Arnold Mesches “75 Years of Works on Paper”

Life on Mars Gallery presents Arnold Mesches - 75 Years of Works on Paper. Arnold Mesches was born in the Bronx, New York. His work has been featured in more than 140 solo exhibitions, included in countless group shows, and is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Mesches was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts award (1982); the Pollock-Krasner award (2002 and 2008); an honorary doctorate from the University of Florida (2009); a New York State Fellowship; and a Florida State Fellowship (2007).

In Mesches’ catalogue raisonné, Arnold Mesches: A Life’s Work, which accompanied his retrospective at the Miami-Dade Art Museum in 2013, Robert Storr writes:

“Arnold Mesches is an old hand. You wouldn’t know it from the vigor of his drawings, which is the essence of his art. Nor from the expansive scale he works on, despite the fact that the drawing is often thought of as an intimate communication between the artist and the viewer who, metaphorically, hovers over his or her shoulder. At age 89, Mesches has been “at it” a long time, and his beginnings date to the waning days of that period in American art history when many modern artists took it for granted that their medium was a form of public address and a vessel for public passions. Back in the day, such an attitude usually reflected Left-leaning political views, and those who held them frequently used the wall as a visual amplifier to express their convictions and proclaim their causes. Mesches still speaks in the visual equivalent of an oratorical voice – boldness and fervency are the hallmarks of his imagery – although he sometimes modulates to a no-less-vivid stage whisper. But where he and others once used that voice to articulate unequivocal positions on the issues of the moment, framed by equally-direct scenarios and symbols of social good and evil, it currently addresses compound ambiguities and bespeaks a ‘message’ of ominous confusion with regard to looming dangers and popular delusions who’s sheer enormity all but overwhelm the viewer.”

75 Years of Works on Paper at Life on Mars Gallery is not an overdue retrospective of Mesches’ works on paper; rather, it serves as a small survey of 45 drawings selected from a collection of the more than 5,000 pieces. We will show a range of Mesches’ mastery of various mediums on paper, including pencil, charcoal, ink and oil paint. The sheer volume of his output of painting, drawing and collage over the last seventy-five years is astounding.

Arnold is currently 92 years young and working as vigorously as a man half his age. This exhibition will span from a drawing of his father (c. 1940, Mesches, age 17) to his most recent work, Double Vision 17 (2015.) Among the works selected, we are thrilled to include the sole surviving piece from Mesches’ first major series, The Rosenbergs (1953-1954). This seminal work, The Kiss (1954), is based upon Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed in 1953, at the height of the Cold War, for treason and espionage. The couple was accused specifically of giving atomic bomb blueprints to the Soviets.

Shortly after completing the series, Mesches’ studio was broken into. “An FBI informer, later exposed, who frequented my studio, guided the FBI to the portfolios and paintings I was doing on the Rosenbergs,” Mesches recalls. “They robbed me of art supplies, a cheap radio and over 200 works.”

Also included in this exhibition is a selection of historic pieces from his series, War Images (1958-1959.) Mesches’ works on paper come straight out of the tradition of Goya, Daumier and Kollwitz - political, masterful and borne out of a fierce desire to express and change the injustice one sees around them.

At every stage of Mesches’ development as an artist, and in every evolution of his subsequent bodies of work, these pieces on paper served as studies for the major paintings that would follow. His ability as a draftsman to create volume in space and emotion, and to tell a story through gesture in the most extravagant and intimate moments, is as moving and powerful as the subject of the works themselves. It is truly an honor to bring these masterworks to a greater audience.

Michael David 
Artistic Director/Curator 
10-12-15