February 4-April 5, 2013

Due to popular demand, Hayward Oubre: Difficult to Impossible
is extended to April 5, 2013

Proud Rooster, c. 1956, painted wire, 21 1/4 inches high

Hayward Oubre (1916-2006), known primarily as a sculptor, was also a painter, printmaker, and influential teacher. A native of New Orleans, he graduated from Dillard University, studied with the Harlem Renaissance painter Hale Woodruff, and earned a Masters of Fine Art degree from the University of Iowa, the third African-American to do so.

Featured in this exhibition are the artist’s signature wire sculptures of figural, biomorphic, and whimsical themes. They are made of ordinary clothes hangers, which Oubre shaped totally by hand, manipulating the wire with his own strength to create a more textural surface. In execution, the interwoven outlines of each piece are feats of balance, light, and minimalism.

Oubre’s work was regularly exhibited throughout his career, at historically black colleges and at annuals at Atlanta University (1946-1969). This exhibition is the artist’s first retrospective, shown first at the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina and in New York, at Debra Force Fine Art.

ADAA: The Art Show, March 6-10, 2013

Park Avenue Armory, New York

artdealers.org/artshow

Boston International Fine Art Show, November 21-24, 2013

Boston Center for the Arts

 http://fineartboston.com/

The American Art Fair, December 2-5, 2013

The Bohemian National Hall, New York

theamericanartfair.com

October 1-November 9, 2012

       Guy Pène du Bois, Lady in a Cloak, 1927                                      

Although American artists began making the “Grand Tour” in the mid-19th Century, it was during the next fifty years (1875-1925), that artists visited Europe, mainly France and Italy, in droves. The lure of each country was unique. France gave young Americans the opportunity to study with the French Masters, experience the atelier system, and to exhibit at the Salons. Italy offered artists something freer, an opportunity to work outside the constraints of juried exhibitions and artists’ associations, to explore the ruin-filled countryside and contemplate the area’s ancient history and regional cultures.

Selections include works by Frederic Arthur Bridgman, Mary Cassatt, Alson Skinner Clark, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Walter Gay, Robert Henri, Daniel Ridgway Knight, Walter MacEwen, Guy Pène du Bois, William Lamb Picknell, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, and John Singer Sargent.

February 2 – March 23, 2012

This exhibition examines the relationship between Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997) and Michael Michaeledes (b. 1927), contemporaries who shared artistic ideologies and inspiration that each uniquely translated to canvas. Spanning the time period between the late 1940s and early 1980s, Ethnos/Techne explores each artist’s direct response to nature and light, transition to a mature style, and shared heritage. In the 1950s, Michaeledes produced intensely saturated washes of pure color, before moving to a sleek, reductive style that was based on geometric formations; Stamos’ work evolved from biomorphic canvases to classic Abstract Expressionism.

Catalogue available. For more information, please contact Debra Force or Helena Grubesic at 212-734-3636 or info@debraforce.com.

             
Michael Michaeledes, Blue Variations, 1967                                      Theodoros Stamos, Infinity Field, Jerusalem Series, 1983