Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof at a reception for the acquisition of Resnick's New Bride (1963) by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1978. Courtesy The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation
In May, Schoelkopf Gallery presents a focused Spotlight exhibition showcasing the work of Pat Passlof and Milton Resnick, two artists who were early pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. The artists met in 1948 and married in 1962. They had separate, distinct artistic practices, but shared their life and worked alongside one another in New York for decades.
Pat Passlof (1928–2011) was born in Georgia and grew up in New York City. She studied at the storied Black Mountain College in North Carolina and received individual education with her mentor Willem de Kooning in New York. She also earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Her work is in many notable institutional collections around the world including the Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Crystal Bridges Museum, among others.
The Spotlight exhibition will feature an untitled oil-on-canvas painting by Passlof from 1962 that exemplifies the artist's style in the 1960s. During this time, she embraced lighter palettes and increasingly rhythmic, layered surfaces. Having emerged from the downtown New York scene of Abstract Expressionism, shaped by her studies with Willem de Kooning and her participation in The Club, Passlof developed a visual language that balanced gestural immediacy with a keen understanding of color and structure. As in much of her work, this painting reflects Passlof’s commitment to reinvention and her distinctive contribution to postwar abstraction.
Milton Resnick (1917–2004) was born in the Ukraine and immigrated to New York City with his family in 1923. He grew up in Brooklyn, and entered the American Artists School in 1933. In the 1930s, he was enrolled in the Federal Art Project of the WPA, and met Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, and other downtown artists. In 1940, Resnick was drafted and served in the U.S. Army through all of World War II. He studied with Hans Hofmann on the GI bill after serving and then studying in Paris during and after the war. In New York, he was a founding member of The Club, the famed artist collective and meeting space that defined the Abstract Expressionist movement. His work is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many other significant institutions.
Resnick's striking monochrome Edna from 1973 will be featured in the Spotlight exhibition. The painting is a quintessential example of Resnick's work at the time, which was characterized by an almost obsessive emphasis of the paint itself, resulting in thick, heavy, imageless canvases.
The Spotlight exhibition is presented in tandem with New York City Circa 1960: Works from the Collection of Robert A. Ellison, Jr., which focuses on the vibrant downtown New York art scene through the perspective of the visionary artist and collector Robert A. Ellison Jr.
Ellison forged deep friendships with many artists involved in the downtown scene, including Passlof and Resnick.
