Philip Slein Gallery: Friday, 15 February 2019

Philip Slein Gallery presents Arthur Osver: A Retrospective

Opening Reception:  Friday, February 15^th, 2019, 5 PM to 8 PM

Exhibition runs through Saturday, March 30^th, 2019 

When Philip Guston had taken a leave of absence from his teaching job at Washington University in 1947, he wrote a letter to Dean Kenneth Hudson explaining that the reason he would not be returning was "...the stimulation of New York itself and the contact with several painters I know there..."  One of those painters was Arthur Osver, who Hudson ended up hiring on Guston's recommendation. Osver had found the same sort of stimulation in New York, painting the urban landscape, with its rooftops, smokestacks, etc., which he rendered in an increasingly lyrical, poetic way as he moved toward abstraction.

By the early 1950s, Osver had embraced pure abstraction. By the late 1960s, he was making meticulously composed paintings and drawings of abstracted vertical forms inspired by the architecture of the Grand Palais in Paris. By the mid 1970s, his compositions were pared down, simplified, and flattened out as he explored the aesthetics of minimalist geometry. By the early 1980s, he returned to the rooftops, so to speak, by re-introducing one of his favorite motifs--the smokestack. Until the end of his life, Osver would make paintings that riff on the image of the smokestack.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10 AM - 5 PM

Philip Slein Gallery

4735 McPherson Ave.

St. Louis, MO 63108 

314-361-2617