CHICAGO, IL – Galleries Maurice Sternberg in Chicago will present “Ian Hornak: A Retrospective” from May 1st, 2009 – July 1st, 2009, the largest U.S. retrospective exhibition since the artists death in 2002.
Over the last four decades, Ian Hornak (1944-2002) has become regarded as one of the most distinctive realist painters and draughtsman of his generation. “Ian Hornak: A Retrospective,” a major survey of his work will be comprised of in excess of 30 paintings and drawings completed between 1968 and 2002 brought together from the estate of the artist, private and museum collections. The exhibition showcases what Art Critic and Historian John Gruen described as “imagery at once visionary and hauntingly intimate”-works ranging from the surreal figurative paintings of the early portion of the artists career, the conceptual multiple exposure landscape paintings that Hornak gained international recognition for within the art world and among collectors throughout the 1970’s with John Canaday, Lead Art Editor of the New York Times writing “Mr. Hornak… is right at the top of the list of romantically descriptive painters today,” and the floral and non floral still life works that dominated the last sixteen years of the artists career which continued Hornak’s critical success being heralded as one of the most innovative realist artists of his time.
Born in Philadelphia, Hornak was raised in Detroit and educated at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University where he earned his BFA and MFA. In 1968 Detroit Art Dealer Gertrude Kasle admired the artists work, encouraged him to leave his job as an art professor at Wayne State University for a career as an artist in New York and gave the 24 year old Ian Hornak letters of introduction to Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Fairfield Porter and Lowell Nesbitt. It was Lowell Nesbitt who introduced the young artist to Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg and Robert Indiana among others. In the summer of ’68 Hornak sublet Lowell Nesbitt’s large studio on West 14th Street in New York, steeling himself to the bums and prostitutes on his doorstep, launching himself into the New York art world. As Hornak described it “after a month I realized I could never go back to teaching at Wayne State so, with $700 in my pocket, no job and once Lowell came back, no place to live, I somehow found the courage to stay.” Though Hornak had been exhibiting at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in group shows in 1968 and 1969 it was in 1971 that he had his first one man exhibit at the venerable Tibor de Nagy Gallery located on 57th Street in New York. The artist remarked “It was very exciting and quite a coup. Tibor was a great gent and we used to go to the opera together, but he wasn’t interested in my work until he hired Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s Nephew, Jason McCoy as his new Director. Jason persuaded him to take me on.” The relationship lasted until 1977 when Hornak left to be represented by the Fischbach Gallery on 57th Street in New York where he was to stay until 1984. From 1986 though 2002 the artist was represented by the Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery of 57th Street. Between 1970 and 2002 the artist worked primarily from his home and studio in East Hampton, New York and maintained a secondary penthouse studio near the corner of East 73rd Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.
Despite Hornak’s work defying any one classification, critics often attempted to categorize him with the Photorealists. The artist rebelled against this often stating “I always fought inclusion with the Photorealists, I thought they were more connected to everyday things like snapshots of families standing in front of their cars in their backyards, then to my romantic landscapes.” He continued his pursuit of combining surrealist traits with realism explaining “My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can’t understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I’m after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments.” Art Historian Marcia Corbino expressed her feelings about the artist by writing “Not since the Hudson River School glorified the grandiose panorama of the natural world in meticulous detail has an American artist embraced landscape painting with the artistic totality of Ian Hornak.”
In the final years of his life Hornak would continue the pursuit of beauty and perfection in his work that had remained consistent throughout his career. One of his last public remarks regarding his art came in an excerpt from an interview with Cover Magazine, “While I know that the beautiful, the spiritual and the sublime are today suspect, I have begun to stop resisting the constant urge to deny that beauty has a valid right to exist in contemporary art.” Ian Hornak died on December 9th, 2002 from complications resulting an aortic aneurysm that he experienced while working in his East Hampton studio. He was 58 years old. Hornak’s last solo exhibition was held at the Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery of New York City in 2002. The artist leaves a large legacy of nearly 2000 paintings and 30 solo exhibitions to his credit. His work is owned by private collections around the world, corporate collections including Nabisco, JP Morgan, Citibank and Xerox in addition leading museums including the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution of Washington D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston among many others.
Galleries Maurice Sternberg, a Fine Art Dealer since 1945, located in the John Hancock Center 875 North Michigan Avenue, 25th floor, Chicago, Illinois is the official United States representative of the Estate of Ian Hornak.
Galleries Maurice Sternberg (est. 1945),
The John Hancock Center,
875 North Michigan Avenue, 25th Floor,
Chicago, Illinois 60611 USA
Tel: (312) 642-1700
Fax: (312) 642-7159
www.galleriesmauricesternberg.com
www.ianhornak.com
