Suzan Frecon

(Hardback)

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The newest monograph dedicated to the striking new work of internationally acclaimed abstract painter Suzan Frecon Suzan Frecon features new paintings, which highlight the artist's ongoing exploration of the interaction of shape, color, texture, and light. Painted over long periods of time, these works are the result of a deliberative process guided by a deep understanding of color and the properties of paint. Frecon has been exploring the issues of horizontality and verticality, asymmetrical balances, and interacting arrangements of color for over five decades. The result is an ongoing dialogue that yields new and surprising paintings at every turn. Frecon's knowledge of color is deeply rooted in art history; her selection of color brings with it an understanding of the scientific properties of pigments as well as their use by Renaissance painters. Esteemed poet and critic John Yau explores this inspiration in his illuminating essay, in which he teases out the connections between these bold abstract works and historic figurative paintings. Highlighting Frecon's interest in these paintings for their form and color rather than their narrative, Yau offers a new and intriguing way of looking at both present and past.

Reviews

"The solid, organic abstract forms of the painter Suzan Frecon carve out a zone of formal concentration"-- "The New York Times"
"Each shape is of a single hue of remarkable depth and inner variation, partly due to the pigment being suspended in rich concentrations of oil mediums that can vary from glossy to matte."--Stephen Westfall "Art in America"
"Frecon's merging of color and shape is an unexpected development, and, to my mind, her evocative use of color is rivaled only by Brice Marden..."--John Yau "Hyperallergic"
"It is a finely attuned openness to the world that we encounter in Frecon's work, a sense of color unlike anyone else's."--John Yau "Hyperallergic"
"The real novelty of these abstractions is the texture."--Rema Hort "Whitewall"

Author Bio

For over five decades, American artist Suzan Frecon (b. 1941) has created abstract oil paintings and works on paper that are at once reductive and expressive. Made over long stretches of time, her canvases embody the durational activity of painting itself and invite the viewer's sustained attention: these, asthe artist herself has noted, are "paintings that you experience." John Yau is the author of seventeen books of poetry, four books of fiction, and two collections of criticism. His most recent book of poetry, Bijoux in the Dark, was published in 2018.He has received awards and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. He was the 2018 recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize