Stephen Pace Abstract Expressionist Author:Lisa N. Peters "Stephen Pace: Abstract Expressionist" is a catalogue that accompanied the 2011 exhibition at Spanierman Modern gallery in New York. The exhibition presented a group of large-scale, Abstract Expressionist paintings by artist Stephen Pace (1918-2010), dating from the 1950s through the early 1960s, representing the bold and direct freedom of thoug... more »ht and action that characterized this exhilarating time in American art and culture. This catalogue includes color illustrations of the twenty-one works in the show and an essay by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D..
Stephen Pace (1918-2010) arrived in New York in 1947. There he immediately found himself at the epicenter of a dynamic milieu of debate and innovation, where he discovered that the trajectory occurring spontaneously within his own art resonated with that at the forefront of the New York School. Associating with Franz Kline at the Cedar Street Tavern, reconnecting with Milton Avery (whom he had met a year earlier in Mexico) and the circle around Avery of artists such as Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, and studying with students of Hans Hofmann, as well as with Hofmann himself, Pace quickly gained a position of significance within the group of younger artists coming to the fore, including Joan Mitchell, Alfred Leslie, Michael Goldberg, Grace Hartigan, Milton Resnick, and Helen Frankenthaler. Scraping and manipulating thick pigment with muscular, gestural strokes, while controlling form according to relational design issues stemming from Cubism, Pace explored the theme of freedom and its limits.
In the 1960s, Stephen Pace's approach began to shift in the Figurative direction that characterizes his late work. Focusing on his art from the early 1950s through the early 1960s, this exhibition positions him within the heightened period in which Abstract Expressionism was at its peak, affording many strands of crossfertilization as artists explored issues of existence and identity through the physical act of painting.« less