FROM MODENA TO VENICE: "AMERICANA" - AN EXHIBITION WITH WORKS BY 4 US
ARTISTS INCLUDING PAINTINGS, WATERCOLOURS AND DRAWINGS ON DISPLAY AT
THE NEW SILOS SPACE
Modena's ArtBroking gallery is to exhibit the works of four American artists, mainly made in the
1970s, at the new Silos space on the Giudecca in Venice from tomorrow Friday 27 June to
Sunday 27 July: Gregory Gillespie, James McGarrell, Robert Barnes and William Bailey are all
well known in Italy thanks to the insight of the famous Modena art dealer Mario Roncaglia
Four US artists in love with Italy and who have lived in our country and paid tribute with their
works of art. They are the protagonists of "Americana", the exhibition that will take place in
Venice at the historical premises of the Giudecca, the former brewery - and more specifically
at the new cultural centre Silos - open from tomorrow Friday 27 June to Sunday 27 July.
Gregory Gillespie, said to be one of the most interesting contemporary American artists,
James McGarrell, Robert Barnes and William Bailey are the protagonists of this exhibition
dedicated to American paintings of the '70s. The artists are well-known in Italy thanks to the
talent and vision of the known art dealer Mario Modena Roncaglia of "Il fante di Spade", a
gallery based in Rome and Milan, that invested in them and launched them on the Italian
market.
Paintings, watercolours, canvases and drawings are the main focus of this exhibition, ranging
from Gillespie’s figurative painting, and its obsessive attention to detail, to that of McGarrell,
with a penchant for an intense and bright range of colours; from Barnes' psychological/ literary
themes, offered in a both figurative and abstract manner and realistic and surreal at the same
time, to the female portraits of Bailey, which live in a timeless metaphysical silence.
Gregory Gillespie (1936 - 2000) was born in New Jersey and raised in a strict Catholic family;
after studying at the Cooper Union in Manhattan, he earned a master's degree from the San
Francisco Art Institute. In the 1960s he lived in Florence and Rome and in 1966 the Forum
Gallery in New York hosted his first solo exhibition: the collaboration with this gallery is still
ongoing (Gregory Gillespie, Supernatural Observation, 6 February to 15 March 2014, Forum
Gallery). He participated in several biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York in
the Sixties and Seventies. The works of Gillespie are in the permanent collections of museums
such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, the
Whitney Museum in New York City and the Fine Art in Boston. His realism - rich
with expressionist distortions and surreal and symbolic elements - is complex and often imbued
with a perverse mysticism. It is especially in his many self-portraits and in his
embittered realism that the viewer can feel the artist's manic desire for introspection. He
experimented with various painting techniques, incorporating montages, newspaper clippings,
postcards and photocopies to his oil paintings.
James McGarrell was born in 1930 in Indianapolis. He studied painting at Indiana University,
where he later also taught, and in 1993 he became professor emeritus at the University of Saint
Louis. His paintings were included in five annual and biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museum
and in two international exhibitions at the Carnegie in New York and at the Venice Biennale in
1968; his work has also been exhibited in major galleries in the U.S. and abroad since 1956
including the Allan Frumkin (1972-1990) gallery, the Adam Gallery (1992-2006), the Aca
Gallery (since 2006) in New York, the Claude Bernard gallery in Paris and the Fante di Spade in
Milan and Rome. His work also features in the permanent collections of many museums such as
the Metropolitan, the Modern Art and the Whitney in New York, the Hirshorn and Sculpture
Garden in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Art in New Orleans,
Saint Louis, Santa Barbara and Hamburg. In 1993 he bought and reclaimed a nineteenth
century residence in Newbury, Vermont, where he currently lives and works.
Robert Barnes was born in Washington in 1934. After his schooling in Chicago, he graduated
from Columbia University in New York in 1957 where he socialised with a group of surrealists -
including Matta, Ernst and Duchamp - and actively participates in the James Joyce Society,
fascinated by the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique. These early experiences will be
crucial in the shaping of his artistic career. In the early Sixties he lived in London for a short
while, where he worked closely with a community of artists including Francis Bacon. In the
Seventies, he was invited by Italian art dealer Mario Roncaglia to live and work in Umbria,
where he continued to spend his summers for several years, exhibiting both in Rome and in
Milan. After nineteen solo exhibitions at the Frumkin Gallery, his works are shown at the Stuve
Gallery in 1992 with "Sources of Power", in 1996 with "Blood and perfume" in 1998 with "Robert
Barnes, new works", in 2000 with "The ogham" at the Zaks Gallery, and in 2010 with "Paradise"
at the Corbett-vs-Dempsey. Barnes' works feature in many major museums, including the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum and the Modern Art in New York, the Madison Art
Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Indianapolis, the National Gallery in Washington
and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. He currently lives and works in Maine.
William Bailey was born in Council Bluff, Iowa in 1930. He studied at the School of Fine Arts at
the University of Kansas and is a graduate of Yale University. He has taught at Indiana
University and at Yale University: here he was awarded the title of professor emeritus from
1969 to 1995. Bailey exhibited from 1957 to 1961 at the Kanegis Gallery in Boston, from 1971
to 1991 at the Shoelkopf Gallery in New York, between 1999 and 2003 in the R. Miller Gallery
and since 2005 at the Betty Cuningham Gallery, also in New York. His paintings were also
exhibited in galleries in Europe, including the Claude Bernard in Paris and The Fante di Spade in
Rome and Milan. His works are included in the permanent collections of major American
museums, including the Whitney Museum, the Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of
American Art, the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, the Art
Institute of Chicago. He currently lives in Branford, Connecticut, and for the past thirty-five
years he spends the four summer months between May and September in Sant'Umberto,
near Perugia, in Umbria.
Info:
Friday 27 June (opening at 18.30)
Saturday 28 June - Sunday 27 July (Fri - Sun 12.00 to 20.00)
SILOS art inside, Venice
Giudecca 800/R
0039 041 2002875
info@silosvenezia.eu
www.silosvenezia.eu
From Piazzale Roma: Vaporetto No. 2 or No. 4.1, Palanca stop
From San Marco: Vaporetto No. 2 or No. 4.2, Palanca stop
Nearby buildings: Hilton Hotel, Fortuny laboratory, Gallery 795, Gallery Michela Rizzo, Punch
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works as a trusted consultant for the purchase and sale of art photography, as well as a
reference point for artists and collectors. Artbroking collaborates with major auction house
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