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Intimate Showcase of Estes’s Travel Inspired Works is Menconi + Schoelkopf’s First Formal Presentation of the Great Photorealist American Painter 

Voyages Will Be Open To The Public And By Appointment From June 14th Through July 30th 

NEW YORK, NY, Monday, February 8, 2021 – Menconi + Schoelkopf, a leading gallery in the field of American art, today announced that it will present Voyages, an exhibition of works by Richard Estes which represent his travels, as well as his vision of New York City. The show, which will run from June 14th to July 30th at the 22 East 80th Street location, is Menconi + Schoelkopf’s first exhibition of Estes’s work. 

Voyages delves deeply into Estes’s canon, offering a riveting and intimate look at some of Estes’s most impassioned work with pieces created from his own world travels, some even capturing him in transit itself. During a period when we share an unsatisfied longing for travel, the photorealism of these paintings captures small, personal moments of the artist’s adventures – touching down at an airport in Germany, approaching Antarctica by sea, stepping aboard the L train, and memorizing the landscapes of Hiroshima, Barcelona, the Pont Neuf and Central Park. 

“Menconi + Schoelkopf is pleased to welcome Richard Estes to our gallery program. As the greatest photorealist painter of our time, it is a privilege to present his work,” said Andy Schoelkopf, Owner of Menconi + Schoelkopf. “Through these 20 paintings, Voyages tells the story of both his personal adventures and exceptional work with special resonance. The gallery focuses on the important work of the most relevant and lasting painters and so presenting Richard’s work is both an honor and a natural fit for us as the canon evolves so rapidly in these times.” 

“Working with Menconi + Schoelkopf to put together Voyages has been a joy and an opportunity to share moments in time and place,” said Richard Estes. “This exhibition is the first of what I know will be a rewarding partnership with the gallery and I am grateful to Andy and his team for their collaborative and rigorous approach.” 

Richard Estes is the standard-bearer of photorealist painting and its most devoted and accomplished practitioner. His work is defined by a profound commitment to the fidelity and quotidian truths of his depictions. Of equal importance is his unique creative process in which repeated observations coalesce into an image in his mind. The painting of that image represents a vision within his subjective reality. Over the last half-century, the rare integrity of his process has unveiled a true understanding of the world around us, even as our cities, our landscapes and our rituals change – slowly and steadily, then all at once. As the pendulum swings back from abstraction and realism recaptures the imagination, Richard Estes is secured as one of the leading painters of the 20th century. His body of work includes his interpretations of timeless, pristine images of New York City as well as his many adventures in travel, some of which will be presented by Menconi + Schoelkopf in the June 2021 exhibition Voyages. 

About Menconi + Schoelkopf 

Menconi + Schoelkopf is a leader in the field of American art, focusing on the finest works of this country’s artists, created from 1875 to today. The gallery’s program communicates the entire sweep of the modernist impulse in America through its presentation of innovative and important works in both abstract and realist modes. The mission of the gallery is to expand the field of American art through research, scholarship and our treasured relationships with the leading collectors and museums. The gallery is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America, of which Andrew Schoelkopf serves as President, and the Private Art Dealers Association. It maintains a robust schedule of programming and exhibitions which support the engagement of new audiences. The gallery strives to inspire a richer understanding of the contributions of the leading American artists. The gallery is located on New York City’s Upper East Side and is open to the public and by appointment. Visit: www.msfineart.com for a schedule of upcoming programming or to engage with us. 

Images & Photo Credits: 

Images and photo credits are available here. 

Contact: 

Susan Ainsworth 

Ph: 1-917-861-7949 

Email: Susan@ainsworthassociates.net 

 

September 20, 2018

We’re now open at our new space at 22 E 80th Street, just a few steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After an extraordinary opening show, we have a number of gallery selections on the walls in advance of our next public exhibition, opening in January, 2019. In the meantime, we welcome your visit by appointment to see a particular work.

September 24, 2018

After 17 years at 13 E 69th Street, Menconi + Schoelkopf is moving to 22 E 80th Street, between 5th and Madison Avenues. Our doors will open to the public September 24th, 2018, with an exhibition surveying American art from 1866-1966. Renovation continues at present, but we invite you to visit us at the end of September — or call to schedule an appointment before then!

April 11 - 28, 2017

On view now, a group of newly available works by Joseph Stella. Stella was an American modernist of Italian birth who worked in a variety of styles and media. You may know his most famous work– the five-panel Voice of the City Interpreted, including perhaps the most famous rendering of the Brooklyn Bridge (Newark Museum of Art, New Jersey). Orange Bars (left) is a study for one of the panels in that masterpiece, executed in pastel as a dazzling abstract view of Broadway around 1920.

Stella’s work before and after the Brooklyn Bridge is extraordinarily varied and rich, from the “Ashcan” realism he produced in Pennsylvania from 1908-1918, to frenetic lines of Futurist Abstraction c. 1913-1918. His later work was just as rich, embracing a deeply personal symbolic narrative in brightly-colored scenes of figures and animals in glowing landscapes. The swan became a personal emblem, a symbol of the creative powers of the arts. In the pastels of his years in the Bronx, one can read a precursor to Milton Avery’s flat planes of color.

March 16, 2016

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has announced their acquisition, along with some thirty other works, of David Johnson‘s The Hudson River from Fort Montgomery, which was included in our most recent catalogue.

Stephan Salisbury reported for Philly.com:

“The Johnson painting, The Hudson River from Fort Montgomery, measures more than 3 by 5 feet and presents a grand landscape view looking out toward the river, where sailboats and a steamer ply the waters. In the foreground are sheep and two leisurely travelers chatting on a path while a dog patiently waits.

“Brigham and Anna Marley, academy curator of historical American art, said the painting, now on view, is in very fine shape.

“‘Johnson is only known to have painted six paintings at this scale,’ added Marley.”

Menconi + Schoelkopf congratulates the Academy on the acquisition of a tremendous and tremendously important painting.

Otis Kaye‘s life is shrouded in mystery, his work filled with riddles and wry satire. Working mainly in Chicago in the mid-twentieth century, Kaye insinuated himself into the lineage of the largely dormant trompe l’oeil style of painting, along with significant works on paper, updating the art form by filling his work with emblems of his favorite themes: money, markets, and chance. Wealth and value are invoked through reproduced money, but also present in Kaye’s work is the theme of risk. A device that may be unique to Kaye’s work is his tracing the lines of stock charts, as in the bit of stock ticker tape traces the plunge referred to in the title of But Abe, I Told You to Buy Low. While trompe l’oeil’s popularity has waned since the turn of the twentieth century, Kaye’s art looks almost prophetic today. Many nineteenth-century illusion painters used reproductions of bills in their work, but in Kaye’s work the illusion often amounts to a riddle or joke. The imaginative conversation, across centuries, between Kaye, Rembrandt, and Karl Marx, in Checks and Balances is a masterful example. We are delighted to have a group of more than one dozen works by the artist, including large-scale oils and works on paper. Make an appointment to visit, or email for information on individual works.

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