Robert Richenburg

On September 10th, Spanierman Gallery, East Hampton, opened Four Visions, curated by Arlene Bujese, featuring four artists with intersecting careers and connections with Long Island. The artists were selected by Arlene Bujese a well-known presence in the East Hampton art world and the curator of the Ossorio Foundation.

Highlighted here is the work of one of the four artists: Robert Richenburg (1917-2006). Richenburg, who trained under Hans Hofmann, was a contemporary of Jackson Pollock, and belonged to “The Club,” along with Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline.

From the artist’s obituary in the New York Times: “Mr. Richenburg was praised by critics and sought after by collectors, and was particularly known for ominous paintings in which fields of black were punctuated by bursts of color and line.” ("Robert Richenburg, 89, Artist of Abstract Expressionist Works, Dies,” Randy Kennedy, New York Times, October 13, 2006.)

Noted art critic Lawrence Campbell wrote in 1959: Richenburg’s process involved working “in an automatist trance, weaving a wonderful complexity, tossing paint into a sea of multicolored surf. Then he pulls across a curtain of paint as black as Egypt’s night. When dry, he digs back into it, discovering bit by bit the forms of his painting. He is like the Romantic archeologist Heinrich Schliemann who looked for Troy but dug through to a civilization a thousand years older to find jewelry.” (Read the full 1959 ArtNews review).

Above is The City (1960), relating to Richenburg’s Black Paintings series begun in the 1950s and first exhibited at the legendary Ninth Street Show (1951). The artist described his process of these paintings as “pulling in the immense, haunting blackness around me, becoming one with it.”

Included in the show are works by the artist from the late 1940s through the 1960s in a variety of media; they range in price from $8,000 to $68,000.

View additional work by Robert Richenburg.

Read a New York Times Review of his first New York exhibition.