Gabriel Laderman

My education really began when I started doing the exercises in Paul Klee's pedagogical Sketchbook, which at the time [1948] was available only in the original Bauhaus edition in German. Klee was the first stop I made in search of a really great teacher. In the summer of 1949 I went to Provincetown and studied with Hans Hofmann. Within the first month, I was doing Mondrians from the model. Since I already knew about abstract expressionist painting (deKooning had his first show before I went to Provincetown) I began painting in that tradition, informed with what Hofmann had taught me about forming. I met deKooning that summer, too, and began to show him my work in September of that year, on a regular basis. But I also went back to Brooklyn College where I had Ad Reinhardt, Alfred Russell, Mark Rothko, Burgoyne Diller, Jimmy Ernst, and Robert J. Wolff [the chairman of the department] as my teachers. Simultaneously I began to go to Hayter's Atelier 17, which I used as a shop for printing my engraved and etched plates. Hayter later began to teach at Brooklyn College, and I took some of his courses there, too. The school was a hot bed of abstract painting radicalism. One of the major buzzwords was for us to try to get "on the Idea level." That meant having a personal pictorial idea which would generate new work. It was clear that my teachers at Brooklyn and also both deKooning and Hayter did not believe that they had to go through the motions of imitating recent radical art. They were going out on their own and inventing new art. All of them, though, believed that there were pictorial actions which guided art making and were required to validate the work. But those actions could be unheard of ones, or ideas imported from elsewhere and other forms. Russell had us not only drawing in the Natural History museum, but also highly touted the value of drawing parked cars, looking through the windows into the internal spaces, and those as seen in a second car through a first one. Reinhardt made a trip around the world and came back with slides of Islamic architecture, often severely symmetrical, but with Arabic calligraphy incised, which had no symmetry, since it was excerpted from the Koran. He also brought back slides of the interiors of Hindu and Buddhist temples that were so dark it was almost impossible to make out the figures. We understood his paintings, both because we could see their actions, and because he made his ideational sources clear through the images he showed in school and at his lectures. I also was one of the youngest members of the artist's club, which started while I was in college on the top floor of the building above Atelier 17. This was the AE hangout, and it was where the members of the movement displayed their ideas and publicly disagreed with one another. After I graduated from Brooklyn, I spent a year as a graduate student in art history in the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. I had Richard Offner for a teacher in two courses 14th century Italian Art and Great Masters of Italian Art. Neither of them got past the 14th century. My love of Florentine, Sienese and Venetian painting of those periods and later ones was sharply intensified. I also took a survey of Chinese, Japanese and Korean Art with Alfred Salmony, and with Walter Friedlander a course titled "From David to Delacroix" in honor of the translation of his book with that title into English. After two years in the Army in 1955 went to Cornell University for MFA, with an Assistantship in painting, as well as my GI Bill. During my time there, I began to try to paint from nature with less and less distortion and invention. In 1957 I was appointed Instructor in Art at SUNY New Paltz and continued my work. After two years at New Paltz I was offered a raise in rank, but chose to return to New York where I taught at Pratt Institute until 1967 when I began teaching at Queens College CUNY. From this time forward I was artist in residence and lectured at dozens of American schools and museums. This only stopped when I retired in 1996. Some of the schools were Princeton, Yale, Bennington, Philadelphia College of Art, Pennsylvania Academy, University of Pensylcania, the Tyler School of Art, Moore College of Art, Boston University, The Boston Museum School, The Museum of Fine Arts[Boston], Amherst College, Stanford, Kansas City Art Institute, Art School of Surabaya, Art Center Jakarta, USIS Centers in Japan in Tokyo, Nagoy, Sapporo and Fukuoka. Royal College of Art, Bangkok, Victorian College of Art, Melbourne; College Ballarat, Indiana University, Bloomington, Louisiana State University, Arizona State, American University, Skowhegan, Chautauqua, Yale Norfolk School, Etc. My first exhibited painting, in 1949, was very much in the vein of deKooning's work. Later I exhibited engravings and intaglios. My first mature work, exhibited at the Tanager Gallery in 1960. Starting with the show, my work was painted from nature and always representational. The earliest work was very tight and detailed. After that I exhibited with the Schoelkopf Gallery until the gallery was closed, due to the death of its proprietor. I then showed with Peter Tatistcheff. My work, starting in the 1980s was usually of the figure including a number major paintings with subject matter. The early subject matter paintings were all about crimes, and several were based on Simenon Maigret's. In summer 2007, Peter Tatistcheff closed his gallery. He had been receiving chemo for leukemia, and although he had made it through, he was not in great shape. So, at this point, I don't have a dealer. I am also not looking for one. Other things will be happening with my painting life, which you will hear about when they happen.
As most of you know there is a one man show traveling around to some museums, all of them associated with art programs. It has already been to U. of Virginia and New Hampshire State. It is next goint to be shown at the New York Academy of Art which offers an MFA in either painting or sculpture and is in downtown New York City. Since they have some more room, I am inclduing 5 more pieces, all of them drawings and pastels, these were not shown elsewhere, and will not be shown in future locations unless those places have the extra room. Then it goes to a new University museum at. the Southwest corner of Missouri. After that it goes to LSU in Baton Rouge.
As you know I have had a llot of medical problems. Right now, outside of living with a large hernia because my medical asdvice says it is better than a major operation and the attending hospital stay, my health is much better than it had been.

I am giving notice That I am going to be working on my blog again, just as I am also goping back into my studio after a long enforced lay off.
Love,
Gabriel