Henry Schwartz, Arthur Polonsky

An excerpt from my review of exhibitions of work by Henry Schwartz and Arthur Polonsky:

In 1991, a year after his big retrospective at the Fuller Museum of Art, Henry Schwartz painted a series of small dark allegorical scenes mixing burlesque dancers, portraits of German intellectuals, crying women, and dense cities. Soon after, he would fall into a debilitating depression that he would not emerge from until early 2007. Those 1991 paintings, now being exhibited for the first time at Gallery NAGA, are the last he has made.

This eight-painting exhibition coincides with a career-spanning retrospective of 35 paintings, drawings, and prints by Arthur Polonsky at the Danforth Museum. Both men are part of the Boston Expressionists, a loose group of local artists that first became known and linked in the 1930s and '40s for their moody, painterly realism. The Polonsky and Schwartz shows demonstrate the range of the style.

Read the rest here.

“Henry Schwartz: The Boulevard of Broken Dreams – Approaching the Vanishing Point,” Gallery NAGA, 67 Newbury St., Boston. Feb. 1 to 23, 2008.
“Arthur Polonsky: A Thief of Light,” Danforth Museum, 123 Union Ave., Framingham, Feb. 10 to May 18, 2008.

Pictured from top to bottom: Henry Schwartz’s “Postcards from Revere No.1: The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” 1991, and “Self-Portrait Sculpting a Head of Bruckner,” 1991. Arthur Polonsky’s “Marine Samson,” 1959, oil on canvas, courtesy of the artist, and “Morning Light,” 2002, oil on canvas, courtesy of the artist.