Simon Gaon, Vibrant New York City Times Square, Figural Abstract Expressionist Oil Painting

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Simon Gaon (born 1943) is an American painter, Expressionist, and action painter. This is a thick impasto oil painting. with … Read more Simon Gaon (born 1943) is an American painter, Expressionist, and action painter. This is a thick impasto oil painting. with a lot of texture and color. Times Square with 42nd st in Manhattan, New York city He is best known for his intense, tempestuous, action oriented paintings of the cityscape. He was also a co-founder of the Street Painters, a group of eight New York City artists who painted directly from the city life they observed on the streets of America's largest city. Born in 1943 in Manhattan, Gaon at an early age displayed creative talents. By age 14 he began painting while attending the Roosevelt School in Stamford, Connecticut. A key influence on him was painter Arthur Bressler (1927–1975) who was Gaon's teacher and mentor. Gaon graduated from the High School of Art and Design in New York City. In 1962, Gaon won the art studio award scholarship from the Art Students League which allowed him to study art on the European continent. In 1964, he studied in Academia 63 in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and furthered his European education with the Art Students League Merit Scholarship (1965) and the Edward G. McDowell traveling scholarship. He later stayed more than ten years in Europe, primarily in Paris, where his style evolved. The works of the Fauvist (Fauve) painters - Andre Derain, Maurice Vlaminck as well as Chaim Soutine, Oskar Kokoschka, Lovis Corinth, Gen Paul, and especially Vincent Van Gogh have all strongly influenced his work. His work is part of the figurative abstraction the was resurgent in NY in the second half of the 20th century. The influence of Robert Beauchamp, Lester Johnson, Jan Muller, Peter Saul, and Leon Golub as well as Rhino Horn artists Benny Andrews Jay Milder and Red Grooms can be seen in his work. Gaon is influenced more by his temperament than intellectualism. He prefers to take risks, and edit later, putting the living experience of painting at the forefront of his craft. As an action painter, he immerses himself physically in his art, using pigment, emotion, and poetry to reinvent nature in a personal way. He paints nature and the city with abandonment and freedom, harnessing the different layers of the subconscious to help form the painting. However, life in all its energy and contradiction remains his inspiration. Subjects of his art include the night, the stormy sea, and the frenetic, carnival-like neon-lit colorful city. Gaon is most famous for his Time Square series (1998) displaying the chaos and confusion of city. His depictions of the locale have been called dizzying, disorienting, and even mind-boggling. His works manifest the vitality, wildness, drivenness, and hysterical quality of the urban setting, ever expanding to the point of explosion. While loosely figurative influences of abstract expressionism are in evidence. Gaon's chaotic Time Square, helps him, as an artist, express the contradictory life forces that live within him. Gaon also focuses on those who live on the urban periphery, the street people, immigrants, and prostitutes. His paintings go beyond the immediate perception of these subjects, to uncover the inherent contradictions both in his subjects psyche and social position, and in his own consciousness. His subjects display a noble and prophetic character, as if spiritually from a bygone era yet awkwardly entrenched in a harsh contemporary reality. Museums and collections Museum of the City of New York, New York New York Historical Society, New York Yeshiva University Museum, New York Hudson River Museum, New York Art Students League, New York White and Case, New York West Valley Art Museum, Surprise, Arizona France Loisirs, Paris, France Millennium Hotel, New York Carrot Capital, LLC, New York Queen's College Museum Exhibitions 2016 Andrea Tardini Gallery, Venice Scuderie Aldobrandini, Rome 2008 Gallerie OPEN, Berlin, Germany Gallerie Rose, Hamburg, Germany 2007 Berlin Capital Club, Berlin Germany 2006 Famira Gallery, Sylt Germany Nabi Gallery 2005 Dankert, Box, Meier, Rechtsanwalte (Law Offices) Berlin, Germany Peter Findlay Gallery, New York, NYTon Warndorff Gallery, Haarlem, The Netherlands Nabi Gallery, New York, NY Gallery Rose, Hamburg, Germany Famira Gallery, Sylt Germany 2004 Jan Famira Gallery, Sylt, Germany West Vallery Art 2003 West Valley Museum, Surprise, Arizona 2002 Ludvika Konsthall, Ludvika, Sweden 1999 Galleri Rubens, Smedjebacken, Sweden Realismus Galerie, Kasel, Germany Galerie Rose, Hamburg, Germany 1997 Galerie Peter Fischinger, Stuttgart, Germany 1995 Galerie Peter Fischinger, Stuttgart, German Susan Conway Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1992 Frank Bustamante Gallery, New York, NY 1991 Galerie Le Chainon Manquant, Paris, France Loisits Corporate Offices, Paris, France 1990 Galerie Peter Fischinger, Stuttgart, Germany Galerie Rose, Hamburg, Germany 1989 The Exhibition Space, New York (sponsored by Ingber Gallery) 1988 Inngber Gallery, New York, NY 1986 Nicolas Roerich Museum, New York, NY 1974 Galerie des Ambassadeurs, Paris, France 1968 Art Students League, New York City See less