Pure color appears to pool, flow, pulse or simply mark the boundaries of a void in the latest retrospective of American abstraction at Pazo Fine Art’s Kensington location. “Living Colors” offers a single item by each of 10 artists, half of whom spent at least part of their careers in Washington. Seven of the pictures were made before 1976, but the selection ranges from a print of nested yellow squares by Josef Albers, patriarch of color-field art, to a brand-new minimalist canvas by Matthew Feyld.
Installation view, Living Colors. Photograph by Vivian Doering.
The first artwork visitors encounter is the darkest and boldest, and among the largest. Howard Mehring’s 1964 “Magenta Double” is one of the D.C. artist’s collage-paintings, assembled from strips cut from canvases painted with heathered allover patterns. Two magenta columns, confined by thick black bars, float on a dark green field, the hard-edge geometric forms softened by the stippled color. The picture is essentially flat, yet beckons the eye into seeming depths.
Equally symmetrical and even bigger is Thomas Downing’s 1972 “Split Possession,” which arrays dots in seven colors (including white) on a bare-canvas expanse. The precision is gently offset by the edges of the dots, which bleed ever so slightly into the fabric.
Among the other highlights are paintings by Helene Herzbrun and Vivian Springford in which free-form blue areas are exquisitely aqueous, and Terry Parmelee’s “August,” whose overlapping orange circles oscillate on a yellow backdrop. The titles of this work and Dorothy Fratt’s “Bird on a Wire” hint that the pictures are portrayals of the natural world, however highly stylized. Most of the show’s artworks, however, distill the universe to nothing but color, shape and texture.
Living Colors Through May 18 at Pazo Fine Art, 4228 Howard Ave., Kensington. pazofineart.com. 571-315-5279.
