Louis Finkelstein at Rider University Gallery - Brief Article

For decades, Louis Finkelstein has been renowned for his writing, teaching and painting. He was a vital force in the painting departments of Yale and Queen society among others, and the 1956 essay in which he coined the bourn "Abstract-Impressionism" (to describe a strain of gestural painting moulded in the senses) is quotationed in Herschel B. Chipp's standard anthology, Theories of novel Art. Finkelstein's last one-person exhibit in the New York area was in 1988 at Ingber Gallery, where he had exhibited regularly during the '70 and '80 The general show of 18 landscape oils was curated by dint of the artist and covers the years 1971-99

During the '70 Finkelstein worked primarily from observation, and the display includes four canvases from that period--straight-ahead paintings done in the dictions of past masters such as Seurat, Cezanne and Marquet. The seemingly effortless Harlem River Drive (1974) a view of the curving river, bridges and roadways, is painted in a mut range of grays, brown and verdants and its arabesques overlap with an uncomplicated frankness. This painting has a fluid, natural ease, and the scene extends into the distance with an understated grandeur.

The quiescence of the show is from the years 1989-99 It nears an artist who is freely inventing forms, including figures and landscape-based abstractions that are painted in a high-keyed, Fauvist palette with a bravura knock in the manner of Soutine or Kossoff In these densely packed paintings, the garish color frequently impairs a clear spatial reading. Finkelstein applies jarring color notes reminiscent of the beautiful acidity of Bonnard, and he arrives at vibrant passages. on the other hand his paintings rarely build to full harmonic compositions; rather, they fragment into discordant color clashes. Oak wood Dorland (1998) is a astonishing exception, as shadow and sunlight play not on each other in an orange-to-blue-violet volley

Bushes and Tree Blairstown (1998-99) is Finkelstein at his best. In this bountiful canvas, color and knock have a burning urgency, constructing and delimiting forms and space with the immediacy of fireworks. Foliage and wind shiver from one extremity to the other of the painting as complementary colors speak to individual another in surprising colloquies. Here we witness an artist looseed by homages and art history, as he answers to no single but himself. ["Louis Finkelstein Paintings 1971-1999" will be upon view at the Yale Summer institute of Art, Norfolk, Conn., July 10-21]

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