An Unexpectedly Sharp Bladen
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
An exhibition of paintings by Ronald Bladen opened April 19 at Loretta Howard Gallery with a curious backstory. “A cache of some thirty-five canvases and panels was discovered behind a wall in his studio that Bladen built in 1978 to seal them from sight,” according to the poet and critic Bill Berkson.
“Long renowned as a minimal sculptor of great import, prior to 1963 Ronald Bladen was a painter,” says Loretta Howard Gallery. “His heavily impastoed paintings were often constructed with masonry trowels and two by fours as the artist spread, packed, kneaded and pounded his heavily pigmented, handmade oil paints into place. His surfaces are marked by their sensitivity, chromatic intensity and earthy texture. Massive topographies of paint and pigment, these works invite comparison to landscape. They too display an aesthetic concern born throughout the artist’s entire oeuvre. These works radiate with the subject and power of nature. Bladen’s paintings are a conduit into his complex sculptural search. Bladen’s painting reliefs welcomes the viewer to step into the artist’s next body of legendary work.”
“Ronald Bladen: New York Paintings 1955-1962” runs through May 25 at Loretta Howard Gallery, 525 West 26th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, 212-695-0164, lorettahoward.com.
Franklin Einspruch is the art critic for The New York Sun.
