Spotlight on Irving Petlin
As we look forward to Memorial Day Weekend, we're pleased to spotlight the symbolist artworks by the late Irving Petlin (1934 – 2018).
Paintings, pastels & drawings (1983 to 2016) are currently on view in a solo exhibition at Galerie Ditesheim & Maffei Fine Art, Switzerland, through May 30, 2026.
Ditesheim & Maffei (and its predecessor, Galerie Krugier-Ditesheim) has represented or exhibited Irving Petlin for nearly 30 years, tracing back to solo exhibitions like Le Monde de Bruno Schulz in 1992. The Swiss gallery expanded its role in June 2021 by officially taking on representation for the European Estate of the artist.
If you're fortunate enough to be in that neighborhood, stop by to see the show.
Irving Petlin's career began in Chicago in the 1950's, thereafter he worked in New York, Paris, and on Martha's Vineyard. His early bold aesthetic leanings of the Chicago Imagists and the Monster Roster period shifted towards the tender idiosyncratic surrealism we've come to so appreciate in the last decades of his life.
He considerately preserved history, transforming broad, objective events into intimate relatable human experiences. He explored biblical stories, mythology, and his own personal memories, merging philosophy and poetry with his lifelong passionate activism, enticing deeper inquiry and the senses at once.
The Stolen Blessing….Swirls in the Dust, 1986, pastel on paper, 19 ⅞ × 27 ½ inches
A Gallery is honored to represent a selection of Petlin's United States Estate, with several of his pastel works made on Marthas's Vineyard over decades exhibited in numerous Pop Up exhibitions since his passing. We also have access to paintings and pastels securely housed off island, some of which is represented in this newsletter.
above left: Ismael II,1997 above right: In the Bed of Sarah, 1997
Request a link for private online viewing of available work
"Christianity has all these saints, Madonnas and figures to worship, who were protective in moments of oppression. Why not a Black Madonna?"
In 2015, in response to brutal, tragic violence by police against African-American men a few years prior, Petlin made a series of four paintings of the same black woman depicted in different settings. He called it the Madonna of Slavery. In an interview with The Brooklyn Rail arts journal in 2017 Petlin spoke about how he felt that this chronic aggression towards a particular race was indicative of how the American consciousness still imposes biases resembling slavery on this group.
Madonna of Slavery IV, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 28 ¾ x 23 ⅝ inches
Madonna of Slavery III, 2015, oil on canvas, 28 ¾ x 23 ⅝ inches