Art/Print/Collectible

Item Description

The winner will receive this hand-signed serigraph of December Boardwalk (1980) by artist Saul Chase.

Print is numbered by the artist (28/175) and measures 22" x 28.5".

Chase graduated from City College of New York, where he also received his M.A. degree. He taught for six years in vocational schools before he had his first solo show at A. C. A. Galleries in 1973. A realist with a predilection for geometric abstraction, Chase works loosely from photographs, but dissects and reconstructs the buildings, store fronts, streets, bridges, and skies captured by his camera. Chase's urban landscapes are devoid of people and action and possess a precise linearity and atmospheric clarity that derive from the rectilinear planes and surfaces of his subjects. A great admirer of J. M. W. Turner, Chase describes his scenes as memories of visual events and says his goal in painting is ambiguity: "the multiple levels that paint can achieve.

The beauty of Saul Chase's work arises out of the inherent contradiction between his subject and the rendering. Chase paints the urban landscape of barren streets, warehouses, beaches, and subways in contrast with a palette of soft muted colors. There is nothing as complicated as simplicity and to achieve his deliberate monotones Chase may use as many as 103 colors in a single painting. In recreating the memory of an event Chase rebuilds his vision of the urban landscape as a facsimile of his initial impression. Recently Chase has turned to silk screen printing as a medium finding it ideal in translating his visions.

If you dissect a Saul Chase painting and reduce it to its basic compounds and materials you will not find the painting, something more is expressed through the artist. That something more is beauty. Analyze and dissect a painting too carefully and the beauty will disappear. The whole is always more than the sum total of the parts. Saul Chase's paintings are very simply beautiful, a not often used adjective in the art world, where much of the beauty has been theorized out of the canvas in favor of mental gymnastics.

On the other hand, Chase's paintings are to be approached totally through the heart. They are images washed clean of prejudices. They emerge as if reborn. The urban landscape is presented with innocence and wonder. This is the "landscape" Chase grew up with in the Bronx. Chase developed a deep rapport with his environment, as children do, oblivious to preconceived ideas, knowing no other world but the one within. As unconcerned with the pedestrian idea of "objective reality,¿ the subway station, Coney Island and the I ND as identities disappear, existence arises luminous as a tension caught in the cobweb of our minds (ROGallery.com/Chase_Saul).

Item Special Note

*Sold as is.

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