to simply reduce the canvas to a flat surface of color-forms and negatives and positives, Ms. Harwood’s work from this period included both open forms and interlocking structures, while injecting a sense of energy and movement into the often static and contemplative world of the hard-edge.

The current exhibition explores four major themes within Ms. Harwood’s work from this period, including: the earliest “sliver” paintings, whose consistent and neutral palate allowed for experimentation in form and geometry; the “colorform” paintings, which show Ms. Harwood’s mastery of the mature language of the hard-edge and the opposition of color; the “loop” paintings, which demonstrate the artist’s development of open, kinetic forms within the confines of her geometric abstraction; and finally the “network” and “grid” paintings, which represent the evolution of the loops into a fully-formed, complex structure.

Noho Modern is proud to bring John Crowther’s seminal one-man show on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright to its gallery for a limited engagement on December 5th and 6th

When John Crowther was a 14-year old boy he met Frank Lloyd Wright, an experience he never forgot. With this production he realizes a long-standing dream, bringing the greatest architect of the 20th century to life onstage. F.LL.W. centers around the creation of Fallingwater, which began the remarkable comeback that restored Wright’s reputation as one of the pre-eminent architects of the 20th century. In a life marked by scandal, crushing tragedy, financial reversals, and finally triumph, Wright is revealed as a man of biting wit and strong opinions, who survived adversity thanks to an unwavering belief in himself, his ideas, and his remarkable vision.

In 1934, when he was already 67 years old, Frank Lloyd Wright was asked by E.J. Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh entrepreneur, to design a country place for him on a plot of land he owned at Bear Run Creek in western Pennsylvania. At the time Wright’s career appeared to be over, his reputation as an innovative architect was in eclipse, and he was barely eking out a living lecturing and training architectural students at the fellowship he established at his home in Taliesin, Wisconsin.

Wright characteristically postponed work on the commission. Almost a year later Kaufmann impatiently telephoned Wright from Milwaukee where he was on a business trip, and asked if he could come to Taliesin that day to see the plans. Nonplussed, Wright told him to come ahead, and with only two or three hours before Kaufmann’s arrival flew into action. Just as he had done on many other occasions, Wright “shook the design out of his sleeve.”

The result was Fallingwater, now one of the most famous houses in the world, and it marked a turning point in Wright’s life, leading to the work for which he is best remembered today. The designing of Fallingwater frames F.LL.W., as the master shares memories of his tumultuous life with members of the fellowship while he feverishly prepares for Kaufmann’s imminent arrival.

With candor and humor, Wright recalls his childhood, his beginnings as an architect, and his apprenticeship with the great Louis Sullivan in Chicago. He reveals the marital difficulties that led to his abandoning his wife and six children, his relationship with the wife of a former client, and the dreadful tragedy that took her from him and made him question whether he could continue living.

F.LL.W. reverberates throughout with this central theme: in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles Wright again and again reached deep into himself for the strength and determination to keep going.