BIOGRAPHY
American, 1913-2001
One of the things we enjoy most about the gallery business is the many discoveries that come our way--artists that have been forgotten and need to be rediscovered or artists that need to be discovered for the first time.
A chance trip over the winter to Lambertville, NJ led to one of those discoveries. On the third floor of an antique store (we never venture beyond the first floor!), high up on the wall and nearly completely obscured by furniture, we saw the corner of a painting. Sometimes its just a feeling, sometimes the hair on the back of your neck stick up... We made the store owner move all the furniture and take down the painting. We bought it on the spot.
We learned that Wilson's estate was housed at Montclair State University. We arranged to see the work, housed in the George Segal Art Center. Sensing our enthusiasm, the University offered us the opportunity to represent the estate, and here we are.
Like many of his compatriots in the New York School, Ben Wilson (1913-2001) began his career painting figuratively before transitioning to abstraction after WWII (and somewhat later than his compatriots.) However, because he started in a different place than they did, he ended up in a different place. His starting place was the cubism of Picasso, Braque and Leger, and their influence never left him.
A critic in the Princeton Review in 1987 wrote: "Ben Wilson's canvases, while still within the abstract expressionist mode, retain echoes of Picasso, Braque and even mechanistic elements of Fernand Leger." Another critic writes: "The expressive abstractions of Ben Wilson belong among the best work created by New York artists in the 20th century; but they stand outside the critical labels applied to Abstract Expressionism..."
Ben Wilson had more than 30 one-man shows during his lifetime, first starting to show in the early 1930s. As early as 1942, he was singled out by the New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell as a "discovery." He exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum (1934), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the Corcoran, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, among others. His work is in the collection of the Newark Museum and the Montclair Museum.
Lawrence Fine Art is pleased to represent this fine estate.
A critic in the Princeton Review in 1987 wrote: "Ben Wilson's canvases, while still within the abstract expressionist mode, retain echoes of Picasso, Braque and even mechanistic elements of Fernand Leger." Another critic writes: "The expressive abstractions of Ben Wilson belong among the best work created by New York artists in the 20th century; but they stand outside the critical labels applied to Abstract Expressionism..."
Ben Wilson had more than 30 one-man shows during his lifetime, first starting to show in the early 1930s. As early as 1942, he was singled out by the New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell as a "discovery." He exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum (1934), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the Corcoran, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, among others. His work is in the collection of the Newark Museum and the Montclair Museum.
Lawrence Fine Art is pleased to represent this fine estate.