MARGE RECTOR
Abstract and Captured Forms, 1967 to 1975

Opening Reception: Friday, March 23, 2018, 5:00 - 7:00 PM

On view through April 28, 2018

The current exhibition explores 2 series of paintings by Marge Rector, Captured Forms and Abstractions, both initiated in 1967. Captured Forms was one of several black and white series initiated in 1967 that consisted of bold structures with slight optical effects that evoked the sensation of vibration and movement. The Abstraction series is far reaching, lasting until 2014 and included black and white as well as color-based abstractions, hard-edge forms, optical patterns and Color Field painting.

David Richard Gallery, LLC
  1570 Pacheco Street, E2
Santa Fe, NM 87505
P: (505) 983 - 9555
www.davidrichardgallery.com 

David Richard Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming presentation, Marge Rector: Abstractions and Captured Forms, 1967 to 1975, the gallery’s first exhibition for the artist and co-curated with Patricia Watts of Watts Art Publications. The opening reception is Friday, March 23, 2018 from 5:00 - 7:00 PM. The exhibition will remain on view through April 28, 2018 at the Gallery’s Santa Fe venue located at 1570 Pacheco Street, Suite E2, Santa Fe, NM 87505 P: 505-983-9555. A digital catalogue will be available online. 

The current exhibition, Abstract and Captured Forms, 1967 to 1975, explores 2 series of paintings, Captured Forms and Abstractions that Rector initiated in 1967. Captured Forms was one of several black and white series initiated in 1967 that consisted of bold Modernist structures with slight optical effects that evoked the sensation of vibration and movement. The other series were Reflections and Shadows. Her first series of black and white paintings, Visual Participation, were hard-edge, consisting of arrays of lines, dots and circles along with other fragmented shapes that created optical and illusory effects. Rector’s Abstraction series is far reaching, lasting until 2014 and included black and white as well as color-based abstractions, hard-edge forms, optical patterns and Color Field painting. 

Like other artists throughout the US in the 1960s who explored Post-painterly abstraction, Rector worked independently and in isolation finding her own way through a myriad of aesthetic changes and approaches. Yet similar themes and tendencies emerged in parallel across many regions of the country. In Rector’s paintings, transitions from Modernist geometric structures and illusory effects gave way to her own experimental paintings that were comprised of 2 canvases stretched one in front of the other with about 2 inches separating them. The front canvas was surgically cut in select areas coincident with the compositions to create irregular shaped openings that revealed the canvas below. The shape of the openings clearly interacted with the painted structures in her compositions, but added a mysterious portal, another dimension and view to the world beyond the surface of the canvas. These openings in the canvas were evocative of Lucio Fontana’s Spatial Concept works, but with greater precision, complexity and integral to the composition. Later paintings explored lyrical abstraction, Color Field painting and a return to hard-edge color-based abstractions. 

About Marge Rector:

Rector has dedicated her fifty-year career to painting non-objective abstractions. Trained as a commercial artist, she received her BA degree from Texas Technological College (currently, Texas Tech) in 1950 and worked professionally in that field until 1964. At that time, Rector decided to pursue a career in fine art and studied at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Emerging from her studies about the time of the Op Art movement and that seminal exhibition, The Responsive Eye, presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965 and organized by William C. Seitz, Rector could not help but be influenced by the hard-edge structures, dizzying lines, geometric forms and high key and high contrast colors that created optical and illusory effects challenging visual perception. She exhibited regularly in solo and group exhibitions with Atelier Chapman Kelly in Dallas until she moved to Sausalito in 1973 where she has lived and worked ever since. While in Sausalito, her painting practice expanded to explore new mediums, shapes, compositions and palettes, but always staying focused on non-objective abstraction. 

About David Richard Gallery:

Since its inception in 2010, David Richard Gallery has produced museum quality exhibitions that feature Post War abstraction in the US. The presentations have addressed specific decades and geographies as well as certain movements and tendencies. While the gallery has long been recognized as an important proponent of post-1960s abstraction—including both the influential pioneers as well as a younger generation of practitioners in this field— in keeping with this spirit of nurture and development the gallery also presents established and very new artists who embrace more gestural and representational approaches to the making of art as well as young emerging artists.

In 2015 David Richard Gallery launched DR Projects to provide a platform for artists of all stripes—international, national, local, emerging and established—to present special solo projects or to participate in unique collaborations or thematic exhibitions. The goal is to offer a fresh look at contemporary art practice from a broad spectrum of artists and presentations. Opening the second location in New York in 2017 exposes the gallery’s artists to new markets, institutions and collectors.

Associated Artist

• Marge Rector

Associated Exhibitions

• Marge Rector Abstract and Captured Forms, 1967 to 1975
  March 23, 2018 - May 26, 2018
  MORE INFO

Associated News

• March 25, 2020
  Marge Rector: Color and Non-objective Abstractions From 1970 to 2014' at David Richard Gallery
  ArtDaily.com
  March 25, 2020
  
  


• March 23, 2020
  Marge Rector: If It Makes You Happy
  GalleriesNow.net
  March 23, 2020
  


• March 23, 2020
  Press Release - Marge Rector "If It Makes You Happy"


• March 15, 2018
  Press Release - Marge Rector "Abstractions and Captured Forms, 1967 to 1975"