“I strive to capture the sensorial emotions of particular moments and experiences in nature–chasing the feeling of being there. Less about naturalism, what I find interesting is the translation of a lived experience and sensation into an image so I can return to that moment every time I make and see a painting.”
- Nicole Wittenberg
July 2, 2022
Oil on canvas
66 x 84 inches
Daylilies, 2021
Pastel on paper
11 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Broken Reflections Study, 2022
Oil on canvas
36 x 72 inches
Sweet William 3, 2021
Oil on canvas
96 x 72 inches
Acquavella Galleries is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of works by New York-based artist Nicole Wittenberg. Titled Our Love is Here to Stay, the exhibition features 22 new works on canvas and paper. The show is on view from December 17, 2022 through January 10, 2023 at Acquavella’s Palm Beach location.
During the pandemic, Wittenberg spent over a year in mid-coast Maine, recording what she saw and experienced in plein air pastel studies. Rendering the world in brilliant colors and free expressive marks, Wittenberg’s scenes from nature are deeply personal and meditative. The loose pastel compositions capture the sensations of the landscape. Back in her studio in New York, Wittenberg reimagines the scenes rehearsed in the sketches on large canvases, where a single composition often undergoes a series of transformations.
Wittenberg states: “I strive to capture the sensorial emotions of particular moments and experiences in nature–chasing the feeling of being there. Less about naturalism, what I find interesting is the translation of a lived experience and sensation into an image so I can return to that moment every time I make and see a painting.”
The artist’s use of color aids in this pursuit: the high chroma oranges and pinks that fill her canvases almost mimic warm light seen through closed eyes. Though her artworks are created from observation and life, the artist pulls away from the constraints of naturalism. As Reilly Davidson states in an essay for the exhibition’s catalogue, “Wittenberg avoids naturalism by communicating the revelatory interactions between person and world… [her] ambitions can be linked to this interest in having felt experience realized in paint.”
In her landscapes, Wittenberg builds off a rich artistic tradition of American painters who have found inspiration in Maine’s natural beauty, including Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Marsden Hartley, Alex Katz, Lois Dodd and more recently, Katherine Bradford, Ann Craven, and Reggie Burrows Hodges.
Sunset 21, 2022
Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches
In Sunset 21 (2022), the artist depicts a vibrant sunset over a pond in Maine where a glowing orange sun, bathed in pink and purple light, sets beyond dark evergreen mountains. Wittenberg paints the strange hues created by the haze and smoke from the devastating wildfires in California during the summer of 2021. Here the artist’s impulse to experience and record the natural world can also be seen as an act to document and protect a dying planet, a cause the artist is passionate about.
On behalf of the artist's studio and this exhibition, Wittenberg and Acquavella Galleries will donate all proceeds from the sale of Sunset 21 to Art to Acres, a non-profit that engages art to support large-scale land conservation. The founder of the initiative, Haley Mellin, says, "Nicole Wittenberg’s work is a considered commitment to the natural world. She draws and paints from nature, and looks to learn from the legacy of landscapes and waterscapes."
The exhibition will be accompanied by a hardcover catalogue featuring an essay by Reilly Davidson.
About Nicole Wittenberg
Nicole Wittenberg (born 1979) is an American artist based in New York City. She is a curator, professor, writer, and painter.
Wittenberg was born in San Francisco, CA, and received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003. She received the American Academy of Arts and Letters coveted John Koch Award for Best Young Figurative Painter in 2012. From 2011–2014 she served as a teacher at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, and Bruce High Quality Foundation University, and in 2017 she was a professor in the Critical Theory Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Wittenberg’s works are included in many prominent collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Albertina, Vienna, Austria; the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA; and others. Exhibitions include The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look at Men at Cheim & Read Gallery, New York, NY; Painter’s Painters: Gifts from Alex Katz, High Museum of Art Atlanta, GA; and In Her Hands, Skarstedt Gallery, New York, NY.
About Art for Acres
Art into Acres is a U.S.-based, artist-founded non-profit that supports permanent land conservation on behalf of the art community. The conservation is focused on irrecoverable carbon and high biodiversity forests and the initiative is a member of PACT (Partners for Art Climate Targets). Learn more at www.visualartspact.org.
About Acquavella Galleries
For over 100 years, Acquavella Galleries has dealt in paintings, sculptures, and works on paper of unparalleled quality. Renowned for its expertise in the fields of 19th, 20th, and 21st century art, the gallery has sold important paintings and sculpture to private collectors and museums world-wide and regularly presents museum-quality exhibitions of Impressionist, modern, postwar, and contemporary masters. Founded by Nicholas Acquavella in the early 1920s, the gallery is now a third-generation, family-owned business, run by Bill, Eleanor, Nicholas, and Alexander Acquavella: Bill joined his father Nicholas in 1960, Bill’s daughter Eleanor joined in 1997, and his sons Nicholas and Alexander joined in 2000 and 2003 respectively.
Today, the gallery exhibits and deals in works by artists such as Francis Bacon, Jean Michel-Basquiat, Pierre Bonnard, Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Willem de Kooning, Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, Jasper Johns, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Wayne Thiebaud, and Andy Warhol, among the other giants of the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st century. On the primary market, the gallery represents contemporary artists Miquel Barceló, Wang Yan Cheng, Jacob El Hanani, Damian Loeb, and Tom Sachs.
Media Contacts
Tyler Mahowald | THIRD EYE | tyler@hellothirdeye.com | +1 212-355-9009 x 311
Alison Peknay | THIRD EYE | alison@hellothirdeye.com | +1 212-355-9009 x 312
Van Lundsgaard | THIRD EYE | van@hellothirdeye.com | +1 212-355-9009 x 315
"Our Love is Here to Stay" features 22 new works on canvas and paper, and will be on view at the Palm Beach gallery beginning December 16.
Following Art Basel, the New York-based painter’s forthcoming exhibition at Acquavella’s Palm Beach gallery, “Our Love is Here to Stay,” stems from a summer in Maine.
