Shades and layers of white dominate this exhibit. Titled "The White Album," it includes bas-reliefs by Giglio Dante, paintings by Ingeborg ten Haeff, collages by Rae Ferren, and sculpture by John Philip Capello.Giglio Dante was born in Rome, the son of a muralist who trained him from an early age in painting and sculpture, and who often assigned his light and agile apprentice the task of clambering up rickety scaffolds to work on the plaster figures in cathedral ceilings. As a teenager he moved to Boston with his family and soon began making a name for himself as an artist. His first one-man show was in 1944 and was followed by many others in Boston, New York, and East Hampton, where he has lived since 1981.
Over the years Dante has worked in a variety of forms, including the abstract collages he exhibited in 1999 at the Nabi, but the 12 bas-reliefs in the new show, created this year, combine his classical training with an exuberant, modern sensibility, their gesso surfaces etched and molded to suggest mysterious faces and sensuous nude forms.
Giglio Dante, Couple, bas relief in gesso, 24x20, 2000
Ingeborg ten Haeff, too, has enjoyed a long and illustrious career that brought her from her native Germany to Brazil and then New York, with, along the way, many travels in Asia and Central America and summers in East Hampton. Her paintings, abstract but hinting at human or natural forms, express what the critic Harold Rosenberg called "an extraordinary kind of inward thinking. "
Reviewing her previous show at the Nabi, two years ago, Phyllis Braff of The New York Times remarked on "her deft handling of crisp, seemingly electrified geometric surfaces and her equally confident use of softer, more lyrical and curving shapes. " Angular figures suggestive of dance are in several of the canvases in the new exhibit, which also includes a semi-abstract self-portrait in shades verging on white.
Ingeborg ten Haeff, Split
Rae Ferren, a long-time Springs resident, is best known for her luxuriant paintings of East End landscapes and garden scenes, but she has also been exploring mixed media, and the dozen small pieces in the Nabi show, all produced within the last few months, are adventures in collage. Predominately white, in keeping with the theme of the exhibit, they incorporate fragments of natural forms, abstract shapes, and typography-including, in one work titled "Letters," the "To the Editor" logo of The East Hampton Star.
Rae Ferren, Letters
John Philip Capello, who lives in Sag Harbor, is a self-taught sculptor with a classical mastery of his craft and a romantic intuition. He is a direct carver, who begins each piece without sketching or even knowing what form it will take, but determining to find out "what the stone wants to say. " The result, after months of painstaking labor, is always startlingly lifelike but at the same fantastic, often a blend of human and animal or plant forms on a theme from ancient mythology or history.
John Philip Capello, Dream Time, Siena marble, 13x18x10
For more information about the artists, the works on display, and other Nabi Gallery exhibits featuring them, please click on any of the following links:
More Dante bas reliefs from The White Album
