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“Stephen Pace Paintings: 1950-1998,” a collection of 26 oil and watercolor works by the American artist, will be on display in the Mandeville Gallery at Union College's Nott Memorial, March 30 through May 30.
An opening reception and gallery talk on Tuesday, March 30 from 5 to 7 p.m. will feature Pace discussing his body of works.
“Stephen Pace is a lesser-known figure from an important era in American art,” said Rachel Seligman, curator of the Mandeville Gallery. “He departed from an abstract style characteristic of New York school painters of the 1950's; Pace developed a distinctive style by reincorporating recognizable, intimate subject matter – his family, friends, homes he lived in – into his art.”
“Pace practices a kind of Zen acceptance of what happens when his brush hits the canvas or paper,” wrote Martica Sawin, in Arts. “The ability to take risks and to allow the paint to surprise him are fundamental to Pace's artistic gambit.”
Born in 1918 near Charleston, Mo., Pace studied at the Arts League from 1948-49, in Paris and Florence from 1950-51, and with Hans Hofman from 1951-52. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at the Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery in New York City in 1997, 1994, 1991, 1989 and 1987; the Courtyard Gallery in Washington in 1986; Bates College Museum of Art in 1994; and Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, Maine, in 1994.
Among the long list of public collections of his work are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center