William Bailey [1930 - 2020]
New Work
Opening Thursday, February 18 from 6 – 8pm
On view through Saturday, March 27
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by William Bailey, including recent still-life and figure paintings as well as a selection of works on paper. This will be the artist’s third exhibition at the gallery; he will be present for the opening reception on Thursday, February 18th.
Bailey is known particularly for his still-life paintings. Although unlike other still-life painters, Bailey composes his paintings on the canvas from his imagination, adjusting the light source and relative scale of each object as he paints.
Also included in this exhibition are six figure paintings (four on canvas, two on paper). Like the objects in the still-lifes, the figures are painted from Bailey’s imagination and have a strange, dreamlike presence. Unlike the major works in this exhibition, Bailey’s drawings of the figure begin from direct observation.
William Bailey’s work can be seen in a host of public and private collections, most notably the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Bailey is the subject of two monographs, one by Mark Strand and the other by John Hollander and Guiliano Briganti.
William Bailey was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. After serving in the United States Army during the Korean War, he studied under Josef Albers at Yale where he received both his B.F.A. and M.F.A degrees. He has been exhibiting in New York since the late 1960’s. He lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut and Umbria, Italy.
An essay by Alexi Worth will accompany the exhibition.
Click below for full press release.
Minutes before seeing a collection of William Bailey’s meditative still-lifes and figure paintings, I heard, yet again, a series of small-minded and reckless comments by Donald Trump. How soul enriching to leave behind a sleazy Presidential candidate’s hate and hubris to be in the presence of a masterful artist’s refined vision and voice. Bailey’s exhibit at the Betty Cuningham Gallery provides a welcome respite from the kind of nasty energy and ideas Trump-like politicians spew–so different from the picture-perfect, yet unconventional, world to which Bailey transports us.
William Bailey’s current exhibition at the Betty Cuningham Gallery in Chelsea covers a lot of ground. Although it emphasizes recent paintings created both in the U.S. and in Umbria, it also includes works made in 1963 and 1977. Examples of Bailey’s methodically burnished still-life paintings are on view alongside his serenely elegant figure paintings.
