The Webster dictionary defines “edge” as “the outside limit of an object, area, or surface; a place or part farthest away from the center of something”. We often associate it as the place where a “hard surface stops and a soft or undefined space starts” or vice versa.

This exhibition features paintings by important but less well recognized mid-century modernists who used the edge to establish a relationship between colors, or generate tension by using a line to define a visual plane, or to present a relationship of dimensions of time. All of the artists featured in this exhibition are represented in the permanent collections of the major museums around the world, have extensive exhibition histories in both solo and group shows, have received strong critical review, and most importantly demonstrated an authentic voice that resonated throughout their entire body of work.

Nassos Daphnis (1914-2010): Using the edge to establish a space to support a relationship between color and shape, Daphnis had an innate ability to determine the visual weight of a specific color and use that reference to generate a painting that was in perfect balance even if the shapes and colors were dramatically different – edge to edge.
His technique was flawless. Celebrated by Leo Castelli 50 years ago as an important and visionary artist, Daphnis is once again beginning to receive the attention he deserves.

Leon Polk Smith (1906-1996): Born in the Oklahoma Territories, Native American Leon Polk Smith used the Edge of where two colors meet to establish a “figure/ground opposition” that moves as your eye travels across the canvas. In 1959 he began his Correspondences series. The painting, Correspondence Red-Blue, 1966 illustrates why he is recognized by many as one of the initiators of “Hard Edge Painting”, a term coined by the art critic Jules Langsner in 1958. Leon Polk Smith expanded Mondrian’s foundation of angular geometric form with curvilinear elements. Bold, simple, often large masses of color seem to dance around the line that separates them, generating a painting that has a lightness of being that is refreshing and surprising.

Rolph Scarlett (1889-1984): Scarlett is the first American artist to be embraced by Hilla Rebay, the Guggenheim Museum’s founding curator to create pictures for the Museum (first called the Museum of Non Objective Painting). Rebay, a student of Kandinsky learned that if an artist could silence their ego and allow the energy of universe to pass through them that a picture reflecting the authentic “voice” of the universe would present itself. Scarlett used this technique/philosophy to “move” across the edge of known/unknown and self/selfless. This energy was often depicted using line and color to echo the essence of the energy of a different dimension or place in time.

Maurice Golubov (1905-1987): Golubov from childhood had an innate sense that allowed him to be resolute in his belief that time existed in at least four if not up to seven dimensions. By 1922, at the age of 17, he used the Edge to establish the relationship between the present and each dimension of time. His tools were the dot, line and curve reflecting the relationship of one to all, creating a dynamic and fluid transition across time. Mondrian and Golubov were unknown to each other at that time. New scholarship on Golubov by two noted scholars is forthcoming.

Budd Hopkins (1931-2011): As a young man in West Virginia in the late 1940’s, Hopkins was influenced by a presentation given by Robert Motherwell, deciding to go on to Oberlin College for a Fine Arts Degree. Hopkins was fascinated by Abstraction while at the same time inspired by the simplicity of the structure and color of works by Mondrian.

Upon his arrival in NY in 1953, Hopkins became close friends with Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Their art inspired Hopkins to create pictures that used the Edge of the line to define a moment, a visual pause, a portal to explore the Abstract. According to Hopkins, “my paintings and sculptures, at first glance, may appear to be purely aesthetic; closer up, they are not. They hold a feeling of tentativeness, combined with a sense of arrival."

Already a highly respected artist by the early 1960’s, he and his friends’ 1963 sighting of a UFO on Cape Cod and the subsequent denial by authorities further strengthened his resolve to explore the edge of a reality based on what was “known and accepted as known, versus what was “known but denied as known”. This internal drive to move the “conversation” from denial was echoed in both his art and his writings for the rest of his life. Reflecting the museums and critics approval, Hopkins paintings and sculpture were acquired by many of the major American museums. His artistic voice was strong and consistent until he died in 2011.

Charmion von Wiegand (1896-1983): As an active member of the American Abstract Artists and a leading artist in the abstract Neo-Plastic field, Charmion von Wiegand is most notably recognized for her use of flat planes, her preoccupation with simple, elementary colors and her fragmented rectilinear constructions. She was heavily influenced by Piet Mondrian and worked with him to develop his artistic theories, eventually culminating them into the first American book about Mondrian and his aesthetic.

Her work resides in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Gallery, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and several other institutional and private collections.