American artist Al Held had his first solo exhibition as an Abstract Expressionist painter in 1952 at Gallery Eight in Paris. Known especially for hard-edge painting, in the 1960s Held was a leading exponent of the trend known as Post-Painterly Abstraction. After a period beginning in 1967 in which he painted mainly in black and white, he returned to the use of color in the late 1970s. Held was awarded a Logan Medal of the Arts (1964) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1966).
Memorial, like many of Bak’s paintings, evokes the ruins incurred by the Holocaust, in this case symbolized by the shards of shattered Jewish tombstones, possibly hinting at the two tablets of law. A…
A prayer (Ha-nerot halalu anu madlikin (“These lights we burn”), usually recited after the blessings for lighting the Hanukkah candles, is inscribed on the back panel of this Hanukkah lamp from…
E. O. W. Nude is considered one of Frank Auerbach’s masterpieces, an example of his distinctive painting style, which focused on the paint itself. The paint surface is thick enough to become almost…