TORREGANO
November 5th - December 23rd, 2021
Reception: Saturday, November 6th 6-8 pm
GEORGE DUNBAR
TORREGANO
November 5th - December 18th, 2021
GEORGE DUNBAR
GEORGE DUNBAR
“I enjoy revisiting and changing certain series. I am frequently asked which piece of my work is my favorite. My answer is: the one I have yet to create.”
- George Dunbar
One of the leading and most respected artists of his generation, painter and sculptor George Dunbar (b. 1927) has earned an international reputation during the course of a brilliant, seven-decade career. At age 94 he has produced an entirely new body of work that reinterprets ongoing series. The exhibition has the character of a career retrospective, inviting viewers to survey a wide repertoire of techniques and media, which all bear Dunbar’s unmistakable artistic thumbprint. He deploys centuries-old techniques to transform clay and precious metallic leafs into sumptuous visual études that evince his technical mastery and aesthetic vision. He brings fresh iterations to signature motifs in stylistic periods such as Coin du Lestin, Bonfouca, Surge, and Rouville. Equally adept working in Hard-Edge or organic styles, he creates artworks of incredible complexity, which nevertheless manage to communicate effortlessness, elegance, and concision.
Dunbar’s groundbreaking career began with studies at Tyler School of Art and the Grande Chaumière Academy in Paris. He was active in New York City at the height of Abstract Expressionism, exhibiting in 1953 alongside one of his heroes, Franz Kline. In 1957, when he returned to his native Louisiana, he co-founded the Orleans Gallery, the first artist co-op in the region’s history. Since those formative years—collected around the world, the subject of rave reviews in The New York Times, Art in America, and ARTnews—Dunbar’s paintings and sculptures have been acquired into prestigious private, corporate, and institutional collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the British Museum, and has been honored with career surveys at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Hilliard University Museum, and North Carolina Museum of Art.
Although the ever-changing landscape surrounding his studio on Bayou Bonfouca has influenced his work on a subconscious level, he is concerned not with the particulars of locale but the universal language of abstraction. Across time and a panoply of working methods, his work integrates rawness with sophistication, tying those polarities together with a potent concentration of compositional energy. Edward Lucie Smith has called this celebrated and beloved figure “a virtuoso at a time when virtuosity has become suspect...The story of his career is full of resonance for students of the contemporary American cultural scene.” Summing up Dunbar’s artistry and uncountable contributions to the cause of abstraction, the late critic Eric Bookhardt echoed the feelings of a wide community of art historians and connoisseurs when he pronounced Dunbar, quite simply, “a Renaissance man and an enduring legend.”
- Richard Speer
George Dunbar
Typha-Surge Series, 2021
Red gold over red and black clay with die keen
47h x 53.50w in
SOLD
George Dunbar
Coin Du Lestin CXCVI, 2021
French gold over black and dark green clay
62h x 50w in
George Dunbar
Freret-Surge Series, 2020
Palladium over die keen and rags with red clay
50h x 62w in
George Dunbar
Hexagona - Rag Series, 2021
canvas bundles, acrylic on canvas-beige
48h x 72w in
George Dunbar
Rouville CXX, 2021
Palladium and blue gray clay with die keen
37h x 49w in
SOLD
George Dunbar
Crestone XIV, 2021
Moon gold over taupe and white clay with die keen
21h x 19w in
SOLD
George Dunbar
Malsumis-Surge Series, 2021
French gold over black and dark green clay
19h x 23.50w in
George Dunbar
Abstract Deity in Bronze
5/10, 2019
Caste Bronze with high polish and sealed finish
12h x 13w x 7d in
George Dunbar
Coin Du Lestin CXCVI, 2021
French gold over black and dark green clay
62h x 50w in
George Dunbar
Typha-Surge Series, 2021
Red gold over red and black clay with die keen
47h x 53.50w in
George Dunbar
Freret-Surge Series, 2020
Palladium over die keen and rags with red clay
50h x 62w in
George Dunbar
Hexagona - Rag Series, 2021
canvas bundles, acrylic on canvas-beige
48h x 72w in
George Dunbar
Malsumis-Surge Series, 2021
French gold over black and dark green clay
19h x 23.50w in
George Dunbar
Crestone XIV, 2021
Moon gold over taupe and white clay with die keen
21h x 19w in
George Dunbar
Abstract Deity in Bronze
5/10, 2019
Caste Bronze with high polish and sealed finish
12h x 13w x 7d in
GD392
George Dunbar
Rouville No. CXIX, 2021
Palladium over white and blue clay with die keen
41.50h x 44.50w in
