MILTON RESNICK: VEILS OF ISIS

November 5, 2021 - July 30, 2022

The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation is proud to present Milton Resnick: Veils of Isis — a selection of paintings ranging in date from 1971-2001, on view November 5, 2021 -February 26, 2022.

The title series of large pictures, ‘Veils of Isis’ from the mid 1980s concluded a twenty-five year stretch of painting which can appear in retrospect as a mystical journey into the materiality of oil paint. The title was cribbed from Madame Blavatsky’s notorious tome on Theosophy which transfixed so many painters and composers from the generation of Resnick’s Ukrainian father. The Veils of Isis, as an imaginative projection, calls to mind Yeats’ invitation to “gather me into the artifice of eternity.” Also featured in this exhibition is one of Resnick's mural size paintings from some sixteen years earlier: 'Debris' (painted in 1971). In this greenish yet tawny picture Resnick may have been trying to find a way to reconcile the large gestures more typical of the 1950's to his allover vision. For the most part he did not continue in this vein.

Milton Resnick was born in Ukraine in 1917, and immigrated to New York City with his family in 1923. He grew up in the Lower East Side, and entered the American Artists School in 1933. In the 1930s he was on the WPA artist project, and met Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, John Graham and other downtown artists. In 1940 Resnick was drafted and served in the U.S. Army through all of World War II. After returning to New York in September 1945, Resnick immediately began painting abstractions thereby cementing his historical position as a member of the first generation of American Abstract Expressionists. He was a founding member of the Artists’ Club of the 1950s.