Lennon, Weinberg is pleased to present an exhibition of the works of Harriet Korman, our sixth since 1992. It will include a group of paintings created during the past three years, and for the first time we will exhibit alongside the paintings a selection of the black and white drawings that generated these brilliantly colored paintings. In the drawings, finely finished works in themselves, Korman establishes the boundaries that define the strong shapes of the paintings.
She transformed the gestural compositions of the drawings into the complex arena of shifting planes and optically dynamic color that characterize these paintings. One work on paper has been reinterpreted in more than one painting, and Korman has extracted from others certain passages that have become shapes or were retained as sinuous bands separating the colored areas.
In several striking works, looser marks that appear in the drawings have become the impetus for brushy gestures in the paintings. As well, patches of grid and parallel lines appear in other works. These elements are entirely new in the context of Korman’s decade-long engagement with geometric form and pure color, while forging a connection to earlier periods in her work in which she emphasized process and mark-making.

First shown at the Guggenheim Museum, an important Korman painting from 1971 is included in High Times, Hard Times: New York Paintings 1968-1975, an exhibition with current and upcoming venues in Graz, Austria and Karlsruhe, Germany and seen last year at the National Academy of Design in New York. In our booth at the ADAA Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory from February 21-25, we will exhibit two rare examples of Korman’s works on paper from that period. They serve as reminders of the experimental beginnings of Korman’s work, an approach she continues to embrace today.