NEW YORK, NY.- Spanish artist César Galicia (b. 1957) is celebrated for his illuminating renderings of what are seemingly ordinary objects – toys, public telephones, air pumps, motorcycles. Painted from life, Galicia’s paintings are deeply absorbing and fascinating portraits of modern life.
In Telephone, César Galicia returns to a subject that has captured his fascination since the 1980s. The wall-mounted payphone with its rotary dial and wired tether, has ceased to be a device for communication and seems more of an ancient artifact to be admired for its strange beauty. In his 2003 monograph about the Artist, author Pablo Jiménez describes such works as “the portrait of an object” that has been “taken out of its habitual existence and brought to the art laboratory.” Yet, from our vantage point in the future, with computers in our pockets to access limitless information and the ability to instantly connect with anyone, anywhere on the planet, it cannot be forgotten that the invention of the telephone was a revelation in global communications and truly revolutionized the Twentieth Century, democratizing the choice of where to live, the way we conduct business, and the way we socialize. Galicia’s Telephone then becomes an object of reverence and an icon of a century that witnessed technological development like none other before it.
Davis Cone (b. 1950) grew up in small-town America during a time when regularly attending movies at the local theater had not yet been eclipsed by television, sporting events, and other newfound national pastimes. The focalized theater, not the sprawling shopping mall, was Twentieth-century America’s secular meeting place, just as the “piazza” (town square) continues to represent such a venue in old-world European towns. The glowing theater marquee, faithfully illuminated in the evenings, offered hope to a suffering pre-War population and community to a post-War nation. It also bestowed unto middle America a touch of glamor, as so effectively encapsulated by the title of Linda Chase’s 1988 monograph on Cone, Hollywood on Main Street. These Popcorn Palaces, the title of a second monograph on the art of Davis Cone published in 2001, are icons of Twentieth Century entertainment and life, fixtures that continue to represent the personal friendships, social interdependence, and human values that came together beneath their roofs.
The painting Forum depicts the Forum Theatre at 314 Main Street in Metuchen, New Jersey. Opened in 1928 as both a vaudeville and movie theater, it was revitalized as a performing arts center in the early 1990s before temporarily closing in August, 2007. In the Fall of 2009, the Forum Theatre reopened to show foreign, classic, and independent films, all projected in thirty-five-millimeter format.
Clothcraft Clothes, Cleveland, Ohio, by American artist Anthony Mitri (b. 1951) depicts the building which, in 1900, housed the Goldsmith, Joseph, & Feiss Company, once the largest clothing factory in the United States. The company, originally known as Koch and Loeb, was founded in Meadville, PA in 1841 by Caufman Koch, a German immigrant from Bavaria who moved the company to Cleveland in 1845. Over the years, he brought Moritz Joseph and Julius Feiss into the business as partners, and in 1907 the company was renamed Joseph & Feiss.
Joseph & Feiss began producing ready-made men's clothing under the Clothcraft label in 1897. The building depicted in the drawing is the Clothcraft Clothes factory, located on the near west side of Cleveland. Much of the factory’s building complex has been demolished. The three-story warehouse and 200-foot brick smokestack depicted in the drawing are all that remains today.
Twentieth Century Stories also presents paintings, works on paper, photography and sculpture by Ernie Barnes, Philip Evergood, Gregory Gillespie, William Gropper, Chaim Gross, George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, Jack Levine, Louis Lozowick, Reginald Marsh, Bernard Perlin, Winfred Rembert, Ben Shahn, Raphael Soyer and Alfred Stieglitz. Each work is a compelling, humanist expression of subjects that include civil rights, the human toll of war, and the century’s industrial progress, public works, and entertainment that challenged the world and changed modern life.
