BERTA WALKER GALLERY

Creative Couples: 1890-Present Seven Exhibitions, Two Galleries, 175 Creative Couples

actors, artists, writers, filmmakers, photographers, musicians, dancers, curators

FOR RELEASE: UPON RECEIPT 6/18/19

Berta Walker Gallery is celebrating its 30th Anniversary by presenting in both the Wellfleet and Provincetown galleries, a summer-long rotating group of exhibitions by Creative Couples from 1890-Present.

NEXT EXHIBITIONS in Provincetown & Wellfleet

PROVINCETOWN June 28 - July 20

OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 6 - 8 PM

WELLFLEET

June 28 - July 20 OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, JULY 6, 4 - 6 PM

Provincetown One Couple Exhibitions:

Robert Henry artist & Selina Trieff artist Carmen Cicero artist & Mary Abell writer and art historian

Grace Hopkins "Patterns of Portugal" abstract photography taken in Portugal

A brief introduction to this group of Creative Couples Exhibitions

This exhibition is a very special celebration for Berta Walker Gallery. Not only is this the Gallery's 30th Anniversary, but it's auspicious on many other levels as well. In 1989-1990, Berta Walker had wrapped up the winter in Provincetown as Acting Director of the Fine Arts Work Center, a seven-month residency program for emerging artists & writers in Provincetown. Then a chance opportunity to open a gallery presented itself, and suddenly, its 30 years later! "Almost immediately I gave one-person exhibitions to Bob Henry & Selina Trieff. But the very first opening exhibition was a huge group show, "Going Fishing: A Tribute to our Industry", a benefit for the Portuguese Festival." Already completely scheduled for the season with Creative Couples, I THEN learned that Grace Hopkins had just returned from a vacation in Portugal. Viewing her incredible new abstract photographs made in Portugal, I of course had to add her to the celebratory season as this, then, brought the season celebrations "full-circle", offering another opportunity to again create a tribute to this year's Provincetown Portuguese

Festival, June 27 - June 30. And to take this celebration one step further, Selina Trieff and Carmen Cicero were two of the first artists I represented at Graham Modern Gallery in NYC when I became Director in 1985.

ROBERT HENRY & SELINA TRIEFF

A Robert Henry exhibition is always an exciting adventure in paint and visual impact. He works with symbols that move from the abstract to a pulsating narrative. Both abstract and figurative, they move almost kaleidoscopically from seemingly pure abstract patterning into grounded, interactive story of the eternal human struggle and primal emotions that comprise the human drama. Art historian Eileen Kennedy observed: "Henry appears uncategorizable to me. He is an artist statesman of our age, much as Picasso was - or Goya - but he does not

confront epic conflict between and within nations in the direct way that they did. He presents the human impulse to harm and heal in the emotional atmosphere, the psychic space that human turbulence creates. His more abstract works seem to me to be what so much of contemporary art is trying to express, the distillation of emotion, the spiritual and psychic space that the times we are living in have created."

Robert Henry, Fun #1, May 2011 oil on canvas, 40 x 30"

"Selina Trieff was a hauntingly good painter," wrote David Brody recently for Artcritical. "Each composition is a carefully calibrated balance between color surprise, dramatic stagecraft, and strong, intelligent draftsmanship."

Trieff was dubbed "an American original" by New York Times art critic John Russell during her first exhibition presented by Berta at Graham Modern Gallery in NYC in 1985. Her message remains remarkably consistent, remarkably timeless. Trieff generates allusively gripping figurative compositions, abstract images in oil & gold leaf, richly pensive, introspective, strangely self-like. The subjects distilled to their essence in rich fields of color, reveal an entrenched passion for the push/pull technique of painting she first learned from Hans Hofmann. Trieff goes back to the same format in her work, but each return is a very different experience, an ongoing meditation of the human spirit through color and paint. "The figures are guarded, but they are also vulnerable," Trieff says. Like the artist in the harsh world of earthly experience, they are archetypal pilgrims wandering, searching for a home place.

Selina Trieff (1934-2015), Dancers with Blue, Oil on canvas, 36 x 30"

CARMEN CICERO & MARY ABELL Carmen Cicero was both a painter and jazz musician. Early Cicero was known as an abstract expressionist, but after a fire in his studio in the late 1970s, his work changed. He turned to Figurative Expressionist paintings and watercolors, unique, original, and personal, exuding the artist's personality and observations of human interaction through color and form. Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe noted in an article about Cicero's paintings at a recent exhibition at Provincetown Art Association and Museum: "[Cicero's] later

work seems to have nothing to do with the instinctive gestures of Abstract Expressionism. It is closer to the obsessive detail and dream-lucidity of Henri Rousseau and Rene Magritte. What seems particularly significant in Cicero's art is the way he blends levels of subjectivity, accumulated experiences, dreams, and earlier art in what seems to be a reflection of the multi-faceted contemporary mind in an information age."

Carmen Cicero, Leisure, 2018, Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40"

MARY ELLEN ABELL curated and authored Edwin Dickinson in Provincetown for Dickinson's exhibition at the 2007 Provincetown Art Association and Museum, with the invaluable help of Dickinson's daughter, Helen, who wrote the catalogue raisonné on her father's work. Abell wrote two essays on Dickinson's work for the book that accompanied the traveling exhibition Dreams and Realities (2002), organized by the Albright-Knox Gallery. Abell taught art history for 25 years at Dowling College where she was given tenure in 2000. Mary's career started as an assistant at Artnews. Later she became director of Art Views lecture bureau. She earned an M.A. from NYU in 1991 and a Ph.D. from The University and Graduate Center, CUNY, in 2001. Many folk in the Provincetown art world know Mary Abell from her days a Director of Provincetown's Long Point Gallery (1987-1994). In 2012, Abell curated and wrote an essay in the catalogue for a show on the gallery at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum titled Long Point: An Artist's Place. She continues to write about art and lives side by side with her life partner, painter and jazz musician Carmen Cicero.

GRACE HOPKINS "Patterns of Portugal" abstract photos mounted on steel Grace Hopkins' recent abstract photos printed on aluminum reflect the mosaic atmosphere she found in Lisbon this winter. This exhibition celebrates Provincetown's annual Portuguese Festival. Grace Hopkins has been creating photographs since 1991. She builds a highly energized visual image from a tiny piece of reality. Susan Rand Brown wrote recently in the Banner, "Hopkins is "a photographer with the eye and soul of a painter." Grace Hopkins, Portugal 35, 2019

Photograph on aluminum, 16 x 16"

Charles Hawthorne praised "delicious juxtapositions of color from a common place or better yet, an ugly subject...". Grace Hopkins creates her photos sourced from such odd, dark, sometimes scary, abandoned places, and discovers magic buried within. It's as if she cannot allow decay to be left, but sees the light, texture, change - HOPE - in the darkest and ignored areas. "I feel her brushstroke in the camera's lens, making the photos personal, painterly, uniquely her own, notes Berta Walker. They are a celebration of place. Looking at them, I find I want to be inside them. They are sensual, tactile, luscious and somehow very present."

Wellfleet June 29 - July 20

RECEPTION SATURDAY JULY 6, 4 - 6 PM

Three-person special:

Karl Knaths (1891-1971) artist Helen Weinrich pianist (1876-1978) & Agnes Weinrich (1873-1946) artist

and Creative Couples: Fine Arts Work Center

Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown

In 2018, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown celebrated its 50th Anniversary with exhibitions in several galleries, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA.

For 50 years FAWC has juried into the Program ten emerging writers and ten emerging artists from across the United States and Europe.

Many singletons became couples, and still live in the Provincetown Art Colony today, including Janice Redman from England, Paul Bowen from Wales, Jim Peters straight out of the Navy, native-born Conrad Malicoat.

Rob DuToit, Flowers in Studio, 2017, Pastel and sumi ink on

paper, 22 x 18"

Janice Redman, Ritual (Two Cups), ceramic, wool, silk, sand,

8 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 5 1/2" Courtesy of Clark Gallery, Boston

I continue to salute the Fine Arts Work Center whose residency program brings in youth during the off-season, creating income for the Town and introducing artists to Provincetown who are living here fifty years later!

The Creative Couples of FAWC celebrates some twenty FAWC Fellowship couples and many other Creative Couples who have been instrumental in founding and keeping FAWC on steady footing. The Focus Exhibition celebrates the collaborative relationship of artists Agnes Weinrich & Karl Knaths, and Karl's wife, Helen Weinrich, a pianist. Since Karl Knaths was the first visiting artist to the Fine Arts Work Center, nurturing the first year's artists throughout the season, it seemed poetic to feature him again with the Fine Arts Work Center Creative Couples Exhibition.

Marty Davis (above), Eddies 7, 2018, Acrylic and collage on

board, 12 x 12" &

Alix Ritchie Poem (below)

Collaboration Gail and Michael

Mazur, Young Apple Tree, December 2003, Aquatint, etching, letterpress, ed

48/50, 22 1/2 x 12 1/2" Courtesy of Albert Merola Gallery

"Creative Couples" A three-person Special Exhibition

Karl Knaths (1891 - 1971) artist & Helen Weinrich 1876-1978 pianist & Agnes Weinrich (1873-1946) artist

"For over 30 years," notes Berta Walker, "I have had the privilege of learning about and showing the art of the amazing modernists of Provincetown who came to Provincetown in the early 1900's." Among them, I have become completely intrigued by the trio family of artists:Karl Knaths & Agnes Weinrich and musician Helen Weinrich. This exhibition series is the perfect opportunity to present the work of Karl Knaths and Agnes Weinrich who shared a formative number of years working side by side together, becoming two of the best-known artists to have worked in Provincetown during the 20th century."

Karl Knaths (1891-1971), Rainbow Dunes Mixed media on paper, 16 x 21"

Agnes Weinrich (1873-1947), Purple Dunes,

Fall, Watercolor, 17 x 19"

In the summer of 1914, as war was breaking out in Europe, many artists and musicians of the American colony in Paris left Europe and came to Provincetown, including the Weinrich sisters, Helen, a concert pianist, and Agnes. The sisters had traveled to Europe frequently as Agnes studied art independently and at the Louvre. They were most probably encouraged to visit Provincetown by artists Oliver Chaffee and Charles Hawthorne whom they had met in Paris.

In 1919, Karl Knaths left Wisconsin and settled in Provincetown, then a burgeoning art colony, which he recognized as the prefect place in which to settle and study art. Soon after his arrival, he met the Weinrich sisters, and in 1922, he married Helen, who was 15 years older than he, and Agnes was in fact 18 years older than he. He moved into the home in which the Weinrich sisters had been living, and the three proceeded to live together, to travel together, and to make art and music together. Karl & Agnes both integrated qualities of fresh vision and self-reliant invention.

Agnes Weinrich (1873-1947), Untitled Landscape, n.d. Watercolor, 12 x 18"

"Karl and Agnes each had their studios and (together with Helen) settled down to a quiet, retiring life of making art. Together they formed part of the 'modern' wing of the Provincetown artistic colony,(Paul Mocsanyi, Karl Knaths Exhibition, Phillips Gallery exhibition Washington D.C, 1957.) Today, in light of current standards and taste and consciousness, this feels like a good time to exhibit the collaborative nature in which Weinrich and Knaths created together in the early formative years of American Modernists.

Karl Knaths was a gentle and sensitive soul, completely committed to his art, spending hours alone in his studio. Agnes had an open and inquiring mind with a radical bent, and she too was committed to her art. She brought to this artistic trio her experience of having lived and studied in Europe. Karl loved music and would spend hours listening to his wife Helen playing on the piano. Both were committed to taking care of Helen, who was quiet and frail. In the home they shared, each had their own studio, and enjoyed talking about art. In fact, says Berta Walker, "It would appear that Agnes and Karl must have enjoyed working together en plein air on the dunes, by the bay and on the streets of Provincetown, as attested to by the similarities of many of the works in this exhibition." Blanche Lazzell noted in a letter to a friend in 1926 Weinrich and Knaths "... are so congenial I would rather be with them than anyone else." (Lazzell Papers, Archives of American Art.)

Karl Knaths (1891-1971), House & Blue Hills, n.d. Watercolor, 13 x 17"

AGNES WEINRICH, having spent many years of independent art study in Europe and many months at the Louvre, joined the Hawthorne School upon arrival in Provincetown in 1915. The next year she joined with Oliver Chaffee in his short-lived Modern School of Art, along with others she knew from Paris: Ada Gilmore (Oliver Chaffee's wife), Blanche Lazzell, Maude Squires and Ethel Mars. This group was very involved with the writings and teachings of cubist artist Albert Gleizes, with whom Lucy L'Engle and Blanche Lazzell had studied, and by 1920, Weinrich was deeply committed to cubism; and Knaths was on the verge of his own form of Modernism, as seen in his 1922 painting "Geraniums", the first painting purchased for the Phillips Collection. KARL KNATHS, who had never traveled anywhere except from the Midwest to Provincetown, was aware of the Modernist movement through vast reading and seeing the 1913 Armory show when it arrived in Chicago, but according to Knaths himself it was Weinrich who introduced him to modernism. During their winters in New York, Weinrich frequently joined Knaths in visiting museums, artists' exhibitions and studios. "At first," Knaths recalled, "she was teacher, then our relationship became cooperative and we learned from each other." (Knaths letter to a friend, 1966, Archives of American Art.) He often said that Agnes was a better artist than he was, "which", says Walker, "I believe he felt, although some earlier writings like to indicate this was said with a mixture of condescension and genuine admiration."

There's no question, Knaths and Weinrich found equality and artistic companionship in a unique way. By the time Karl moved to Provincetown, he was showing in New York, where in 1922, he was first purchased by Duncan Phillips. While Weinrich never received the acclaim she might have, had she not been a woman, she never seemed to dwell on that. Instead, starting in 1917, she showed with other women in group shows and in 1925 helped form the NY Society of Women Artists with other Provincetown associates Marguerite Zorach, Blanche Lazzell, and Lucy L'Engle, rebelling against the "too-conservative" National Association of Women Artists. In 1926, she, Knaths, Lazzell, the Zorachs, and twenty-five other Provincetown modernists rebelled against the traditionalists who controlled the Provincetown Art Association, creating that year the first-ever modernist exhibition in Provincetown. Intrepid

Agnes died as modernism and abstraction was taking hold in America. But her life-long friend Karl Knaths, would continue for another 25 years, becoming one of the great masters of American art.

Agnes Weinrich (1873-1947), Untitled, n.d. Oil on board, 14 x 10"

Agnes died in 1946 at the age of 73; Karl,18 years younger than Agnes, died in 1971 at the age of 80; and Helen, whom both Karl and Agnes had taken care of over the years, and who was supposedly so frail, died in 1979, at the age of 102. Perhaps the appreciation of Karl Knaths, written by E. M. Benson for the 1957 Phillips Collection exhibition, sums up the efforts of both Karl Knaths and Agnes Weinrich: "...the artist's dream was not closed up in the completed work of art ...it will become alive in the heart of this whose sensitivity is set afire by the sight of the painting. For this - and not fame alone - is the artist's real immortality; that his/her sovereign dream, passion and faith, pent up in the (work of art) can resuscitate in the hearts of men, again and again...'" Both Agnes and Karl creatively dreamed, and willingly shared their passion & faith with each other, and now the world.

Karl Knaths (1891-1971), King Cock Oil on canvas, 36 x 31 1/2"

Upcoming Exhibitions

PROVINCETOWN GALLERY (Receptions Friday, 6 - 8 pm) July 26 - August 17 One Couple Exhibitions: Charles & Marion Hawthorne and Ross Moffett & Dorothy Lake Gregory Creative Couples: students of Hawthorne & Hensche schools, Mixed Media August 23 - September 14 One Couple Exhibitions: Blair & Paul Resika and Miz & Hans Hofmann Creative Couples: Students of Hofmann & Abstract artists

WELLFLEET August 3 - August 31 One Couple Exhibition: Nancy Whorf artist & Herman Tasha, jeweler Creative Couples: Mixed Group Reception: Saturday, August 3, 4 - 6 pm

Gallery Hours

PROVINCETOWN May 23 to June 30: 11am to 4pm, Thursday to Monday, closed Tuesday, Wednesday July to Labor Day: 11am to 5pm, Closed Tuesdays September: 12pm to 4pm, Thursday to Sunday October on: Weekends, 12 to 4pm or by appointment

WELLFLEET May 23 to June 30: 11am to 4pm, Thursday to Monday closed Tuesday, Wednesday July to Labor Day: 11am to 5pm, Closed Tuesdays September: 12 to 4pm, Thursday to Sunday October on: By appointment

"Berta Walker's gallery mission is voiced in the motto that has guided her over the years, 'Presenting the History of American Art as seen through the Eyes of Provincetown'. She aims for nothing less than documenting the role that artists associated with Provincetown have played in the major movements in American art...making the past vital to the living artists she represents, replenishing the present with a curatorial finesse that is highly regarded." Andre van der Wende, Provincetown Arts Representing: Donald Beal, Varujan Boghosian, Polly Burnell, Romolo Del Deo, Salvatore Del Deo, Joseph Diggs, Rob DuToit, Ed Giobbi, Elspeth Halvorsen, Robert Henry, Grace Hopkins, Brenda Horowitz, Penelope Jencks, David Kaplan, Judyth Katz, Anne MacAdam, Danielle Mailer, Erna Partoll, Jim Peters, Sky Power, Blair Resika, Paul Resika, Peter Watts, Murray Zimiles Frequent guests: Susumu Kishihara, Dana McCannel, John Thomas Estates: Gilbert Franklin, Budd Hopkins, John Kearney, Gloria Nardin, Selina Trieff, Ione Gaul Walker, Nancy Whorf Masters in Our Collections: Gerritt Beneker, Byron Browne, Oliver Chaffee, James Floyd Clymer, Jim Forsberg, Sue Fuller, Dorothy Lake Gregory, Marsden Hartley, Charles Heinz, Charles W. Hawthorne, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Karl Knaths, Blanche Lazzell, Lucy L'Engle, Herman Maril, Ross Moffett, Vollian Rann, Helen Sawyer, Carl Sprinchorn, Agnes Weinrich. Provincetown Folk Art and Ancient African Carvings and Bronzes

Grace Hopkins, Director

Berta Walker, Curator

David Henry Perry, Manager, Provincetown

Cristina Hadzi, Manager, Wellfleet