Jan Wunderman: RECENT WORK

Denise Bibro Fine Art, 529 West 20th Street, 4th Floor, Chelsea New York is pleased to announce a new exhibition by artist Jan Wunderman.

Jan Wunderman entered the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California, in 1938. Enrolled in a four-year fine-art course, she found it especially difficult for women, who were seldom chosen for the best painting classes even after the required two years of class separation with a very reputable teacher.

Wunderman was one of two women chosen for such a class in the company of eighteen male students. After finishing at Otis, with a teacher who openly wanted no women in his class, she had the good fortune of briefly meeting Man Ray and Maya Deren. Through them and a few of their friends, she was shown reproductions of work being done in Europe—Dadaism, Cubism, and all manner of work aimed at breaking the classical rules that existed at that time. She was immediately drawn to the excitement and possibilities of abstraction and began to work outside the confines she had known.

She was able to convince the Gastine Gallery of Los Angeles to give her and two other young women painters an exhibition before leaving for New York in 1946. Once in New York, she found herself immersed in a painting culture that hadn’t yet condensed into what we now know as Abstract Expressionism. She indulged the experience and fell instantly in line with its individualism and openness. While learning of work by De Kooning, Kline, Pollack, and many others, she began attending classes at the Brooklyn Museum Art School with Reuben Tam. Under his guidance, her work began to develop a very personal statement far removed from the constricting ideology of art school.

Her work, though abstract, is always rooted in nature. It has taken many turns through the years but has always maintained certain basic elements, retaining a rich and strong color sense and a painter’s vocabulary of her own.

Over her career, spanning more than a half century, Jan Wunderman has received numerous awards, exhibited dozens of exhibition, and complimented hundreds of individual and institutional art collections. For a specific list of Jan’s biographical information, please contact the gallery for a complete biography.

There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, November 20, 2006 from 6-8 pm.