Modern Muses

George Condo, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Yayoi Kusama, Isshaq Ismail, Nicolas Party, Andy Warhol

Helwaser Gallery is pleased to present Modern Muses: Selected Paintings, a new exhibition featuring a selection of Post-war and Contemporary Masters.

Modern Muses brings into focus the gallery’s long-standing emphasis on Modern, Abstract Expressionism and Pop artworks, particularly those made in the 1960s and beyond. The exhibition selects master works from artists that have been an integral part of 20th-century art history, and expounds upon those storied artists by introducing works by contemporary greats like Genieve Figgis, George Condo and Nicolas Party.

Bringing together a varied selection of paintings and pastels that explore the conventions of figuration through the experience of texture and tone while laying claim to the ethereal interiority of one’s spirit, not just the traditional confines of the corporeal body. The exhibition demonstrates the respective artist’s best-known thematic concerns, and highlights their use of color and form within their compositions. Whilst emphasizing the achievements of each respective artist, it draws out the nuanced stylistic dialogues occurring between each work, allowing unexpected connections to be made between a range of global contexts.

Large-scale works include Andy Warhol’s High Society Portrait (1977), a staple of the artist’s Pop Art practice. To create iconic images of celebrities, models, and art collectors, the artist used acidic and pastel tones of the era, meanwhile reducing the sitter’s features to their own geometric essence.

Isshaq Ismail’s Nkabom 3 (2019) is part of the current generation’s fresh approach to figurative painting in the realm of contemporary portraiture. The artist uses a free and flowing motion through each stroke, amplifying its texture with high impasto layers. The scale of these works contrasts

with the smaller pastels by Nicolas Party presented in the exhibition. Best known for re-interpreting traditional painting genres such as portrait, landscape, and still life through a neo-Surrealist eye, in Still Life (2014), Party explores the texture of three tall, monumental pots that rest on a pastel nude background.

Based along Madison Avenue, Helwaser Gallery presents mid-career and established artists, including Anton Ginzburg, Boedi Widjaja, Christina Kruse, and Lin Yan. It also specializes in the work of post-war masters, such as Tom Wesselmann, Alexander Calder, Adolph Gottlieb, and Helen Frankenthaler, among others. Founded in Paris in 1986, the gallery has initiated significant exhibitions, including a retrospective on Jean Dubuffet (1996), and presentations on French cubist masters, notably Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, and Pablo Picasso. In 2008, Helwaser Gallery marked its inaugural relocation to New York with the group exhibition Red, which presented works by Hans Hofmann, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2019, Helwaser Gallery reopened its present space with a public exhibition program, presenting internationally recognized artists. The gallery program emphasizes a dialogue between contemporary art, and modern art historical movements and contexts.