Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Sidney Gross

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Died
  
17 November 1969, New York City, New York, United States

Sidney Gross’ early style was influenced by the social realism. He also drew on the surrealist movement that was just beginning the year he was born. By the time he was twenty, he was painting distinctively urban surrealism, while producing critically admired portraits, something he continued to do during his lifetime.

Late in the 1940s and early into the 1950s, he experimented with various forms of abstract expressionism, including what one critic called amorphorism. These soft, diffuse, often numbered abstractions bore the title ‘Dusky’.

He continued to produce realistic portraits and semi-abstract portraits of the landscape of New York City. By the mid 1950s, he was producing large and dynamic works of Abstract Expressionism and finding a cliental at a time when other Ab Ex artists were forced to band together to exhibit. Around 1960, his UFO and Probe Series began to include controlled abstractions against hard edge geometric fields of colors. At his premature death, he was setting expressionistic forms in a wide bands of colors, separated by a white field.

Throughout his relatively short career, he received critical acclaim and financial success.

Solo Shows

Contemporary Art Gallery, - NYC 1945-1959 Tirca Karlis Gallery, Provincetown - 1960, 1962 Frank Rehn Gallery, NYC - 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969, memorial 1972 Pinchpenny Gallery - Essex Ct 1959,1985? Seasons Gallery, The Hague, The Netherlands - 1977 David David Gallery, Philadelphia 1991 Kaleidodscope Gallery, Sagamore, MA 1992 Gertrude Stein Gallery - 2000 Davenport & Fleming Gallery - 2007 Memorial exhibits in New York City, Baltimore, and Providence, RI.

Permanent Collections Albright-Knox Art Gallery Allentown Museum of Art - 1967 American Academy of Arts & Letters - Childe Hassam Fund - 2 paintings Art Students League of NY Baltimore Museum of Art - 1961, 1962 Block Museum (Northwestern) - 1996 Brandeis University -1956 Butler Institute of American Art - 1953, 1961, 2004 Walter P. Chrysler Museum - 1960 Colby College - 1958 Columbia University - 1962 Cornell University - 1958 Corcoran Gallery of Art - 1961 Israel Museum of Art - Jerusalem - 1965 Guus Maris Collection James Michner Collection - University of Texas - 1967 Lempert Institute - 20 paintings purchased 1948-52 Morgan State College - 1961 - reproduction available Muscarelle Museum of Art (College of William & Mary) New York University Norfolk Museum of Art Oklahoma Art Center - 1968 Philbrook Art Center - 1966 Provincetown Art Museum -1969, 1985, 1989 Princeton Museum - before 1953 Mt. Holyhoke University - 1950 Michigan State University - 1960,1966 Norfolk Museum 1963 Riverside Museum - 1959, 1963, 1966 Standard Financial Corporation 1958, 1959, 1960 Smithsonian American Art Museum (3) 1975 Syracuse University - 1963, 1965 Washington Gallery of Modern Art - 1962 Whitney Museum - 1945, 1946, 1955 Walker Art Center 1948? Witchita Art Museum - 1987 University of Georgia - 1949 University of Illinois - 1949 University of Omaha - 1951 University of Maryland 1965 University of Rochester - 1966

Date indicates when entered in collection Painting may no longer be in the collection or the institution may have since closed.�

Invitational Exhibits Pennsylvania Academy of Art - multiple exhibits beginning 1945 and when he was a student Carnegie Museum of Art - multiple exhibits beginning 1945 Whitney Museum - multiple exhibits beginning 1945 Armory Show - 1945 Brooklyn Museum - 1945 Pepsi Cola Traveling Exhibit - 1945, 1946 Frank Rehn Gallery, NYC - 1946-1970s Corcoran Museum of Art - multiple exhibits, including biennials 1953-63 Jewish Museum, NYC University of Nebraska National Academy of Design - 1946, 1948 Toledo Museum of Art - 1947 Audubon Artists - annually from 1947–67 Milwaukee Art Institute - 1946, 1951 Minneapolis Art Institute - 1946 Federation of Modern Painters & Sculptors - annually from 1947–67 Albright Art Gallery - 1947, 49, 1951 Museum of Modern Art - 1949, 1959, 1961 Hallmark Traveling Exhibit - 1949 Institute of Contemporary Art Corcoran Gallery Los Angeles County Museum City Art Museum of St. Louis W. R. Nelson Gallery, Kansas City Des Moines Art Center Detroit Institute of Arts Isaac Delgado Museum, New Orleans Carnegie Institute Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha

Milwaukee Art Institute

Wildenstein Gallery - 1949 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - 1949 University of Illinois - 1949 Metropolitan Museum of Art - 1950 Hallmark - National Tour - 1950-51 American Academy of Arts & Letters - 1950, 1955, 1958 Institute of Contemporary Art Boston - 1951 Nelson Gallery - 1951 Detroit Institute of Art - 1951 Des Moines Art Center - 1951 Isaac Delgado Museum - 1951 Montclair Art Museum - 1951 Hallmark - European tour - 1952 Butler Institute of American Art - beginning 1953 Joslyn Art Museum - 1954 Brazil - Contemporary Arts - 1956 Riverside Museum - multiple since 1957 American Federation of Arts - 1958-60 Zabriskie Gallery, NYC 1958 Puerto Rico - 1959 Art USA - 1958, 1959 Washington Gallery of MA - 1962, 1966 YMHA &YWHA of Elizabeth - 1963 Poindexter Gallery - 1963 National Institute of Arts & Letters - 1967 Artists for SEDF - 1967 Maryland Arts Council at the Peale Museum - 1968 (then travelled throughout the state) Baltimore Museum of Art Invitational - 1968 Art Expo/New York - GIN gallery - 1980 Hillstrom Museum of Art, MN - 2007 L.I. Museum at Stony Brook - 2008 Davenport & Fleming - 2010 Gilbert Pavilion Gallery - 2011 Davenport & Shapiro Fine Art - 2012-13

Sidney Gross is listed in Who Is Who in the East, Who Is Who in America annually 1957 to 1967, Who Is Who in American Art 1948 to 1969, and in Who Was Who in American Art. Essays about his work appear in Master Paintings from the Butler Museum, Catalog of the Whitney Collection, and in Permanent Collection of the Wichita Art Museum, Jewish Artists by Jon Catagno, American Paintings of Today, MOMA, as well as in exhibition catalogs of various museums and his one-man shows, more recently in a monograph for an exhibit in the 1990s, and the 2007 monograph Sidney Gross - A Vision Cut Short, Leonard Davenport and the ongoing biography project on the web at http://www.lsdart.com/assets/Artist/grossbook.pdf. Reviews and illustrations appeared in Art News, Art Digest, Arts Magazine, American Art, and most of the then almost a dozen New York area newspapers.�

References

Sidney Gross Wikipedia