The Indefatigable Abstractionist
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.
A serious segment of the art world looked forward to the exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery of paintings by Pat Passlof that opened November 19. The New York Times had just profiled her in October, detailing her efforts to maintain herself and her studio practice in a former synagogue on the Lower East Side. Having survived her husband, the painter Milton Resnick, by seven years, she continued to paint large-scale abstractions with a nervous but knowing touch.
Passlof died a few days before the opening.
Her exhibition ends this Friday. David Cohen, writing for Artcritical, paid her tribute: “A kindly curmudgeon, old school in the depth of her solidarity with others and the forthrightness of criticism when it needed to be expressed, Passlof was utterly indefatigable in her generosity, whether as a teacher, a widow, a Tai Chi companion, or indeed a painter. We sometimes forget how generous painting can be because the making of it has such antisocial requirements. In Passlof’s case, generosity comes across in the way her images are constituted equally of integrity and finesse: brimful of beauty, but uncompromising in rigor and resolution.
“Her art and life were a yin and yang balance of opposites.”
“Pat Passlof: Recent Paintings 2005-2011” runs through December 23 at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, 529 West 20 Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, 212-463-9666, eharrisgallery.com.
Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer. He blogs at Artblog.net.
