Joanna Beall Westermann, Old Virginie (1965- 1967)
Our editors and writers scour the city each week for the most thoughtful, relevant and exciting new exhibitions and artworks on view at galleries, museums and public venues across all five boroughs of New York. This week we recommend:
Joanna Beall Westermann
Until 20 February at Venus over Manhattan, 120 East 65th Street, Manhattan
The work of the late Chicago-born artist Joanna Beall Westermann was somewhat obscured in her lifetime by the success of her husband, the influential sculptor H.C. Westermann, and her own reluctance to share her work with critics despite significant milestones including exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art and shows alongside John Chamberlain, Joan Mitchell and Leon Golub. The artist also spent eight months studying
with Diego Rivera, studied under Josef Albers at Yale University and earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met Westermann, in 1958. The exhibition is the first solo presentation of the artist’s work in more than two decades and presents an abridged survey of her prolific and diverse portfolio, comprising compelling paintings, watercolours, drawings and collages with a Surrealist bent. Many works in the exhibition—like the oil painting Old Virginie (1965-1967)—contain conspicuous odes to artists like Henri Rousseau, René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico, while still demonstrating Westermann’s own talent, technique and interpretation of the metaphysical. —Gabriella Angeleti
