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i12bent:

Balcomb Greene: Woman, 1966 - oil on canvas (Smithsonian)

“Greene continued through the 1940s [reintroducing form and figure], increasing the amount and saturation of color along the way. At the same time he began taking photographs of nude figures, using light to manipulate the way shadows created their own forms, which complemented and contrasted with those of the body.

Greene’s renewed fascination with the figure stood in great contrast to the postwar reaction to it, which equated figuration with Fascism. His first months in Montauk coincided with explosive breakthroughs occurring in the Springs studios of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Although it appears from his statements from the time that the artist mostly ignored the work of his Abstract-Expressionist neighbors, the painting titled “The Women” from 1958 might even be seen as a reaction to de Kooning’s “Woman” series of the 1950s. In de Kooning’s series the women are deconstructed in hot, fleshy colors with threatening teeth and crazed expressions.

In Greene’s painting, his own high-toned palette is replaced by moody grays, blues, and browns, but the figure is in full flower. The expressive language is still abstracted, but the subject is recognizable yet murky, as if seen through a fog. The content is suggestive but not overtly sexual.” (Source)

i12bent:

Balcomb Greene: Woman, 1966 - oil on canvas (Smithsonian)

“Greene continued through the 1940s [reintroducing form and figure], increasing the amount and saturation of color along the way. At the same time he began taking photographs of nude figures, using light to manipulate the way shadows created their own forms, which complemented and contrasted with those of the body.

Greene’s renewed fascination with the figure stood in great contrast to the postwar reaction to it, which equated figuration with Fascism. His first months in Montauk coincided with explosive breakthroughs occurring in the Springs studios of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Although it appears from his statements from the time that the artist mostly ignored the work of his Abstract-Expressionist neighbors, the painting titled “The Women” from 1958 might even be seen as a reaction to de Kooning’s “Woman” series of the 1950s. In de Kooning’s series the women are deconstructed in hot, fleshy colors with threatening teeth and crazed expressions.

In Greene’s painting, his own high-toned palette is replaced by moody grays, blues, and browns, but the figure is in full flower. The expressive language is still abstracted, but the subject is recognizable yet murky, as if seen through a fog. The content is suggestive but not overtly sexual.” (Source)

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