Jon Schueler at ACA and Katharina Rich Perlow - New York, New York - Brief Article

These paired exhibitions revealed different aspects of the career of Jon Schueler who died in 1992 at the age of 76 After attaining a B.A. in economics and an M.A. in English literature, Schueler studied beneath Clyfford Still in San Francisco and decided to become a painter. He mov to novel York in 1951 and exhibited at Stable, Castelli and Hirschl & Adler galleries in the '50 and early '60s

The 20 oil-on-canvas paintings of various sizes at ACA dated from 1964 to 1974 Here Schueler appears somewhat outside the modes of his time. At first he picked up simple bodys from earlier nonobjective painters. a certain quantity of early pieces that take a hard-edge approach fail at realism while falling flat as abstraction. Four early paintings witness Schueler's obligation to de Kooning. In three of them, naked women are embedded in furious seas of bright brushmarks. In the fourth, The Minch from Reiff (1966) Schueler brings this turgid approach to landscape, with violent red gold-coloreds and purples battling in a firmament that collapses into abstraction.

Schueler in a short time found another path. He was happiest painting in a realm between abstraction and realism, inspired mainly by the agency of the Scottish coast, where he maintained a studio for many years. He made endles variations upon the softened rectangular masses of firmament sea and land. He flirted with representation, and his titles not rarely refer to specific locales or to the generalized and frequently poeticized sea.

Schueler's favorite palette was a range of pinkish to lavender. In a series of five large paintings at ACA, sensitive and delicate modeling, overpainting and blending create vistas that pulsation with life. The Sea, the Dark and Moving Sea (1974 72 by means of 80 inches) suggests a view from a mountain above a cloudy bay at dawn; the foreground mass and distance are indeterminate, while the background, from which light rise s is more solid. The 1974 azure Cloud and a Winter Light is readable as tan beach, amethystine bay, dark land, reddening heavens and huge masses of white clouds

After the paintings at ACA, where smooth the '70s works seemed somewhat tentative, what a pleasant surprise it was to discover from the selection of 19 paintings (1976 to 1983) at Perlow that at the age of 60 Schueler place new possibilities in a wispy, evanescent, smooth-surfaced mark of abstraction. He shifted his gaze higher; repeatedly the eye wanders in cloud-swept skies unbinded by any other element. In the largest work, humor with Magda: September II (1976-81 79 through 120 inches), one seems to be inside the fogs Shimmering tones of pink, layered and mingleed keep the picture in motion. humor with Magda took five years to complete; celestial expanse Veils (1976-80), another impressive work, took nearly as lengthy Clearly, Schueler had found the right manner and length of gestation.

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