Saturday, March 28, 2015
Opening today...All Welcome
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
New Paintings by Margaret Buchte
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Great Barrington, MA – New Paintings by Margaret Buchte will
be on view at Art On Main, The Gallery at Barnbrook Realty from January 3 to
February 26, 2015.
Working primarily in oils for this show, Margaret Buchte,
one of the Berkshire’s best-known regional artists, has captured the light and
energy of the rural landscape and the urban streetscape. Though her easel and palette are commonly
seen in and around Great Barrington, Lenox and other small hamlets of the
Berkshire hills, Buchte has widened her reach and is working in “plein aire”
further afield these days. Indeed, there
are horses and cows out below the blue sky and clean air of grasslands but we
are also treated to the man-made, architectural and decidedly grayer concrete
of life in the city.
For those of us who have lived in the Berkshires for a long
time, when the commonplace scenes of everyday life can become stale or just too
familiar to notice, the paintings of Margaret Buchte enliven our attention and we are invited to see them
again through Buchte’s rich color and dazzling light. This is a very enriching experience.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Goldstein himself, having lived in the
Berkshires for many years, is surprised by his sudden interest in the subject of
the late fall and its weathered forms.
Having been an active shutterbug throughout his many trips some of which
to exotic destinations where landscape was seductive and photography somewhat
of a mission, the “Flora After Frost” images came out of a deep but unexpected commitment.
An unlikely subject turned into a project that has resulted in these fifteen
images. During late fall, when snow and freezing rain was in the air, he continued
to seek out the textures, forms and linear compositions with zeal.
Goldstein, author, retired professor and
department chair at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, found within the
narrow range of subject, many challenges to be confronted. His photographic vocabulary, inspired by some
new photo gear and the desire to test its range with seed pods and dried flower
heads, is the reason for his closer look at what turns out to be a visually
rich and rewarding world. This is a world
where photography can invite contemplation in the profundity of nature, its
natural cycles of growth and decay reminding us of own transience.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Mia Munzer Le Comte: Biography and Collections
MIA LE COMTE
1909 Born in Prague,
Czechoslovakia
1929 Master’s Degree in Fine
Arts
1930 Studied under Karl Hofer,
Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin
1931 Moved to Paris. Studied under Oskar Kokoschka
1941 Immigrated to U.S.A.
1942-2002 Lived
in Eastern U.S.A., creating hundreds of works of art
in various styles, genres and
themes
2003 Died in Alford, Massachusetts
One-Woman Shows
1938 Feigl Gallery, Prague
1939 Galerie Rousseau
(Zborovsky), Paris
1942 Carroll Carstairs, New
York City
1970 Berkshire Museum,
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
1974 Tibor de Nagy, New York
City
1976
Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
1977
Livingston-Leamont Gallery, New York City
1989 Bachelier-Cardonsky
Gallery, Kent, Connecticut
1992 Wells Gallery, Lenox,
Massachusetts
1993 Spazi Fine Art Gallery,
Housatonic, Massachusetts
1994 Paris-New York-Kent
Gallery, Kent, Connecticut
1995 Spencertown Academy,
Spencertown, New York
1996 Carie Haddad Gallery,
Hudson, New York
1997 Spencertown Academy,
Spencertown, New York
Group Shows (Partial List)
1934 Salon Printemps, Paris
1935 Prague Sezession
1936 Prague Sezession
1937 Prague Sezession
1942 Travelling Exhibition of
Czech Artists throughout
the U.S.A. and
Canada
1946 San Francisco Museum of
Art
1957 Jersey City Museum
1963 Trenton Museum
1964 New York World’s Fair
1967 Institute of History and
Art, Albany, New York
1968 Schenectady Museum
1976 Gallery of the Xerox
Corporation, Rochester, New York
1980 Jack Gallery in SoHo, New York City
Mia Le Comte -- Page Two
1981 Jack Gallery in SoHo, New
York City
1989 Paris-New York-Kent
Gallery, Kent, Connecticut
1990 Art of Our Time,
Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey
1992 Miami
Art International ’92, Miami, Florida
1992
Susanne Fonda Blanchard, New York City
1994 Spazi Fine Art Gallery, Housatonic, Massachusetts
1998 Spazi Fine Art Gallery,
Housatonic, Massachusetts
1999 The Lenox Gallery of Fine
Art, Lenox, Massachusetts
From 2003 until the
present, paintings of Mia Le Comte have been on exhibit in several galleries
around the Berkshires, including the Lenox Gallery of Fine Art, Church Street
Gallery, Lascano Gallery, and the Berkshire Art Gallery
Collections, Public and Private (Partial List)
Museum of Modern Art in Prague
Ministry of Education in Prague
Roy Neuberger, New York City
David Bermant, Rye, New York
Carol Eiseman, Basking Ridge, New Jersey
Ingeborg Hecht, New York City
Hans Blumenfeld, Buenos Aires, Argentina
John David Hatch, Lenox, Massachusetts
Robert Strassler, Boston, Massachusetts
Maureen Stapleton, Lenox, Massachusetts
Violaine Bachelier-Kaplan
Carol Schulze, Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Betsy Dovydenas, Lenox, Massachusetts
Spertus Institute, Chicago, Illinois
Walter Matthau, Los Angeles, California
Henry Kissinger, New York City
Stephen Schoenfeld, South Egremont, Massachusetts
MIA LE COMTE
1909-2003
In
a letter of October 7, 1944 to Mia Le Comte, Albert Einstein wrote, “Your
paintings deeply impressed me”.
Mia Munzer Le Comte was born in Prague and received
her master’s degree there at the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture by the
time she was 20. She also studied as an exchange student at the Berlin Academy
under Karl Hofer. Later she moved to Paris where she worked privately with
Oscar Kokoschka and with Paul Colin, making theater design and posters.
Madame Le Comte displayed her works at one-woman shows
at the Feigl Gallery in Prague, the Galerie Rousseau in Paris, and at numerous
galleries and museums in the USA. Soon after she immigrated to the States, her
work was included in an exhibition of modern Czech artists which toured the
United States and Canada. Paintings by Le Comte have appeared in
group-exhibitions in Prague, Paris, Nice, and from New York to San Francisco.
Her works have hung in the Prague Museum of Modern Art and Ministry of
Education, as well as in many private collections in Europe and America.
Shortly after her exhibition at the Galerie Rousseau
in 1939, Hitler occupied Paris, and Mme. Le Comte fled to the United States,
arriving after a harrowing journey which took many months. She left most of her
paintings in the custody of a friend, the writer Andre Germain. When she
returned to France after the war, her friend had disappeared without a trace,
and the paintings have never been located.
The Berkshires were her home from 1966 until 2003. She
brought something of Central Europe with her which lent special character to
her works. Wit and humor infuse her art. “The enthusiasm – strength—the
ebullience – the originality of her work deserve the widest audience.” (Renova
Art Gallery)
“I
admire the art of Mia Le Comte”.
--
Leonard Bernstein
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Mia Munzer Le Comte at Art On Main
The Garden Party, Oil on Canvas by Mia Le Comte
Monday, June 23, 2014
Mia Munzer Le Comte: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" begins Saturday, June 29, 2014
For Immediate Release
Mia Munzer Le Comte: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
June 28 – September 4, 2014
Reception to honor the artist: Saturday, August 30, 2014
from 5-7 p.m.
Art On Main, The Gallery at Barnbrook Realty
271 Main St., Great Barrington, MA 01230
Contact Information: Peggy Reeves, Curator, (413) 528-2446
Open during regular business hours of Barnbrook Realty, 10
a.m. to 5 p.m. daily
Great Barrington, MA – Art On Main is very pleased to present
the work of Mia Munzer Le Comte, (1909-2003), who lived and painted in the
Berkshires from 1966 to 2003 at her home in Alford. The exhibition of her paintings was made
possible with the help of her son, Douglas Le Comte who has been caring and
keeping track of the collection through the years. A tour through the home in
Alford, now a family retreat, traces the trajectory of his mother’s life, an
account of her odyssey through her art.
Married to a writer, John Milton scholar, college professor,
Edward Le Comte for 60 years, Mia Le Comte was herself a writer. Much of what
we know about the life that gestated this art is from her memoir published in
1986 which is dedicated to her mother who perished in a concentration camp in
Poland. “I Still Dream of Prague” is the story of “the halcyon days in Prague
before World War I, the aftermath of that war, her marriages, her success as an
artist, and the approach of World War II.”
Hitler’s occupation of Prague on her 30th birthday is the
beginning of the story of her survival as she escapes the horrors of the war
and her transformation from innocence to worldliness through the emigration
experience. In this exhibit, we will see Le Comte’s deep connection to the
universal longing for the “land that I heard of once in a lullaby,” in
paintings such as “The Flight,” and “The Leaving” which recounts the Biblical
exodus from Egypt. We make the long psychic
journey as Mia Le Comte did escaping to Rome, Nice, Paris, Lisbon and finally
to “the blue skies” of America in a series of paintings with more idyllic
subjects set in the “Garden of Eden” and “Garden Party” with friends in the
Berkshires.
After earning a Master’s degree in Fine Arts in 1929, Le
Comte studied with two famed Expressionists, Karl Hofer (1878-1955) in Berlin
and Oskar Kokoschka, (1886-1980) in Paris.
Hofer’s lighter, happier palette appears to be the greater
influence. From Hofer we see domestic
scenes, families and gatherings of figures in stillness and tranquility while
from Kokoschka, Le Comte has absorbed the power and direction of the
brushstroke and movement. The dream is always present as it filters through her
subjects and appears on canvas in the forms, sometimes floating, of people and places
from a rich imagination. One may feel
the presence of Chagall, of a Surrealism based on the deep connection to the
immigrant consciousness, framed by the pogroms of the past and the Holocaust
about to happen.
Shortly after her
exhibition at the Galerie Rousseau in 1939, Hitler occupied Paris and Mme. Le
Comte fled to the US, arriving after a harrowing journey which took many
months. She left most of her paintings
in the custody of a friend, the writer Andre Germain. When she returned to Paris after the war, her
friend had disappeared without a trace and the paintings have never been
located. After seeing New York for the first time in January 1941, she set to
work for an exhibition of modern Czech artists which toured the US and Canada.
The Berkshire Museum mounted two one-women shows in the 70s and her audience
expanded here and abroad.
The collective title of the 26 paintings exhibited in 1970
at the Berkshire Museum “The Family Album,” was inspired by a visit to Prague
in 1965 which brought back memories to her of “all that is lost and gone.” She
brought with her to the US something of the trauma of her central European
heritage but adversity is, very often, the breeding ground for humor. Le Comte farmed that wit with a series of
plywood cutout figures of cultural icons of theater, politics, music and
literature. Josephine Baker, Benny
Goodman and many others are in private collections but Norman Mailer and Ed
Koch will be attending this show.
With representation at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York
and the show at the Berkshire Museum, Le Comte’s work was very briskly
collected in the 70s and then again shows at the Spencertown Academy in the 90s
propelled her work into the spotlight. Her
paintings are widely exhibited internationally and in many public and private
collections in the Berkshires. An
extensive list of galleries and private collectors is available at www.artonmain.blogspot.com.
Mia Munzer Le Comte’s work is represented in Great
Barrington and is on view at Wingate Ltd., 420 Stockbridge Rd., Great
Barrington.
Friday, May 9, 2014
Opening Reception Saturday, May 17 from 5-7 at Art On Main
Irmari Nacht PhotoCollages at Art on Main Gallery during May-June
Irmari Nacht of Englewood, NJ and South Egremont, MA will be showing photocollage assemblages from her "Facades/Background" series and "Pages " series at Art on Main, the Gallery at Barnbrook Realty in Great Barrington, MA from May 3 through June 26. In this show, the artist uses one or more photographs to create compound or fragmented images exploring the concepts of altered realism, segueing of colors, and multiple imagery.
Irmari Nacht’s art is in many corporate and public collections, such as AT&T, PSE&G, ADP, Newark Museum, International Museum of Collage, Mexico, Bowdoin College, Jimmy Carter Museum, Cleveland Institute of Art, Rutgers University, and Yale Art Museum. She has exhibited internationally, as well as nationally, and received two NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Sculpture. She received a second Puffin Foundation Grant for “Who Am I?” an interactive project where the viewer becomes part of the artwork.
Her work has been recently exhibited in the Newark Museum, NJ State Museum, Berkshire Museum, Belskie Museum, NJ, Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, MA, Doverodde Book Arts Festival, Denmark, Westport Library, Conn, WAH Center, NY, June Fitzpatrick Gallery, ME, Univ of Northampton, UK, and in solo shows at the Atrium Gallery, Bard College at Simon's Rock, MA and the Intermezzo Gallery, BergenPAC, NJ.
The “Facades/Backgrounds” series, uses small round raised pictures to tell a story that relates to the larger images. Nacht explained, "Because the work appears on two planes, you can see the images in details or fragments, as well as viewing it as a larger, complex picture." In “Cellphonia” and “Glitterati” Nacht depicts celebrities as well as everyday people in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. The “Sunset Segue” pieces explore the relationship of color placement - the changes of light, tone, and mood as one color is placed next to another.
The photo collage series "Pages" incorporates the ancient technique of encaustics, the traditional media of painting, photography, photogram, recycled objects, with the contemporary methods of computer enhancements. The inclusion of written materials from books - words, sentences, fragments, and slivers - add another dimension imparting information and new ideas. The images of shadows and reflections through windows, clouds on a beautiful sunny day and during the deepening skies of sunset, artifacts of murders, money from around the world, fasteners and unfasteners, tiny watch parts and metal shavings are unified by slivers of cut-up book pages and the grid format.
The public is invited to the opening reception Saturday, May 17 from 5-7pm at Art On Main, the Gallery at Barnbrook Realty, 271 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA. The gallery is open from May 3 to June 27 during Barnbrook's regular business hours, usually 10 - 5 everyday. For further information, contact irmarinac@aol.com or check her websites: irmari.com, or for book works, irmarinacht.shutterfly.com
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