Press release - Claire Blitz The Circle Game
The paintings by Claire Blitz from the late 1960s and early 70s presented in her first solo exhibition with David Richard Gallery, “The Circle Game”, dance gracefully somewhere between Color Theory, Color Field painting, and Optical Art in a narrow window of time when these art historical interests overlapped. It was not by design, but more the fallout from simultaneous explorations of color in terms of theory and practice.
This artistic space and time included Josef Albers’ academic work regarding the interactions of adjacent colors manifested in his studio practice, and the many paintings in the series, Homage to the Square.This period also included two unrelated, distinct art historical movements, each propelled to notoriety through the participation and successes of several of Albers’ students. First, Color Field painting and the seminal work of members of the Washington Color School in Washington, D.C. Most notably, Kenneth Noland, a former student of Albers at Black Mountain College and the much younger Thomas Downing, who absorbed the learnings and knowledge of Albers from his mentor, Kenneth Noland. Noland was famous for his concentric circle paintings that were referred to as “Targets”. Downing mostly utilized many uniformly sized dots arranged in grids and geometric patterns, each dot serving as a vessel for pigment to further explore his interest in color interactions. The use of dots in Downing’s case, while Gene Davis used stripes and Noland preferred Targets, provided discrete, consistent vessels for each particular color and value thereof. The use of such devices reduced compositional variables and subjective inputs so that the focus was purely on color and the interactions between colors within a given painting.
One cannot help seeing similarities in the work of Blitz and certain members of the Washington Color School—her use of circles as a composition device, but uniquely combined with vectored shards of color, geometric lines and/or large fields of single hues, often in concentric geometric compositions or linear grids. Blitz lived and worked in Washington, D.C. during this vibrant and important period. She did, as noted above, have stark contrasts from the Color Field painters, including her use of primed canvases with grounds of painted colors, instead of raw stained canvas like most of the members of that group.
Then, in an entirely distinct and different aesthetic world, Op Art was advanced and benefited from the intense knowledge and intuitive sense of color interactions from Richard Anuszkiewicz and Julian Stanczak, both students of Albers at Yale University in the early 1960s. While neither Anuszkiewicz nor Stanczak thought of themselves as nor chose to pursue Op Art per se, they saw themselves as observers of nature and human visual perception and saw color as transcendent and far more thought provoking than trompe-l‘oeil alone.
Like the Op artists, Blitz had an intuitive sense of color and composition. She liked the density of contrasting shapes (ie. squares and circles in Mandala, 1972 ca) and colors (ie. complimentary or dichroic as in Burgundy, 1975 ca) as well as optically challenging arrays of concentric and repetitive forms that created the illusion of layers and spatial depth in her paintings, such as Comet, 1970 ca and Witching Hour, 1970 ca. Yet, and simultaneously, she could also create more reductive, contemplative, post-minimalist compositions focused on fewer and larger fields of color, such as in Black Diamond, 1972 ca and Circa 22, 1970 ca. Blitz also used metallic colors, such as silver paint in Mercury, 1972 ca., which adds a reflective surface and spatial dimension with just a single color. It is not clear that she wanted to pursue optical and mind-bending illusions or just borrow to leverage the techniques of creating the illusion of depth and space while still exploring color and geometric forms.
Oli Sihvonen was another student of Albers in the1940s at Black Mountain College and like Claire Blitz, straddled the worlds of Color Theory, Color Field painting, and Optical art to their own unique compositional and conceptual ends. While Blitz used circles, Sihvonen used elliptical shapes, a variation of a circle, as his vessel of choice to leverage the optical qualities of color adjacencies, simultaneous contrast, complimentary and dichroic eye-popping color combinations, along with extreme vector angels, rhythmic patterns and fragmentation to create the illusion and feeling of motion in a two-dimensional picture plane. In many ways, Blitz and Sihvonen, who did not know one another, shared similar aesthetic and compositional interest.
Blitz also tapped into another lesser known but important movement that emerged around the same time, early-to-mid-1970s through the mid-80s, Systemic Pattern Painting. Many of the important founding members who were part of the Criss-Cross Collective based in New York City and Boulder, Colorado included: Dean Fleming, Richard Kallweit, Gloria Klein, Marilyn Nelson, Clark Richert, Dee Shapiro, Robert Swain, George Woodman and Mario Yrisarry. Blitz did not follow the rules of creating and repeating patterns with the same mathematical rigor and systemic approach as the members of the Criss-Cross collective. Instead, she selectively used concepts such as repetition of shapes and patterns and rhythm, much like Sihvonen, as a compositional means to an end.
Claire Blitz was a well educated and smart artist who had her own point of view, she assembled a visual language and carved out her own path. She did it well, just like the guys, yet, she had little commercial and critical success during her career. It is interesting that she was inspired by Op Art and Color Field painting in the day, both heavily dominated by men. There were women who had interests and some recognition, but far fewer than their male counterparts. To put it into perspective and a data point specific for the Op Art Movement, the famous exhibition that put Op Art on the map was The Responsive Eye, organized by William C. Seitz and presented in 1965 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The exhibition had 125 artworks by 75 artist, only 4 artists were women, which was roughly 5% of the total. The women included Bridget Riley, Agnes Martin, Lily Greenham and Lynn G. Leland. While that statistic pertains specifically to The Responsive Eye, it was and is reflective in many ways of women’s inclusion (or not) and recognition in many aspects of the critical and commercial art worlds. However, it is not an accurate reflection of the number of women artists actually exploring, pursuing and working in any given art historical moment or tendency, including Op Art and Color Field painting. Which makes it so interesting that Blitz found the chutzpah to pursue it so passionately for so many decaeds. She wanted to be herself -- not another one of the guys.
The important aesthetic and historical observation is, early on, Blitz demonstrated a unique ability to keenly observe the world around her, including the emerging visual and conceptual artistic influences and trends of the day; yet, seemingly, not wanting to fully commit to any one group or trend. Instead, she decisively picked various processes, new and popular materials, and artistic movements and assimilated them into her own visual language and compositions. Blitz created a unique and compelling bodyof work, at a time when women did not receive their due nor a lot of incentive to continue other than their personal commitment and trust in themselves. We will see more such co-opting and amalgamating of disparate approaches, themes, motifs, and bold artworks throughout her long career.
About Claire Blitz:
Claire Blitz's (1910-1998) life work showed a fascinating progression through time. As a young woman in New York City, she designed textiles at Countess Mara, and worked in batik, while painting early abstractions in oil. Later series in acrylic, painted in Washington D.C., include an Op Art Circle series, a Planetary series, (influenced by the moon walks of the day), and an enigmatic Egyptian series, often on shaped canvases.
Blitz's exhibitions include the U.S. State Department and Congressional Offices, Baltimore Museum of Art, Decordova Museum, Howard University, National Institute of Health, Copley Society of Boston, Cosmos and Arts Clubs of Washington, the Austrian Embassy, and the Office of the District of Columbia Commissioner of the Arts.
Claire Blitz was born in Russia in 1910, and came to New York as a young girl. She was active in the New York Art Student's League and the WPA Era in the 30's. She received a Guggenheim Foundation Scholarship from the New York School of Applied Design for Women. She studied at Hunter College, and later on, she would receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from George Washington University in D.C. Blitz also studied painting at the American University in Washington.
At the same time Claire managed to raise two families. She married the photographer Sam Brody in N.Y., and had two children, Mady and Julian, both of whom had their portraits painted by the famed painter Alice Neel. Claire moved to LA and worked in an aircraft plant in support of the war effort, and then returned to N.Y. She divorced Brody, and married Murray Blitz, an engineer, with whom she had three children, Marc, Valerie, and Ava, all born and raised in Washington D.C., where Murray worked. Claire also lived in New Mexico and Arizona. She died in California in 1998.
Claire Blitz's paintings show an exciting personal, autobiographical, and universal growth, at a time when women artists did not receive their due.
Associated Artist
Associated Exhibitions
- Claire Blitz The Circle Game
October 7, 2024 - December 23, 2024
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October 7, 2024
Press release - Claire Blitz The Circle Game