UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Paint: A Global Story of Women and Abstraction 1940-70
Kunsthalle Bielefeld
Bielefeld, Germany
2 December 2023 - 3 March 2024
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Women on the Verge
Westbeth Gallery
New York, New York
March 6-23 2024
Westbeth Gallery is pleased to present Women on the Verge, a group exhibition of artists
affiliated with the29.art, a digital platform seeking to create opportunities for self-identified
women working in the arts. It is a group of more than twenty-nine well-established, mid-career, and emerging artists, diverse in practice,
medium, age, ethnicity, and background.
Tattooed Lady Performing, 1962, Collection of Moderna Museet Stockholm
Loft Generation, Painting in New York 1960s-80s
Eric Firestone Gallery
New York, New York
March 22nd-April 27th, 2024
Portrait of Mel Bochner, Year: 1966-67
RECENT EXHIBITIONS 2023
Framing the Female Gaze: Women Artists and the New Historicismo
Lehman College Art Gallery and Hall of Fame Art Gallery
Bronx, NY
12 October 2023 - 12 December 2023
Martha Edelheit, Birds: A View from Lincoln Tower Terrace, 1974
ArtBasel Miami Beach 2023
Eric Firestone Gallery | Booth A28
Miami Beach Convention Center
Miami, FL
December 6–10, 2023
MarthaEdelheit, Flesh Wall with Ladder, 1965
View of Empire State Building
from Sheep Meadow (1970–72)
‘Pictures Girls Make’ was actually a follow up to a show that Alison Gingeras curated at the Pompidou many years ago, but now expanded in many directions to include portraits and figurative paintings (and painted sculptures) by artists from all corners of the world, from many walks of life and with many perspectives, spanning from (as I write in my review) “the first known Black American portraitist, Joshua Johnson (c. 1763– 1824), to the Franco-Japanese ‘dandy of the Jazz age’ Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968), to Argentine-born, Surrealist-adjacent Léonor Fini (1907–96), to Winfred Rembert (1945–2021), who taught himself leatherwork while incarcerated in various Georgia penitentiaries, and to the sex-positive artist-patron William N. Copley (1919–96), whose Love Canal (1980–81) shows a buxom woman adorned with tattoos including a phone number, the word ‘beer’ and the artist’s signature, ‘CPLY’.”
"Pictures Girls Make": Portraitures
Curated By Alison M. Gingeras
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA
September 9 – October 21, 2023
Blum & Poe is pleased to present“Pictures Girls Make”: Portraitures, an exhibition bringing together over fifty artists from around the world, spanning the early nineteenth century until today. Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, this prodigious survey argues that this age-old mode of representation is an enduringly democratic, humanistic genre.
(MOSTLY) WOMEN (MOSTLY) ABSTRACT PT. II
II40 Great Jones Street
New York, NY
September 8 – October 20, 2023
Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announce the second iteration of(Mostly) Women (Mostly) Abstract, a sweeping two-part exhibition across its East Hampton and New York City locations with a cross-generational group of artists. The exhibition focuses on abstraction and represents aesthetic conversations over time between contemporary artists and represented gallery artists and estates.
BEAUTY OF SUMMER
4 Newtown Lane
East Hampton, NY
July 1 – 30, 2023
Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announceBeauty of Summer,a cross-generational group exhibition of eighteen artists, in its East Hampton, NY gallery location. Work from the 1960s through the 1980s will be juxtaposed with contemporary painting and sculpture. Across a wide range of media and approaches, summer motifs—flowers, gardens, sunbathing—recur. Much of the abstraction and figuration on view is also characterized by a feminine aesthetic.
Fishing for the Blue Moon, 1958
Canvas, sheet metal, oil paint on masonite
80 × 57 in | 203.2 × 144.8 cm
Action, Geste, Peinture
Arles, France
4 June – 22 October 2023
Action, Gesture, Paint: the years between 1940 and 1970 represent an eruptive laboratory for painting, and indeed for art in general. Women made an important contribution, evidenced in the scope of the materials that appear on their pictorial supports. This in itself is a telling demonstration of a newly mobilised, heightened power of expression: sand (Juana Francés, Bice Lazzari), metal (Martha Edelheit), wood, glue and shellac (Marta Minujin), marble powder (Aiko Miyawaki), sawdust (Zilia Sánchez), enamel (Janet Sobel, Michael West), graphite and string (Jay DeFeo), sewn burlap (Noemi Di Benedetto), soil and doll’s glass eyes (Carol Rama), plaster (Franciszka Themerson), metal foil (Anna-Eva Bergman), and much more, an array that occasionally figures, in neutralised form, as “mixed media”.
1958-59, Oil on plywood with canvas and metal, Private Collection
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70
London, England
7 February – 9 May 2023
Whitechapel Gallery presents a major exhibition of 150 paintings from an overlooked generation of 81 international women artists.
Reaching beyond the predominantly white, male painters whose names are synonymous with the Abstract Expressionist movement, this exhibition celebrates the practices of the numerous international women artists working with gestural abstraction in the aftermath of the Second World War.
It is often said that the Abstract Expressionist movement began in the USA, but this exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that artists from all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception and gesture, endowing gestural abstraction with their own specific cultural contexts – from the rise of fascism in parts of South America and East Asia to the influence of Communism in Eastern Europe and China.
Martha Edelheit: Naked City, Paintings from 1965–80
Eric Firestone Gallery
40 Great Jones | New York, NY
January 25 – March 18, 2023
Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announce Martha Edelheit: Naked City, Paintings from 1965–80. Opening on January 25, 2023, this is the gallery’s second solo exhibition with the 91-year-old artist. The show will include historic monumental paintings of nude women and men situated on luscious drapery or montaged into familiar locations around New York City; surrealist multi-panel self-portraits; close-ups of torsos with imagined tattoos; and intimate pastels of the body. Edelheit’s practice is transgressive, whimsical, and sensuous all at once. The artist’s output from the mid-1960s through early ‘80s reflects her abiding love of art history and her reimagining of the discipline that was largely created by men, for men.
Naked City
A Panel Discussion on the Paintings of Martha Edelheit
Moderated by Rachel Middleman
with Martha Edelheit, Robert Cozzolino, Alison Gingeras and Erin M. Riley
February 16, 2023
Moderated by scholar Rachel Middleman, author of Radical Eroticism, this panel discussion focuses on the work of Martha Edelheit (b. 1931). Her solo exhibition Martha Edelheit: Naked City, Paintings from 1965–80 is on view at Eric Firestone Gallery and includes historic monumental paintings of nude women and men situated on luscious drapery or montaged into familiar locations around New York City; surrealist multi-panel self-portraits; close-ups of torsos with imagined tattoos; and intimate pastels of the body. This program brings together the artist herself with curators Robert Cozzolino and Alison Gingeras and artist Erin M. Riley.
New York: 1962 - 1964
Upper East Side, NY
July 22, 2022 - January 08, 2023
New York: 1962-1964 uses the Jewish Museum’s influential role in the early 1960s New York art scene as a jumping-off point to examine how artists living and working in New York City responded to the events that marked this moment in time.
New York: Between Art and Life
Martha Edelheit and Rebecca Shaykin in Conversation
The Jewish Museum
November 17, 2022
Join us for an in-person conversation between artist Martha Edelheit and Associate Curator Rebecca Shaykin. Edelheit (b. 1931, New York City, now based in Sweden) is known as a pioneering feminist artist whose decades-long career has resulted in one of the most probing investigations into the subject of the female body, from early works exploring the expressive power of tattoos to erotic watercolors and strikingly vivid depictions of women at various stages of their lives. Her 1962 workTattooed Lady, created just blocks from the Jewish Museum, is included in the exhibitionNew York: 1962-1964and will serve as the jumping off point for a discussion that will touch on the life, work, and unique vision of this artist.
View of Empire State Building from Sheep Meadow, 1970-72
acrylic on canvas
76h x 94w in
Down by The Sea
Larsen Warner, Stockholm
4 September - 16 October 2021
Group Exhibition.
‘Down By The Sea’ shows a collection of works that pay homage to the seaside and the essence of summer. The exhibition contains a carefully curated selection of pieces by Alex Katz, Anton Alvarez, Martha Edelheit, Cooper & Gorfer, Julie Mehretu and Robert Mapplethorpe.
PAST EXHIBITIONS 2018 - 2022
OPENART2022
Örebro Konsthall
18 June - 4 September, 2022
Martha Edelheit (f. 32, USA) har sedan början av 1960-talet avbildat nakna, erotiska, tatuerade kroppar i porträtt och i monumentala väggmålningar. Kroppen utgör det måleriska material som hon fångar i sitt naturliga tillstånd. I Edelheits målningar är kroppen en sinnlig plats för njutning och rekreation. När de först visades i New York på 1970-talet blev de avfärdade av den mansdominerade konstscenen, men idag utgör de en central del av vår gemensamma konsthistoria.
PSYCHEDELIC LANDSCAPE
40 Great Jones Street
New York, NY
July 14 – August 26, 2022
Psychedelic Landscapeis inspired by a current in the art world: a desire for dreamscapes, invented topographies, and utopian visions of the environment.As the San Francisco-based ceramic artist John de Fazio noted, “Psychedelics create optimism in dark times.” The exhibition includes a cross-generational group of more than 20 artists, from estates to young New York-area painters like Amie Cunat and J.A Feng.Cunat has conceived a site-specific painting installation that extends the show’s subject onto the gallery’s walls, while Feng has contributed a recent oil on canvas that is both organic and uncanny in nature.
COLLAGE / ASSEMBLAGE
4 Newtown Lane
East Hampton, NY
July 2 – August 2, 2022
Eric Firestone Gallery presents a cross-generational exhibition of collage and assemblage work, juxtaposing historic and contemporary art and artists.
HOLY WATER
CURATED BY ZOE LUKOVTHE GARAGE
62 Newtown Lane
East Hampton, NY
July 2 – 24, 2022
Featuring works by Shagha Ariannia, Radcliffe Bailey,Brandon Deener,Martha Edelheit, April Gornik,Armani Howard, Zhang Huan,Nicolette Mishkan,Raúl de Nieves,Ricardo Partida, Nereida Patricia,Bony Ramirez, Fawn Rogers,Sheena Rose,Gabriela Ruiz,Hiba Schahbaz, andJwan Yosef.
The Naked Truth: Works from the 60's & 70's
Larsen Warner, Stockholm
4 September - 16 October 2021
Larsen Warneris pleased to present the inaugural show with the gallery of Swedish basedAmerican artist Martha Edelheit. ‘The Naked Truth: Works from the 60’s & 70’s’ presents rarely seen paintings and newly discovered works on paper from this seminal period in Edelheit's artistic development. This is the artists first solo show in Sweden since her exhibition at Piteå Konsthall in 2009 and coincides with the artists 90th birthday, offering a wonderful opportunity to discover and celebrate the powerful work of this pioneering artist.
13 AMERICAN ARTISTS: A CELEBRATION OF HISTORIC WORK
40 Great Jones Street
New York, NY
April 29 – July 17, 2021
In honor of our first season in a new ground floor spaceat 40Great Jones Street,Eric Firestone Gallerypresents13 American Artists,an exhibition showcasing artists from the gallery’s unique, wide-ranginghistoricalprogram.The gallery has made central a mission to explore the ever-expanding canon of Post-World War II American art. Over the last several years,the gallery has presented major retrospectivesto championartists whose stories needed to be re-told.Theirsignificant contributions to art history have been further reinforced by recent institutional acquisitions and exhibitions.13 American Artistscelebratesthis ongoing endeavor,and the new location,presentingseveral artists and estatesfor the first time inourNew York City location.
A Body Apart
Stockholm, Sweden
March 13, 2021 - April 17, 2021
Larsen Warneris pleased to present the group exhibition A Body Apart, featuring thework of Martha Edelheit,Ryan Mosley,Anne RyanandRose Wylie. The exhibition as a whole can be viewed as an imagined body, split and fragmented, with each of the artworks selected representing a morphing part of a disconnected human form. Spanning diverse stylistic and conceptual approaches, the works on view demonstrate how the human figure can be reimagined and reconfigured, representing the broad plethora of bodily experience as well as the expressive potential of the human body within contemporary painting and sculpture.
Fleshcycle, 1969, 84" x 68", acrylic on canvas
View of Crossbronx Expressway II, 1972-73
Acrylic on canvas 20h x 24w in
Classical Portrait with License Plate, 1960
Oil and mixed media on plywood and metal 45h x 39 1/2w in
Seals, Central Park Zoo, 1970-71
Acrylic on canvas, 74h x 103w in
Fleshcycle, 1969, 84" x 68", acrylic on canvas
Fishing for the Blue Moon, 1958
Canvas, sheet metal, oil paint on masonite
80 × 57 in | 203.2 × 144.8 cm
View of George Washington Bridge, 1975, Acrylic on canvas, 61 x 51 cm
Interior Scroll or What I Did on My Vacation
A Multi-Venue Program, Organized by Soft Network, New York. Summer 2021.
A six-part film and video program co-programmed by Soft Network and Jason Evans for Metrograph online calledArtists on Camera: 1967-2021runs through August 23rd and concludes with a live screening at the Arts Center of Duck Creek in Springs on August 22nd. Programmed by Rosalind Schneider and Martha Edelheit of Women/Artist/Filmmakers, Inc. a female experimental film collective founded in the 1970s, the final series includes several titles from the 1975 art and performance weekWomen Artists Here and Now.
THE 1960S
4 Newtown Lane
East Hampton, NY
November 7, 2020 – February 28, 2021
Featuring works by: Stephen Antonakos | Norman Bluhm | Willem de Kooning | Dorothy Dehner | Charles DuBack | Martha Edelheit | Perle Fine | Sidney Geist | Shirley Gorelick | Mimi Gross | Elaine Lustig Cohen | George McNeil | Jay Milder | Kyle Morris | Pat Passlof | Jeanne Reynal | Robert Richenburg | Miriam Schapiro | Thomas Sills |
THE 1950S
Eric Firestone Gallery
East Hampton, NY
July 15 – October 18, 2020
Eric Firestone Gallerycontinues its scholarly reinvestigation of the New York School with a series of Fall exhibitions at its East Hampton location. Each show will focus on a single decade, while presenting a wide range of artists. The first exhibition will include work all from the 1950s by the following artists:
Josef Albers | Elaine de Kooning | Dorothy Dehner | Charles DuBack | Martha Edelheit | Jorge Fick | Jane Freilicher | Sidney Geist | Joseph Glasco | Sidney Gordin | Mimi Gross | Earl J. Hooks | Norman Lewis | John Little | George McNeil | Fred Mitchell | Joan Mitchell | Louise Nevelson | Pat Passlof | Carl Pickhardt | Milton Resnick | Thomas Sills | Miriam Schapiro | Theodore Stamos | Joe Stefanelli
Classical Portrait with License Plate, 1960
Oil and mixed media on plywood and metal 45h x 39 1/2w in
Untitled (July 58), 1958
Oil on canvas, 63h x 51 1/2w in
WINTER SELECTS
4 Great Jones Street, No. 3
New York, NY
February 1 – March 1, 2020
Featured artists: Nicolas Carone, Charles Duback, Martha Edelheit, Perle Fine, Mimi Gross, Jay Milder, Joe Overstreet, and Miriam Schapiro
WHAT ABOUT THE HUMAN FIGURE? MARTHA EDELHEIT, SHIRLEY GORELICK, AND MARCIA MARCUS
4 Great Jones Street, NO. 3
New York, NY
October 10 – December 14, 2019
The title of this exhibition is based on title of a 1962 Dore Ashton article, published in response to two New York figurative exhibitions, one at the Museum of Modern Art, and one at Kornblee Gallery. In the article, Ashton says, “…it has always struck me that the problem of the human figure is never far from the thoughts of any painter.”
In her article, Dore Ashton critiques most of the artists in the MoMA show for trying to have it “both ways” - generalizing the figure into near-abstraction and treating it with “little real love.”
This show considers Ashton’s critique, looking at three artists who were dedicated to attentive observation of the figure: not generalizing or abstracting. They each believed in capturing the essence of personality and identity through painting, and bringing people on the margins into the center.
GO FIGURE!
CURATED BY BETH RUDIN DEWOODYERIC
Firestone Gallery
East Hampton, NY
May 25 – June 22, 2019
Curator Beth Rudin DeWoody says:
I’ve always been attracted to figurative painting and drawing even though I love abstract and minimalist art. I also love the in-between when figure melds into the abstract. There are many young artists who are looking back to some of the great figurative artists of the mid 20th-Century, putting their own 21st-Century influences and viewpoints onto the works.
The exhibition is about pairing contemporary artists with artists of the mid-20th Century to shed new light on the strength of their voices, and continued relevance today. Despite the dominance of Minimalist and Conceptual art, a surprising number of artists in the 1960s and 70s were using figuration to pioneer aesthetic and political ideas that we often take for granted today.
MARTHA EDELHEIT FLESH WALLS: TALES FROM THE 60S
4 Great Jones Street, #3
New York, NY
October 17 – November 15, 2018
Eric Firestone Galleryis proud to announce the exhibitionMartha Edelheit, Flesh Walls: Tales from the 60s. The exhibition will re-introduce the public to Edelheit’s radical paintings and pioneering subject matter. The exhibition includes multi-panel paintings from her “Flesh Wall” series, as well as canvases of elaborately tattooed female figures, and works on paper. The works on paper are a major series from the mid-1960s, depicting a wild, erotic vision of circus performers, and images of paper dolls, reimagined into adult fantasies that explore gender identity, sexual costuming, and sadomasochistic play.
Highbridge, 1973
Acrylic on canvas, 24h x 20w in
Fleshcycle, 1969
Acrylic on canvas, 83 1/2h x 68w x 1 1/4d in
Flesh Wall - Female, 1965
Oil on canvas, 80h x 195w in
Fairs
2023 Art Basel Miami Beach, FL
2023 The Arnory Show at Javits Center, New York, NY
2022 The Armory Show
2021 Art Basel Miami Beach, FL
2020 Art Basel, Miami, FL
2020 Frieze Art Fair, New York, NY
2020 The Armory Show, New York, NY
2019 Upstairs Art Fair, Amagansett, NY
2018 The Tattoo art show at the Art Fair in Munich
Fleshcycle, 1969, 84" x 68", acrylic on canvas
The Armory Show 2020, New York, Eric Firestone Gallery