Piece to Piece
Fritz Bultman at Pavel Zoubok Gallery
Collage (officially speaking) is over 100 years old. Whether Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque invented it first doesn’t really matter, but what became of this technique is much more interesting. Fritz Bultman, who lived from 1919 to 1985, is one of those artists who contributed to the evolution and hybridization of this practice.
Fritz Bultman: Form, Space, Surface: Paintings and Collages at Pavel Zoubok Gallery is an exhibition featuring later works by Bultman. As noted by the press release, Bultman was trained in the Bauhaus and Hoffmann strains of modernism. These mature works still show the influence of Hoffmann’s paintings with their bright colors and large scale. However, the blending of early modernist practices and Ab Ex sensibilities is really the most interesting aspect of these works.
The emphasis on specific plays of color feels distinctly European. Bultman’s time in Paris while on a Fulbright Scholarship in the 1960s may have had something to do with this, and this is when his collages began in earnest. The late work of Henri Matisse played a role during this time period. You can see this very clearly in the painting Untitled (Wave) from 1977, which evokes the cutout nudes of the French master. Luckily, Bultman’s New York School background prevented him from falling back into the work of pre-war art, and instead led to a marriage of sensibilities between the Old and New World. For example, a viewer would notice that Bultman lacks the harshness of someone like Franz Kline. Color Field artists come to mind, but the serious undertones of Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman are nowhere to be found. These works are abstract, but they are warm, embracing, and lively.
This exhibition feels almost like a rebuttal of the angst and existentialism so popular amongst Bultman’s contemporaries of the 1940s and ‘50s. Although abstraction and premeditated formal concerns are still very much a focus in this body of work, Bultman brings back a sense of real exuberance and sensual energy. Titles of the works also suggest something more earthy and physical with names like Yoke Over Lap and Wing Boot.
When entering this show, you may anticipate postwar abstraction and all the baggage it may entail. However, when leaving, the nihilistic tendencies you expect are turned upside down. Rather than ruminating in one’s own anxieties, Bultman’s paintings and collages seem like a testament to the joy of simply being alive. Luxe, Calme et Volupté, indeed.
