Jane Freilicher a Lyrical Painter In Paul Kasmin Gallery

New York’s Paul Kasmin Gallery now represents the estate of Jane Freilicher, which had previously been overseen by Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Paul Kasmin has planned its first Freilicher solo show for April 2018, with another presentation of the American painter’s work appearing at the upcoming edition of Art Dealers Association of America’s Art Show fair. Eric Brown Art Group has been named the adviser to the estate.

A renowned colorist, Jane Freilicher was called “one of the last true scions of Giorgio Morandi” by critic Franklin Einspruch. Early in her career, she adopted tenets of Abstract Expressionism and action painting, but since her shift to figuration decades ago she has engaged but one subject: still lifes, typically of flowers arranged on windowsills with a city or country vista in the background. Imbuing aspects of her earlier gestural style into her representational images, Freilicher is credited as one of the major proponents of “painterly realism,” a style that renders her still lifes viscerally powerful. In Bouquets (2011), for example, several vases and flower boxes assume an uncanny monumentality against the dark night sky, commanding their sill, according to New York Times critic Roberta Smith, “like immense, slightly anthropomorphic monoliths.”

Jane Niederhoffer was born in Brooklyn in 1924.  In the 1940s she eloped with musician Jack Freilicher, through whom she met Larry Rivers. She met Louisa Matthíasdóttir and Nell Blaine. In 1947 Blaine encouraged her to study with Hans Hoffman. Later she received her M.A. from Columbia University. Freilicher met and became lifelong friends with John Ashbery when he rented Kenneth Koch’s apartment for the summer. She also became friends with Frank O’Hara. Jane married Joe Hazan in the 1950’s. They spent their summers on Long Island with artist and poet friends such as Fairfield Porter and Jimmy Schuyler. She and Joe built a home in Water Mill.

Jane enjoyed a prolific and accomplished career until her death in 2014, in the company of her poet friends from the New York School as well as artists from the Second Generation New York School.

Jane Freilicher’s career began with her first solo show at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1952. She has had over fifty solo exhibitions across the United States and hundreds of group exhibitions nationwide. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.