Fleisher/Ollman is pleased to announce Four Decades, organized on the occasion of gallerist John Ollman's 40th Anniversary at the gallery. Four Decades will feature a diverse group of works reflecting the gallery's extensive and unique history with ethnographic, folk, self-taught and contemporary art.
In 1970, John Ollman began work for Janet Fleisher at her eponymous gallery where she supported and encouraged Ollman's interests in Native American, Oceanic, and Pre-Columbian art, as well as in the emerging field of self-taught art, then called 20th Century Folk Art.
Taking a lead from the artist Jim Nutt, one of the first people to identify many of the artists now firmly rooted in the self-taught canon, John Ollman adopted the stance that self-taught artists and the work they made were in no way different than art being made by those trained and working within the art world's mainstream institutions.
During Ollman's career, Fleisher/Ollman has established a reputation as one of the world's premiere sources for self-taught art, defining the field and helping to develop major public and private collections of this once-marginalized group of artists. In Ollman's own words, "I have spent my career as a dealer trying to break down the walls that exist between 'high' and 'low' art forms." Each artist and work included in Four Decades reflects this career-spanning passion.
Jess, Lieving is Beseeing
Charles Burchfield, Lower Part of Sunburst
The major works of art included in the exhibition represent paintings, sculptures, drawings and objects, among which are a significant painting by the late Chicago artist, Christina Ramberg; a sculpture by William Edmondson; Native American kachina figures; Tramp Art furniture, as well as other examples of American decorative arts. Additionally, Ollman will be showing examples from bodies of work that he was instrumental in discovering and promoting, including large two-dimensional double-sided collage works by the Cuban-born Felipe Jesus Consalvos and a selection of wire sculptures found on the streets of Philadelphia and made by an anonymous artist that Ollman named Philadelphia Wireman.
Select additional artists in the exhibition include: Forrest Bess, Charles Burchfield, James Castle, Joseph Cornell, Arshile Gorky, William Hawkins, Morris Hirshfield, Jess, Elie Nadelman, Jim Nutt, Martin Ramirez, Bill Traylor, P.M. Wentworth, H.C. Westermann, and Joseph Yoakum. These attributed works will be accompanied by Oceanic sculptures, Pre-Columbian vessels, Chinese Scholar stones, Northwest Coast masks, Pennsylvania Painted furniture, Weather vanes, Spool Tables and examples of American Frakturs.