PHILADELPHIA – Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia announces the appointment of Matthew J. Palczynski as its curator. Palczynski, who most recently held the position of Staff Lecturer for Western Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, received his Ph.D. from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art with a dissertation on the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko. He specializes in art of the 20th and 21st centuries, and continues to teach courses in relation to this period at Tyler.
“We had over 80 candidates for the position,” says William R. Valerio, the Patricia Van Burgh Allison Director and CEO of Woodmere Art Museum, “and Matt was the best fit for Woodmere. His superlative credentials as an art historian, coupled with his experience in museum education will support Woodmere’s commitment to making connections between our visitors and our great collections of the art of Philadelphia.”
“This is a city with a long history of art and a thriving art scene,” says Palczynski. “More and more young artists are choosing to live and work in Philadelphia, and I am thrilled to be part of an institution that is dedicated specifically to exploring and interpreting this new vitality. At the same time, there are so many established artists in the region, and I look forward to giving these artists the greater attention they deserve.”
Palczynski will oversee the Chestnut Hill institution’s collection, which spans four centuries of Philadelphia art, representing a living history of Philadelphia’s artists, past and present. Much of Woodmere’s collection is now available online at the newly launched woodmerecollection.org. The collections database offers an interactive forum where ideas, knowledge and stories can be shared.
Continually adding to its collection, Woodmere is also pleased to announce the acquisition of Woman with Red Hair, a stunning Modernist portrait by American painter Arthur B. Carles (1882 – 1952). This is the second Carles acquisition for the Museum, which added Abstract Bouquet to its collection last fall, when it was featured in the exhibition Mary G.L. Hood and Philadelphia Modernism. Born in Philadelphia, Carles also spent time in Paris, where he developed a European Avant Garde style influenced by the painterly school of Fauvism and the work of Henri Matisse. Woman with Red Hair, believed to have been painted in Paris in 1922, is an excellent example of Carles’ interest in color play — his use of green and purple in his model’s skin tone becomes striking against the dominating vibrant red palette. (View an image of the painting here: http://canarypromo.com/sites/default/files/Carles_RedHairedWomen.jpg)
“Woman with Red Hairis the most sensual, sensuously painted and fully developed portrait Carles painted of his French red-headed model Angele,” says art historian Barbara Wolanin. “Rather than flattening the figure into an abstract composition, Carles artfully caught his model’s features in near-profile, showing her drape sliding suggestively off her shoulder. I am delighted that Woman with Red Hair is now part of Woodmere Art Museum, where the public will be able to share Carles’ delight in his model and in capturing her with color.”
The painting, a gift of Linda and James Ries in memory of Rose Ries in 2011, was exhibited at Woodmere in 2000 and has also been shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Woodmere owns a print by Carles of the same model, given to the collection by June and Perry Ottenberg. Carles lived and worked in his home on Evergreen Avenue in Chestnut Hill.
“This is a wonderfully sensual painting that expands Woodmere’s ability to tell the story of Philadelphia art,” says Valerio. “This is a major work of art.”
Upcoming exhibitions include FORCE OF NATURE, two exhibitions showcasing the late local artist Elaine Kurtz and a diverse groups of Kutz’s peers for whom nature has spurred creativity in form, style and composition. Elaine Kurtz: A Retrospective and Elemental: Nature as Language in the Works of Philadelphia Artists will be on view February 17 to April 22.
About Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952)
Biography source: Hollis Taggart Galleries
Known for his uninhibited use of color and enthusiasm for modernist principles, Arthur B. Carles is considered a forerunner of the Abstract Expressionists. Born in Philadelphia in 1882, he trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As a student, Carles received two scholarships that allowed him to study and travel in Europe, where he immersed himself in the newest trends in art. He continued to make trans-Atlantic trips throughout his career and earned a reputation as an important conduit of European modernist ideas.
In 1910 Carles’ work was included in the Younger American Painters show held at 291, Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery. A one-man show at 291 followed in 1912, and Carles exhibited two landscapes at the seminal Armory Show of 1913. After these early successes, Carles became a fervent spokesman for modern art in his native Philadelphia and played an influential role as a teacher to younger artists.
During the 1920s, Carles began experimenting with cubist planes of color and renewed his acquaintance with Hans Hofmann, whom he had met years before in Paris. The two artists, accompanied by Carles’s daughter, Mercedes, who was Hofmann’s pupil, lived together in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1934.
In the last phase of his career, Carles painted a number of ambitious abstract compositions, despite repeated hospitalizations for alcoholism. His life as an artist drew to an abrupt close in December 1941 with a fall and stroke that left him an invalid until his death in 1952.
Carles is represented in major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, all in New York; the Newark Museum, New Jersey; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Phillips Collection, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, all in Washington, D.C.; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia; and the Art Institute of Chicago.
