Artwork Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Charlotte Park (1918-2010) |
Title |
Number 3, 1984 |
Date |
1984 |
Medium |
Oil and acrylic on canvas |
Dimensions |
23 x 23 in. |
Description |
Charlotte Park was born in Concord, Massachusetts. From 1935 to 1939 she studied at the Yale School of Fine Art in New Haven, Connecticut. During World War II she worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC, where she met her future husband, James Brooks. (See 2017.002) She moved with him to New York City in 1945 and studied privately with Australian artist Wallace Harrison, who also became a mentor to Brooks. After visiting their friends Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in East Hampton, Brooks and Park soon found a home and studio of their own in Montauk. After their studio was destroyed by a hurricane in 1954, they moved their cottage to Springs, where it became their full-time residence. Although Park started as a proponent of Cubism, by the 1950s she had developed a more lyrical idiom, suggesting the organic contours of natural forms, coupled with a bold color palette. Throughout the 1950s she exhibited regularly at the prominent Stable Gallery in New York, and was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition of 1953. She taught at the Dalton School in New York City in 1951, and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1955-57. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Tanager Gallery in 1957. Notwithstanding her recognition as a first-generation member of the abstract expressionist movement, in the 1960s Park withdrew from the art world, emerging again in 1973 with a solo exhibition at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, NY. For the next twenty years her work was included in numerous group exhibitions on Long Island and in New York City. An exhibition of her paintings from the 1950s was presented at the Pollock-Krasner House in 2013. This 1984 painting is notable for its translucent white ground, a hallmark of her work from the 1970s through the 1990s. With a limited palette and brushwork reduced to a few essential strokes, Park could convey the most delicate of feelings in the most economical way possible. Gift of the Estate of Priscilla Bowden Potter. |
Catalog Number |
2017.001 |
Object Name |
Painting |