In cooperation with Haus Konstruktiv Zürich
Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach organized the first retrospective exhibition of the work of American painter, Joanne Greenbaum, providing the broader national and international public the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the oeuvre of this maverick artist. Born in New York in 1953, the painter Joanne Greenbaum combines graphic systems with painterly gestures and austere construction with light-hearted, punchy forces of colour in her paintings. Through her large scale works, she gives the medium of painting entirely new potential: her treatment of visual space, with its complex design, entangles geometric and organic shapes, whereby not just echoes of constructivism but also cartoon aesthetics emerge. What distinguishes Joanne Greenbaum’s work from that of many other abstract artists of her generation, is primarily the wealth of associations, and the playfulness of her compositions, the formal elements of which only become evident on closer inspection. Greenbaum’s work expresses immense self-confidence and absolute devotion to the medium of painting, which the artist, full of imaginative energy, continually explores anew. There is almost no other contemporary artist who succeeds in combining purely formal, playful, and metaphysical elements in such a convincing manner, and who makes use of various aspects of art dating back to the beginning of the modern period, so as to create something unique, fresh, and previously unknown.
The exhibition is be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by Hatje Cantz Verlag and generously supported by West LB and the Rheingold Collection.
