Gene Hedge

Lincoln Glenn is pleased to present an exhibition featuring Gene Hedge's color field paintings from the 1960s to 1970s, on view in New York for the first time in 55 years.

The paintings represent an experimental period when Hedge turned away from producing the found-object collages that he was best known for in the 1950s, and discovered the then-new medium of acrylic paint.

Last seen in a solo exhibition at Poindexter Gallery in 1968, Hedge’s paintings were self-described as “a sort of dialogue between control and lack of control.” Hedge was a perfectionist who was constantly looking towards nature for inspiration and clarification. Consider the appearance of a snowflake or a zebra’s stripes in that they are similar, but always unique. Such was the natural phenomena Hedge captured in his squeegee-assisted paintings produced in his Greenwich Village studio that he occupied from the early 1960s until his death in 2017.

Gene Hedge (b. 1928) was born and raised in rural Indiana. After military service, he briefly attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. There he encountered the writing of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and the following year (1949) went to study at the Institute of Design in Chicago. He received a B.S. degree in Visual Design from the Institute of Design (1953), and he also took courses at the Art Institute of Chicago and began working in collage.

During this period, the influence of Eugene Dana (painter 1912-1996), Aaron Siskind (photographer 1903-1991), and Robert Nickle (designer & collagist 1919-1980) became especially important, first as teachers at the Institute of Design and later as friends. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hedge became involved with the Exhibition Momentum group of young artists, exhibiting his collages in the 1954 show.

Picked-up by Allan Frumkin Gallery in Chicago, Hedge soon began to show his distinctive collage-paintings in group shows around the United States including the Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh (1955) and the Art Institute of Chicago (1956). It was in this year that Hedge relocated to New York City.

His work was then included in the New Talent/Art in America at New York City’s Rockefeller Center (1959), Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1963), Collage in America at the Museum of Modern Art (1966), 100 Years: 100 Artists at Art Institute of Chicago (1979). Hedge was represented by B.C. Holland Gallery (Chicago) and the Poindexter Gallery (New York), and he also showed at the Stable Gallery (New York) and other galleries and museums across the United States.

In the early 1970s, Hedge began traveling to explore new landscapes, art and architecture, especially that of the Southwestern United States, the Middle-East, and India. During these often-lengthy journeys, he photographically documented all that he was experiencing visually. Having formally studied multiple artistic disciplines, Hedge expanded his work exploring new painting techniques and lithography.

From an early age, Hedge observed an asymmetrical order to natural objects like fruit, fish, feathers, or seashells. Using macro-digital photography and large format printmaking, Hedge’s work provides a viewer with a sense of joy and wonder through un-manipulated images of natural visual organizations normally unseen by the human eye.

Gene Hedge taught students and teachers and developed educational programs in design at the School of Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C. (1968 -1973), and the University of Illinois at Chicago (1980-1986).