JEREMY GILBERT-ROLFE (1945 - 2024) 7th Study, Masurian Lakes.
Pencil and gouache on paper, 1981. 254x710 mm; 10x28 inches, image. 578x768 mm; 22¾x 30¼ inches, sheet. Initialed, inscribed as titled, and dated at lower center, recto.
Provenance Private collection, New Jersey.
This work on paper is one of many studies Gilbert-Rolfe created before he painted "Masurian Lakes," 1981-82, an oil on canvas measuring nine feet two inches by twenty-five feet. This study closely resembles "8th Study, Masurian Lakes,' illustrated on the artist's website, jeremygilbert-rolfe.com
Though born in the United Kingdom in 1945, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe moved to the United States in 1968 to pursue a degree from Florida State University. He remained in the United States until his death in 2024.
Gilbert-Rolfe was a painter, educator, and writer. In a 2005 interview with Joan Waltemath for Brooklyn Rail, while reflecting on a show he saw at the Tate Gallery introducing him to American abstract art of that time, specifically the works of Barnett Newman, he states "I had never seen that much space in painting before, but in that echoed for me the space of films like Howard Hawk's Red River it seemed to be about America in some way and that's what determined that I should go to America." In this statement I see many observations, one being the power of negative space in art. Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe uses negative space, and asymmetry in a unique way. In works such as his Masurian Lakes studies, he strikes balance while offsetting light space with darkness in a way that counters conventional academic training. I am reminded of B.J.O. Nordfelt's portrait of Robert Riedel, 1911-12, a work with half of the painting consumed by a thick painterly white background. This portrait, jarringly asymmetrical, is a memorable work of art precisely because of the tension created by Nordfelt's compositional choices.
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe's talents conveying emotion through abstraction go beyond the paint surface. He co-founded the publication, "October," and has written extensively about art, architecture, social issues, and the human condition at large. His teaching career includes time spent with institutions such as Princeton, Cal Arts, and the Art Center College of Design where he helped develop their MFA program. His works are in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo; The Getty Study Center, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York to name a few.
