NEW YORK, January 31, 2007—PaceWildenstein will present Robert Mangold: Column Structure Paintings, a series of 12 large-scale, black pencil and acrylic on shaped canvas paintings dating from 2005-6, from February 9 through March 10, 2007 at 545 West 22^nd Street, New York City. A catalogue with an essay by art historian, Dr. Richard Shiff, accompanies the exhibition.

In his essay “Curves Evolve” Shiff writes, “Mangold intended his Column Structure series…to test the possibilities of a vertical format at large scale…. each Column Structure…appears to begin and end arbitrarily at its outer edges. This effect stems not only from the wave-like repetition of the curving linear elements, but also from the fact that Mangold allows the organizing grids to remain manifest as penciled lines…. Mangold’s grids are more than mere guidelines for his drawing linear figures; they become guides for the viewer as well, clues as to how the entire work is structured.”

Marla Prather, in her catalogue essay “A Curious Linkage with the Past” that accompanies the  Musée d’Orsay’s 2006 exhibition Correspondences—Robert Mangold / Paul Gauguin, traces the evolution of Mangold’s work up to his present Column Structure Paintings series. Prather states that “by adding the horizontal element above the column Mangold has opened up new paths for his increasingly dynamic figures, encouraging them to behave in unpredictable though never irrational ways.”

Painter Robert Mangold combines the classic elements of composition—shape, line and color—to create abstract works of architectural scale. His figures of thick, thin and doubled lines push the boundaries of their structure, heightening tension by overlapping, diverging and mirroring each other’s ascent. Mangold’s palette of soft grays, bright, crisp yellows, and burnt oranges, are as Prather describes “off-beat, difficult to describe colors not easily associate with nature or much else beyond his own canvases.”

PaceWildenstein has represented Robert Mangold since 1991. Column Structure Paintings is the artist’s 10^th solo exhibition with the gallery.  

Robert Mangold  (b. 1937, North Tonawanda, NY) studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art before attending the Yale University School of Art and Architecture; he received both B.F.A (1961) and M.F.A. (1963) degrees from Yale.  Since his first solo exhibition in 1964, Mangold’s work has been the subject of numerous one-person shows, traveling exhibitions and retrospectives exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including: Paintings 1964-1982 and Drawings and Prints at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1982); Robert Mangold: Paintings 1971-1984 organized by the Akron Art Museum with subsequent venues in New York, Texas and California (1984-86); and Robert Mangold: Painting as Wall, Werke von 1964 bis 1993 organized by the Hallen für neue Kunst, Schaffhausen, Switzerland and traveled to Paris, Münster and Lisba (1993-95). In 1998, the Museum Wiesbaden in Germany organized and exhibited Robert Mangold: Attic Series and Plane/Figure Paintings (1998-99) and awarded the artist the Alexej von Jawlensky-Preis der Stadt Wiesbaden Award.  On the occasion of that exhibition, the second portion of the catalogue raisonné of Mangold’s work was published; the first portion of the catalogue raisonné was published in conjunction with the 1982 Stedelijk Museum exhibition. The Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht mounted solo exhibitions on three separate occasions (1988, 1989, 1997), and the artist was the subject of an exhibition at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain in 1999. Included three times in Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1972, 1977, 1982) and four times in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial (1979, 1983, 1985, 2004), Mangold’s work has also been featured in the Venice Biennale (1993). In 2000, Phaidon Press published the first major monograph on Robert Mangold.

Early in his career, Mangold received a National Endowment for the Visual Arts Fellowship (1967). In 1993 he was awarded the Skowhegan Medal for Painting from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Robert Mangold later became a trustee of Yale University Art Gallery (1999), a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001), and was most recently elected a member of the National Academy (2005).

Mangold’s work can be found in close to 75 public collections in the United States and abroad including: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Art Institute of Chicago; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Fundació “la Caixa,” Barcelona; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles; Kunstmuseum, Basel; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Menil Collection, Houston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Wiesbaden, Germany; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, United Kingdom; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Robert Mangold lives and works in Washingtonville, New York.

Additional information for Robert Mangold: Column Structure Paintings is available upon request by contacting Jennifer Benz Joy, Public Relations Associate, at 212.421.3292 or via email at jjoy@pacewildenstein.com