2011 DEALER HIGHLIGHTS

CHICAGO — Dealers to date profile their top offerings at this year’s fair, which promises to be rich in outsider and self-taught artworks, as well as African American vernacular and folk art.

	Martín Ramírez Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York NY

Ricco/Maresca Gallery (New York) represents the estate of Martín Ramírez (1895-1963), the renowned self-taught Mexican-American master, who Roberta Smith of the New York Times referred to as “...simply one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.” Born in rural Mexico, Ramirez left his wife and four children in 1925, migrating to California, where police took him into custody in 1931. Unable to speak English, he was diagnosed as a catatonic schizophrenic and confined to California state hospitals until his death. His works all date to the last fifteen years of his life, when he rarely spoke. Many were discovered in hospital storage bins after his death by Chicago artist Jim Nutt and gallerist Phyllis Kind. A master of line and compositional control, Ramírez used matchsticks to paint with melted crayons and found pigments on paper fragments glued together with saliva. Recurring motifs in his dream-like work express both vernacular Mexican and American cultural themes and visual tropes, including the mounted and armed caballero, the Virgin Mary, trains and tunnels, and cars.

Michaela Slavid of Ricco/Maresca Gallery reports, “Our exhibition focuses on perhaps the most complex and mysterious subject matter of the artist’s oeuvre, and includes several powerfully imagined, mural-sized landscapes, which have never been exhibited. Martín Ramírez’s landscapes poignantly illuminate his life as a Mexican American artist suspended between the two very separate worlds of his native, beloved Jalisco, Mexico and the confines of California’s state institution system. Created in the years between 1950 and his death in 1963, these singular drawings merge the artist’s reminiscences of Mexico with his acute experience of alienation in America.”

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago IL

Carl Hammer Gallery (Chicago) will present artworks by Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983), an American outsider artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, about whom Hammer will speak in the Lecture Series. Von Bruenchenhein’s versatile body of work includes over a thousand colorful apocalyptic landscape paintings, hundreds of sculptures made from chicken bones, ceramic and cast cement; pin-up style photos of his wife, Marie, plus dozens of notebooks filled with poetic and scientific musings. Hammer says, “Von Bruenchenhein’s first paintings were on panels of boxes that he brought home from the bakery (where he worked). He spent hours looking at drops of water through a microscope, and was equally concerned with a macrocosmic order, evident in musings and paintings about the worlds beyond ours. He made exceptionally convincing paintings of ‘Lines of Force Contained’ and ‘Lines of Force Released,’ pictorializing what science could only express in numeric formulae. Now, one only needs to pick up a New York Times daily newspaper in which a recent photograph by the Hubbell Telescope is featured revealing some amazing new cosmic cataclysm or phenomena to convince us that, indeed, Eugene Von Bruenchehein had already traveled there.“Read more here.

Also represented by Carl Hammer at The Intuit Show is Henry Darger (1882-1973) from Chicago, who was a custodian and attended church regularly but lived a reclusive personal life. His astonishing work was discovered after his death and includes the fifteen,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story. Carl Hammer reports he will have a 10 ft, double-sided work by Darger on offer at the fair: “This work is very hard to get now. The estate from which it came has very few of these works available to be sold. The piece I will be showing is priced at $205,000. When I began working with the estate, the same piece would have been valued at $20,000.” In 2008, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art dedicated the Henry Darger Room Collection, an evocation of the living space from the small Chicago apartment in which the reclusive artist lived. Intuit will sponsor a lecture on Darger in the Lecture Series. Read more here.

	Bill Traylor Just Folk, Summerland CA

Susan Baerwald of Just Folk (Summerland, CA) reports the gallery will offer iconic drawings by William “Bill” Traylor (c. 1854-1949), a self-taught artist born into slavery on a plantation near Benton, Alabama. By 1939, he had moved to Montgomery, where he slept in the back room of a funeral home and in a shoemaker’s shop. During the day, he sat on the sidewalk and drew passersby and remembered scenes from life on the farm, hanging his works on the fence behind him. Astonishingly, he created 1200-1500 works between the ages of 83 and 85. Baerwald says Traylor drew “images from his memory, his surroundings, keen observations of life and the foibles of characters he came in touch with. His sense of composition was extraordinary, and he even seemed to incorporate flaws in the cardboard he drew on to accentuate story points.”

Baerwald continues, “Traylor was never recognized during his lifetime. It is only due to the efforts of a young WPA artist, Charles Shannon, that so many of his works were saved. It was not until 1982 that Traylor received his first recognition in the landmark exhibition Black Folk Art in America at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. Traylor had 36 of his works in that show, and his sinuous snake was featured on the cover of the catalogue.” Just Folk has acquired a collection of 28 works by Traylor that had been in Europe for the past 18 years, which have not been seen in the U.S. for at least a decade. They are among the strongest of Traylor’s work, and several feature Traylor’s signature ‘Traylor Blue’. “Paintings in this color are among the most collectible and valued of his works, which continue to increase in value and recognition and often command six figure prices.” Baerwald concludes, “Traylor is regarded as one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and we are thrilled to have such an extensive collection of his works at the fair.”

Judy A Saslow Gallery (Chicago) reports it will present paintings by self-taught artist Edmond Engel (b. 1927), who was born in Angers, France but has lived in Switzerland since childhood. Deprived of a family environment by the death of his mother, he began teaching himself to paint and draw, and as a young man, traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East. In 1965, he married and soon had two daughters. Jean Dubuffet was seminal in building Engel’s career, saying his work has “a passion to which I am drawn very strongly,” including it in his Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. Engels has exhibited widely in international galleries since 1968, and several of his works have been included in major museum exhibitions such as The End Is Near! at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum, an institution designated by Congress as the repository for ‘the best in original, self-taught artistry.’ He has written poetry and commentaries for some of his drawings, which were collected and published as two books titled We Could Go, But Where? and We Are Born From The Stars. Saslow says, “Edmond Engel’s dynamic paintings feature bright, contrasting colors with figures that come to life, dancing joyfully off the paper. We will also be exhibiting new works from Christine Sefolosha and François Burland, two additional self-taught artists from Switzerland. Sefolosha’s new work features lush landscape scenes while Burland’s pieces present muted cityscapes in delicate detail.”

	Eugene Andolsek American Primitive Gallery, New York NY

American Primitive Gallery (New York) will present Eugene Andolsek (1921-2008), who lived and cared for his mother, and who for fifty years had a secret life creating drawings with vibrant colors and linear complexity in the evenings after his much disliked and stressful stenographer job. Aarne Anton of American Primitive says, “Working at his kitchen table on graph paper with a compass and straight edge, Eugene laid out black lines and geometries, filling in spaces with colored inks mixed with eye droppers to achieve dazzling compositions. The pictures have elaborate layered patterns with the radiance of stained glass and the complexity of molecular structures. Once completed, the pictures held no interest for him and he put them in the closet or in a trunk. In fact, Eugene did not think of himself as an artist nor see any value in what he created beyond the desire to draw them every evening as a means to cope with his insecurities and dislike for his job as a clerical worker for the Rock Island Railroad.” His drawings would likely have remained unknown had they not been brought to the attention of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh by his caregiver at a retirement home. Andolsek was one of five artists included in the 2006 Obsessive Drawing exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, New York. Anton concludes, “What Eugene humbly suggested might make colorful place mats for lunch are now recognized as a significant art world discovery.”

Joseph Yoakum Harvey Pranian Art & Antiques, Evanston IL

Harvey Pranian Art & Antiques (Evanston, IL) mounted the first exhibit of Joseph Yoakum’s extraordinary drawings in 1967-68 and reports it will have key Yoakum pieces on offer at the Intuit fair. Yoakum (1880-1972) was from Chicago’s South Side and was a self-taught artist of African American and Native American descent who traveled with the circus in his younger years. Heavily influenced by the nomadic lifestyle of circus folk, Yoakum blended the places he visited with landscapes of his imagination through a process of ‘spiritual unfoldment.’ He produced over 2,000 drawings during the last decade of his life. Unlike some celebrated self-taught artists, Yoakum enjoyed a measure of success and attention for his art while he was alive, often visited by Chicago artists who would become known as Hairy Who and the Imagists.

	Thornton Dial Russell Bowman Art Advisory, Chicago IL

Russell Bowman of Russell Bowman Art Advisory (Chicago) reports: “We will focus on Thorton Dial at the fair, as a major retrospective exhibition of his work organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art is currently traveling the country. We will be offering several fine examples from different periods of his career.” Thorton Dial, from Alabama (b. 1928), spent thirty years as a railroad welder for Pullman Standard, an experience which informed his later large-scale steel sculpture. Portraiture, animal figuration, and abstraction are recurring motifs in his evocatively titled drawings and assemblages. Dial was included in the 1998 Whitney Biennial and today his large-scale assemblages sell for over $100,000.” Bowman adds, “We’ll also present focus shows on Joseph Yoakum, The Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective, Simon Sparrow and Charles Steffen at the fair.”

Purvis Young Outsider Folk Art Gallery, Reading PA

Outsider Folk Art Gallery (Reading, PA) will represent another African-American vernacular artist, Purvis Young (1843-2010), whose hometown neighborhood of Overtown–once commonly called ‘Colored Town’–in Miami, FL, provided inspiration, raw material, and audience for his constructed paintings with their ecstatic, rhythmic surfaces. Dealer George Viener reports he will bring a rare “powerful depiction of a Vietnam Era Solider with a railroad halo on metal plate” by Young, which hung in the ‘Good Bread Alley’ section of Overtown. Viener says, “After learning of the ‘Freedom Walls’ created by artists in Detroit and Chicago,Young decided to create his own public mural in 1972, which was visible from the newly constructed Interstate 95, which had all but dissected and consequently isolated his community from the rest of South Florida. His materials and palette came from remnants of the community being torn down around him, and were assembled in the warehouses and abandoned buildings in which he worked. We commend Young’s gritty determination to share the story of African American survival at this time with his beautiful, abstract expressionistic vision.”

	Emitte Hych The Pardee Collection, Iowa City IA

The Pardee Collection (Iowa City, IA) will bring works by Emitte Hych (1909-2009), who spent the first thirty years of his life in rural Mississippi where as a young man, he worked as a sharecropper picking cotton. Sherry Pardee says, “Times were tough for African-Americans in the 1940s, so Emitte moved up North to join a sister. He was able to get a job as a cook-chef and took great pride in his cooking: ‘I ain’t scared to get in the kitchen with no woman!’ Emitte’s drawings and paintings are of simple whimsical scenes of people, snakes, elephants and imaginary plants. His work was exhibited in Intuit’s See What I Say show in Chicago in 1998; and in the Chicago Collects show at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1996-7.”

Amos Ferguson Galerie Bonheur, St. Louis MO

On the international front, Galerie Bonheur (St. Louis, MO) will represent Amos Ferguson (1920-2009) from the Bahamas, an internationally acclaimed self-taught folk artist. Laurie Carmody-Ahner of Galerie Bonheur who has represented his work for over twenty years, says, “The vibrant colors and friendly, straightforward subject matter were what compelled me about Amos’ work–they were colorful, joyful, fun and undeniably free spirited.” Ferguson was known for his brilliantly colored Bible scenes and his depictions of the social rituals and the flora and fauna of the Bahamas. In 1985, the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford mounted the exhibition Paint by Mr. Amos Ferguson, taking the artist’s signature as the title. Ferguson’s New York Times obituary said as a result, “Mr. Ferguson, previously unknown even to many Bahamians, leapt to the front ranks of the outsider-art genre.” Carmody-Ahner says, “Amos’s work reminds me that God made a beautiful world filled with bright colors, flowers, music, trees, birds, fish and magical creatures. I am often asked, ‘Who is your favorite artist in the gallery?’ My answer is always the same: my friend, Amos Ferguson, Master of Color.”

Carlos DeMedeiros Marion Harris, New York NY

Marion Harris (New York) will showcase the work of Carlos DeMedeiros, a monk for 14 years in Brazil and Bolivia who reluctantly left the monastery for a secular life, conflicted by his own idea of religion and the one he would have been obliged to follow. As a way of coming to terms with this ambivalence, and by reaching into his religious experiences, he constructs small-scale confessionals from found objects, along with confessions–real or imagined–in sealed envelopes. While his imagery is at first sight simple, the subtext is complex and multi-layered. In other works his imagination rules, with surreal, miniature scenarios constructed inside discarded small empty containers or Altoids tins. Harris says, “It’s as if DeMedeiros’s work is a Rorschach test that allows each of us to see our own deepest selves–and, more amazingly, to somehow understand ourselves through his work.”

	Hanging Cupboard, Maker Unknown Outsider Folk Art Gallery, Reading PA

Folk art is also a major component of The Intuit Show. This year Outsider Folk Art Gallery (Reading, PA) will have on offer a late 18th c. Hanging Cupboard by an unknown maker from Berks or Lebanon County, PA. It retains much of its original paint and is made of pine and soft wood, polychromed, and stands 27”h x 24”w x 11.5”d. George Viener reports the piece has “a molded cornice above the raised panel drawer with a lovely tulip tree design and wrought-iron strap hinges. Its sides are decorated with a star and four tulip birds with a baluster design painted on corners, typical of those found on dower chests of Lebanon County.” He summates, “This cupboard is a surviving example of a rare and sophisticated artistic hand.”

Tom Charleton Hill Gallery, Birmingham MI

Tim Hill of Hill Gallery (Birmingham, MI) says his gallery’s presentation at the fair will feature works with “a raw, authentic, intense power that can occur in self-taught artists, and speak to the bigger issues in art at large.” He cites as an example King Tut by Tom Charleton, a South Dakotan artist who was a janitor in a church. “Self-taught, he saw photos of the King Tut exhibit traveling the U.S. in the 1920s and recreated Tut using found materials. It is a large piece at 5 feet 5 inches, ambitious in scale, and curious in presence as a result,” Hill is also excited about Scarecrow by an unknown artist. “We’ve studied this piece and how it might have been used. It is evident that is was kept outdoors for a period of time, in a protected area. There is a combination of the natural twig forms and fabric strips, with minimal carvings on the body, and intense carving on the head. When we try to imagine what may have given the artist the idea to create this object, we can see it has the look of being informed by and similarities to African fetishes–but we don’t know for sure. There is wire inside the figure with little rocks, a bit of talisman or mojo. It’s a very moving piece.”

	Karl Mullen Lindsay Gallery, Columbus OH

Lindsay Gallery (Columbus, OH) will present contemporary outsider, Karl Mullen (b. 1954) born in Dublin, Ireland and now residing in Pennsylvania, where he began his career as a painter. Mullen creates distinctive, poetic figures that float on fields of color, his imagery born out of Irish mythology, family and dreams. Duff Lindsay reports, “With no formal training, Mullen has developed a unique vocabulary, process and variety of material–anything and everything is his canvas, from paper to automobile hoods, toilet paper, discarded jewelry cards, receipts, coffee cups, parking tickets, milk cartons, old books, bibles, movie stubs, business cards, paper napkins and US army bandages. His paint is raw powder pigments, walnut oil and wax medium–painted with his hands; his creativity and energy have no boundaries.” Mullen is also a Grammy-Award winning songwriter and musician!

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