Assembling the artwork for AN INTIMATE VIEW: Small Paintings & Drawings by Ben Solowey, has been a pleasure. There are so many terrific pieces to choose from, the task proves that the curator’s job is often times not what one puts into a show, but what must be left out. We have whittled the list down to approximately 35 works, and we hope that as we hang the show we discover that space will allow us more (rather than less).
As there are pieces from virtually every part of of Ben Solowey’s career, this exhibition is literally a mini retrospective. The show cover a half century of Solowey art.
Appropriately, this week’s highlight starts at the beginning of Ben’s career. A 1925 landscape painted soon after his return from six month sojourn in Europe. While abroad, Ben produced a number of small paintings (13 x 16 in) on wood panels and canvas boards that he painted plein air in and around Paris. He was soaking up the influences of Impressionism, Modernism, and other “ism’s” that were all around him in Paris.
He returned to Philadelphia and painted the above work in a similar fashion, capturing a local city scene. Although he was still synthesizing the styles he encountered during his travels, he already had succeeded in personalizing elements of his technique.
At least the judges at the Philadelphia Sketch Club thought so. In a 1926 exhibition, they awarded Ben an Honorable Mention for the painting, an important validation at the time for Ben.
Ben was on his way to become “Ben Solowey” yet in this early work, as was his practice at the time, he signed the work in red (in the lower right), “B. Solowey.” The bold signature that was to become a trademark for him was still five years away.
This painting and others from his trip to Europe in 1924 will be on view in AN INTIMATE VIEW: Small Paintings & Drawings by Ben Solowey.
Above: The Bridge. Oil on board, 1925. 13 x 16 in.
