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RICHARD CALLNER: 50 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE |
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By Tammis K. Groft, Chief Curator |
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Richard Callner was born on May 18, 1927. Both sets of his grandparents immigrated to the United States from the same small village in Lithuania and settled in the Midwest during the late nineteenth century. When Callner was four years old his parents moved to Chicago, where he spent his early childhood during the Depression living in a working class neighborhood. Callner credits his early visits to the Field Museum of Natural History as having a strong influence on his early monster paintings. Another favorite museum was the Art Institute of Chicago, where Callner later took drawing classes.
At age 17, Callner dropped out of school and joined the Navy during World War II. His strongest memory from this period is sitting on a ship in the middle of the ocean observing the formation of clouds, the rising and setting of the sun and moon, and most of all the changing weather, an experience that provided ideas for later landscape paintings. After leaving the Navy in 1946, his first formal study of art began in 1946-48 through the G.I. Bill at the University of Wisconsin, Madison under the direction and guidance of printmaker Warrington Colescott.
From Wisconsin Callner moved to Paris and he studied art at the Académie Julian, also through the G.I. Bill. Callner returned to Wisconsin for a year before moving to New York City to study at The Art Students League. In 1952 he was awarded a M.F.A. degree from Columbia University. A John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship enabled Callner to travel in England and France from 1959-1960. Although he received a rigorous and formal art education, his life and work have been greatly influenced by his family and cadre of friends including Raymond Benson and David Castillejo along with a whole host of poets, intellectuals, musicians, and artists Ted Halkin of Chicago and Byron Browne of New York. Other opportunities included a Fulbright professorship in Yugoslavia and residencies in Finland, Hungary, Turkey, and Russia.
In 1952 Callner began his long and distinguished teaching career at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana where he remained until 1959. He taught at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan from 1960-1964. In 1964-1965 Callner taught at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. A year later he moved to Italy for five years and served as the founding director of the Tyler School of Art in Rome. In 1975 Callner came to Albany to head the art department for the State University of New York at Albany, a position he held until 1981. Callner played a pivotal role in the establishment of the university’s M.F.A. program in 1977. Callner continued to teach graduate level courses until he retired in 1991.
Callner has an impressive roster of one person and group exhibitions in this country and around the world to his credit. In fact, friends muse that Callner is better known abroad than in the United States. His works are in many prestigious private and public collections including the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Museum of Painting and Sculpture, Istanbul, Turkey; the Gallery of Modern Art, Pristina, Yugoslavia; the Albany Institute of History & Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Detroit Institute of Arts; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the New York Public Library; Yale University Art Gallery; Cincinnati Art Museum; Worcester Art Museum; and the University Art Museum, State University of New York at Albany. |
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Early Paintings: 1957-1963Although Callner began his career as an abstractionist, the earliest mature work included in this retrospective exhibition dates from 1957-1963. His paintings from this period are often described as being on the “edge of the Chicago Monster School” in part because of the imagery of grotesque men, women, and animals. The Chicago Monster School traces its roots to artists such as Leon Golub and Ted Halkin who were working in Chicago in the early 1950s. Like Callner, these artists often cite the collections of ethnographic artifacts in the Field Museum of Natural History as having a strong influence on their art along with classic European Surrealism. Yet Callner’s work, with its distinctive palette of muted browns, greens, and gold and richly textured surfaces, is not derived from the same set of regional sensibilities. Instead Callner’s subject matter and painting style are drawn from within and derived from his personal life experiences and ideas. In retrospect, Callner now says that these paintings are related to his feelings about the horrors of war, post-war depression, and frustration with people in power.
The Lilith Paintings: 1963-1975After 10 years of creating dark, somber paintings filled with anger and rage, Callner embraced a new mythological figure he called “Lilith”. The discovery of Lilith gave birth to a body of imagery that focused on freedom, humor, and independence and an entirely new color palette. Callner concludes that the new palette was a direct result of his stay in France. “The light in southern France shattered my vision of color, which until then had been dark and gray and it took me some time to embrace my new vision of color.” Also important to the new direction of his imagery and palette was his stay in England where he spent time studying the repetitive patterns and decorative qualities of illuminated medieval manuscripts. With the Lilith paintings, Callner began to include highly detailed surfaces, clearly outlined shapes, and brighter colors, features that are still characteristic of his work today.
According to Callner, “Lilith was an amazing creature: beautiful, intelligent, strong, and open to change and adventure.” She was feminine, independent, and irreverent. She also had the ability to invoke and control evil and was a master of transformation. Of Lilith Callner writes: “She was the angel that brought Adam to paradise, was Adam’s first wife, Satan’s wife, a medieval destroyer of children, and is said to have created an alternative line of children in opposition to the begotten of Adam and Eve.” In the Hebrew myth (there are many variations), Lilith was created from the same dust, as Adam and she demanded to be treated equally. After Lilith left the Garden of Eden, God created Eve who was subservient to Adam. It is important to note that Callner’s Lilith is not the Lilith of the Jewish tradition or the Lilith of the feminist movement, but instead Callner, as mythmaker, created his own version of the story of the goddess Lilith for his paintings and combined her with other mythological figures.
Interior and Exterior Views: 1980-1990During the 1980s Callner’s subject matter shifted to include landscapes, interior and exterior views, still lifes, and portraits. These striking new works featured strong colors and extravagant lines and patterns, which created penetrating and often-distorted perspectives. Until this time, Callner’s preferred medium was oil on canvas, but with these new pictures he enthusiastically embraced new materials including a unique overlay of watercolor and gouache on paper, which helped him to achieve stunning color combinations that appear to vibrate across the surface of the paintings. Although Callner has a traditional approach to using watercolors, quality paper, brushes, and colors, he also advises one to “break as many rules as suits your imagery.” Callner favored this new medium because it enabled him to work faster and produce more work.
Callner’s distinctive interior rooms are chock full of complex and contradictory perspectives. What may appear at first to be a window overlooking a landscape may also be a painting hanging on a wall or a mirror reflecting another wall. Many of these rooms contain distinctive vases, a selection of fruit or flowers on tabletops covered with patterned cloths, and curtains with tiebacks framing windows. The walls are lined with decorative wallpapers, the floors and ceilings are covered with painted patterns, and multiple tapestries and carpets drape the floors and walls. It is interesting to note the absence of chairs and figures in these rooms. Callner likes to infer that someone has either just left or is about to enter the space. He achieves this by creating movement or action in the carpets. Who are these mysterious people? Are they inhabitants or voyeurs or both?
Landscapes: 1980-2000Callner’s landscape paintings are clearly influenced by time spent in Yugoslavia, Spain, Russia, Japan, Turkey and the Hudson Valley. The ordered fields of Yugoslavia between Novisad and Belgrade stimulated the first landscapes series. The brightly-colored, stylized lollipop trees marching from hillside to hillside are certainly reminiscent of the enchanting Yugoslavian folk art paintings from this period. Landscapes featuring the distinctive olive orchards near Granada, the hills surrounding Madrid, and the distinctive red Spanish Mountains soon followed suit. Another series includes the bright yellow fields of rape in England. At some point, Callner admits, he began to combine elements from all of these landscapes in his paintings.
Callner attributes his carpet-like landscape as a visual gift from Van Gogh. Adding that he was absorbed with Van Gogh’s ability to manipulate productive fields based on one point perspective, as a brilliant device, which gave meaning and an easily understood solution for a problem of penetrating space. The brilliant colors and one point perspective in Red Fields, East of Madrid (1988) is an excellent example of how Callner has mastered the problem of penetrating space.
Recent Work: 1998-2003In 1999 Callner began creating paintings without first preparing a series of drawings, a combination of images or a logical sequence of forms to work from. Instead, paintings from this period represent total freedom with color, imagery, and ideas. Callner now likes to present himself with an idea and then conquer or master the idea in his painting. For example, to conquer the color yellow, he worked with five shades of yellow in one painting. In another painting, Callner mastered the color blue and in others, the color pink. While Callner continues to explore ideas related to abstraction and explorations in color, elements of realistic imagery also have begun to reappear. Work from 2003 represents pure painterly abstractions with sensuous lines and patterns and a restrained color palette. When asked, “What’s next?” Callner replies, “Recently I have been limiting my color, now I want to start adding color again.”
For Richard Callner, artist and mythmaker, there is always tomorrow, another painting to begin, another idea to explore, and more color to add to the canvas. Callner’s world is an exciting place to live in, and it is our good fortune to have the opportunity to savor his art, his intellect, and to enjoy the experience.
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