May 9, 2019
The Shirley Fiterman Art Center (SFAC) at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY) will present Double Portrait: Mimi Gross and Marcia Marcus, an exhibition opening with a reception on May 23 from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will remain up through July 27, 2019.
The exhibition provides an overview of two figurative artists who were key figures in the 1960s and 1970s New York City art scene, and presents 28 iconic works, each made between 1958 and 2012.
Despite the rise and critical predominance of minimalism and post-minimalism in the 1960s and 1970s, both Gross and Marcus held fast to their own visions, each developing a distinctive style as figurative painters.
“Both experimented with innovative approaches to painting and portraiture and explored their loves of color and pattern; however, each explored those elements in vastly differing ways. Marcus’s ‘cool’ silhouetted figures and flattened forms create a counterpoint to Gross’s densely colored and textured images, that are more expressionistic,” said Lisa Panzera, SFAC director.
In their work, the artists depict friends, artists, writers and acquaintances who were emblematic of the creative movements of their time. In later years, Marcus created self-portraits with mythological overtones and classic themes, while Gross explored a continuing engagement with art history.
Starting in the 1950s, both Gross, who was born in 1940, and Marcus, born in 1928, lived and worked in lower Manhattan. Not only would their paths cross in the city but also during summers in Provincetown and on trips to Italy.
Marcus studied at Cooper Union in the early 1950s and then attended the Art Students League. In 1960, she showed a remarkable series of self-portraits at the Delancey Street Museum, an alternative space co-founded by Red Grooms. Marcus went on to show her work at other notable galleries of the period, including ACA Galleries, Alan Gallery, March Gallery, Stable Gallery, and Zabriskie Gallery.
Gross, the daughter of Renee and noted sculptor Chaim Gross, studied art at Bard College from 1957 to 1959 and traveled to Europe where she created a portrait of landscape artist Katharine Kean, featured in the exhibition. In 1960, Gross attended the summer painting school of Oskar Kokoschka — the fabled Austrian expressionistic painter — in Salzburg and then returned to Florence.
The Shirley Fiterman Art Center, 81 Barclay Street in lower Manhattan, is dedicated to organizing exhibitions of contemporary art and cultural programming, through which it seeks to promote and enrich the educational mission of BMCC.
For more information, call (212) 776-6237.
Image attributions
Top image:
Mimi Gross, Genny’s Anatomy Class: After Rembrandt’s ‘Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp,’ 2009-2012, Oil on canvas, 66 inches x 7 feet, © 2019 Mimi Gross / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. / Courtesy Eric Firestone Gallery.
Image in copy:
Marcia Marcus, Double Self-Portrait at Saqqara, 1976, Oil on canvas, 72 x 48 inches, © 2019 Marcia Marcus, New York. Courtesy Eric Firestone Gallery.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Shirley Fiterman Art Center presents Double Portrait: Mimi Gross and Marcia Marcus, an exhibition opening with a reception May 23 at 6 p.m.
- Gross and Marcus were innovative figurative painters whose work defied the conventions of minimalism prevailing in the 1960s and 1970s
- Both artists depict friends,artists, writers and acquaintances who were emblematic of the creative movements of their time
