LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.-USC Fisher Gallery presents Peter Plagens: An Introspective, Plagens, who spent the past 20 years as the art critic for Newsweek magazine, has created art throughout his adulthood. Since most public attention has centered on his role as a writer, his work as a painter has been overshadowed. A distinguished 1962 alumnus of USC's School of Fine Arts, Plagens is a sometimes subtle, sometimes brash colorist and composer of abstract forms whose work moves from the self-described craggy, disjointed and garish to what others might term the elegant and the lyrical.

“Peter Plagens: An Introspective” features Plagens' large-scale oil and acrylic paintings and mixed media compositions from the past 30 years.

The show, curated by USC Fisher Gallery director Selma Holo, is a carefully selected and deeply thoughtful consideration of recurring and evolving themes in Plagens' work.

Throughout the three decades covered by the exhibition, the artist--who was a part of a group exhibition at Fisher Gallery in 1982, titled “Quiet Commitment”--has remained faithful to his personal style of abstraction. According to Holo, “Plagens' ongoing commitment to his own evolving modernist language has made possible a cohesive but varied feast for the eyes.”

The full color exhibition catalogue features an essay written by MacArthur award winner David Hickey, and is funded by the Luce Foundation and by the Peter Norton Foundation. The exhibition remains on view through February 12, 2005.