Loft Generation — Painting in New York, 1960’s—80’s

Loft Generation surveys painting in New York during the “pluralist” period of the 1960s–80s. Focusing on artists who worked in Manhattan’s expansive lofts, this show introduces the work of seven artists:

Vincent Baldassano, Judith Blum Reddy, Susan Fortgang, Regina Granne, Evelyn López de Guzmán, George Mingo, and Naoto Nakagawa, who are showing with the gallery for the first time in New York, alongside several gallery artists.

The artists were largely working in downtown Manhattan, in lofts that were raw but offered open, generous spaces and proximity to art materials and industrial materials that could be repurposed as experimental supplies. The artists in the exhibition come from diverse backgrounds, reflecting the art world’s increased openness to varied perspectives and the rise of alternative spaces in the 1960s and ‘70s.

An excerpt from the Press Release:

This theme of the interrupted grid comes through in other artists in the exhibition, like the work of Susan Fortgang (b. 1944). Fortgang’s 1970s paintings feature horizontal bands of color with insistent vertical drips. They declare the artist’s rhythm and process. These were such an exuberant departure from the grid associated with the Western painting tradition that John Perrault included one of these works in his landmark Pattern Painting show at P.S.1 in 1977. This exhibition brought broader attention to Pattern and Decoration to a wider audience, a movement both Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015) and Ned Smyth (b. 1948) are intimately associated with.

Excerpt from press release:

“This theme of the interrupted grid comes through in other artists in the exhibition, like the work of Susan Fortgang (b. 1944). Fortgang’s 1970s paintings feature horizontal bands of color with insistent vertical drips. They declare the artist’s rhythm and process. These were such an exuberant departure from the grid associated with the Western painting tradition that John Perrault included one of these works in his landmark Pattern Painting show at P.S.1 in 1977. This exhibition brought broader attention to Pattern and Decoration to a wider audience, a movement that both Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015) and Ned Smyth (b. 1948) are intimately associated with.”