Description

Reginald Pollack is known for his metaphorical and almost dreamlike paintings that utilize a variety of soft colors.  This painting from 1957 is an excellent example.  Completed while he was still living in Paris, it shows the influence of prominent Parisian artists he came into contact with.  The elongated figures, especially, remind us of Giacometti.  This is a gorgeously subtle painting that reveals its subtle purples, greens, and blues over time.  We love it.

Details

• Reginald Pollack (American, 1924-2001)
• Bathers (1957)
  
• Oil on canvas
  
• Signed and dated in lower left hand corner
  
• 29" x 37" (overall) in likely original silver gilt wood frame

About the Artist

Born in Long Island, NY, Pollack graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City before serving in the Pacific during World War II, a traumatic experience which, like most veterans, had a profound influence on him. After the war, Pollack used funds from the GI Bill to study art at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris from 1948 until 1952. While in Paris, he and 11 other World War II veterans established the Galerie Huit, the first art gallery in Paris to be operated by Americans. Galerie Huit represented many notable artists, including Jules Olitski and George Ortman. Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a mecca for American and European artists and Pollack acknowledged in interviews that the tutelage of the Parisian artists he came in contact with (such as Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, and Man Ray) made him realize his "responsibility to civilization." During his 14 years in Paris, eight of them were directly influenced by his relationship to the famed sculptor Constantin Brâncusi, his neighbor and mentor. Pollack said Brâncuși was a "modern-day artistic shaman, a holy man as mystically in tune with the primal cosmos as he was impervious to the strains of ordinary existence."

Upon his move back to the United States in 1960 Pollack became an art instructor and Visiting Critic of Art at Yale University.  He also became a prominent peace activist and symbolic figure, encouraged by his own horrific experiences in World War II as well as his objection to the Vietnam War.  Over his 60-year career, he participated in more than 80 exhibitions with works in numerous public collections such as The Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Museum of American Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum.  He passed away at his home in Palm Springs in 2001.