Pat Passlof
The working life of Pat Passlof (1928-2011) can be seen as paradigmatic for an artist of her generation. Her early education as a painter was a combination of study at the experimental Black Mountain College, NC, and private study with her mentor Willem de Kooning in New York. More formal training at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, followed. Back in New York, the young Passlof was part of the vital downtown New York art world where the necessity of abstraction and the role of art as a revelation of the unseen were passionately debated at places like the Cedar Tavern and The Club and works made in response to this aesthetic climate were exhibited at cooperative galleries on Tenth Street. It’s a textbook account of the life of a gifted, aspiring vanguard painter of the period. That the vanguard painter was a dedicated, ambitious woman in a male dominated art world makes the story even more relevant today. Yet Passlof’s work requires no special pleading. It reflects the aesthetic desiderata of her time, her dialogue with the work of her husband Milton Resnick, and her own independence of mind.
Karen Wilkin, March 2019
About
“Painting is inconvenient. It is slow and may require a whole life.”
- Pat Passlof
Selected
Works
Stove, 1959 oil on linen 77 x 69 inches
Tan, 1960 oil on masonite 32 x 24 inches
Drizzle, 1960 oil on linen 69 x 51 inches
Atheneum, 1960-61 oil on linen 78 x 144 inches
Sky Pasture, 1961 oil on linen 68 x 144 inches
Keeping Still Mountain, 1971-72 oil on linen 80 x 132 inches
Isoceles, 1980 oil on linen 78 x 79 inches
Day's End II, 1994 oil on linen 40 x 50 inches
Untitled, Not dated gouache on paper 18 x 24 1/4 inches
Back to Back, 1997 Oil on linen 78 x 132 in.
Untitled, 1995 oil on linen 84 x 49 inches
Hawthorne, 1999 oil on linen 87 x 75 inches
W.C. Williams, 1999 oil on linen 36 x 30 inches
Emily Dickinson, 2000 oil on linen 75 x 65 inches
Alice, 2000 oil on linen 51 x 103 inches
Hamlet's Mill #48, 2002 oil on linen 78 x 67 inches
Hamlet's Mill #43, 2002 oil on linen 78 x 48 inches
Foundation Exhibitions
Pat Passlof: Authors & Poets, 1999-2000May 9 - July 20, 2024
Pat Passlof: MorganMarch 7 - July 20, 2024
Pat Passlof: The Eighth House Paintings September 8, 2022 - February 25, 2023
The Feminine in Abstract PaintingMarch 16 - July 15, 2023
Pat Passlof: Arcadian VisionsNovember 5, 2021 - July 30, 2022
Milton Resnick & Pat Passlof: A Selection of WorkOctober 31, 2020 - October 23, 2021
Pat Passlof: The Brush is the Finger of the BrainOctober 11, 2019 - April 11, 2020
Outside
Exhibitions
A Show About NothingEric Firestone GalleryDecember 17, 2022 - February 28, 2023
Memories of Tenth Street: Paintings by Pat Passlof, 1948-63Eric Firestone GalleryNobember 10, 2021 - January 22, 2022
The 1960sEric Firestone GalleryNovember 7, 2020 - February 28, 2021
Selected
Press
Artforum
Art in America
The New Criterion
Brooklyn Rail
Two Coats of Paint
Hyperallergic
March 2022
March 2020
January 2020
November 2019
November 2019
December 2014
Publications
Published by The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation (2019)
Foreword by Mark di Suvero
Text by Karen Wilkin
84 pages with color plates
Hardcover
Published by The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation (2018)
Edited and with an afterword by David Jacobsen Loncle
47 pages with 9 color plates
Hardcover
Catalog for the exhibition running from January 27 - May 26, 2012 at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and January 26 - May 25, 2012 at the Fine Art Museum of Western Carolina University. Spans the 63 year career of Black Mountain College alumna and first-generation New York Abstract Expressionist Pat Passlof.
Acknowledgments by Connie Bostic, Alice Sebrell, and Denise Drury; essay by Eleanor Heartney; photographs of Pat Passlof in studio by Alice Sebrell.
Paperback, vi, 58 pages with full-page color reproductions.
Published by Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (2012).
Gallery
Contact
Eric Firestone Gallery
40 Great Jones Street
New York, NY 10012
Phone: (917) 324-3386