Andrea Belag: Twombly’s Green

March 6 - April 13, 2024

Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects presents a show of new paintings by Andrea Belag (b. 1951) entitled Twombly’s Green. This grouping of work is, as the title suggests, inspired by Belag’s recollection of Cy Twombly’s use of the color Hooker’s green in his “Pond Paintings.” She writes, 

These paintings are inspired by my memory of Twombly’s green and white paintings that I first saw in the Menil Collection in Houston in 2015. I was stunned by his paint handling and his use of Hooker’s Green.

Since then, I learned he painted quickly and directly with his hands. Discovering the “Pond Paintings” was unexpected and I kept thinking about them. Hooker’s green is opaque and dark. But the dark value doesn’t overwhelm the hue. Instead, there is richness and depth without a trace of yellow.

When I identified the pigment and started to paint with it, I felt a vibration. There was a time when painting with green was taboo and now it is ubiquitous.

Is green in the zeitgeist?

All painted within the last twelve months, these works are a continuation of the artist’s practice of lush, energetic abstraction. Playing with circularity in an ongoing attempt to “get away from the grid,” Belag uses color as forms in space, bodies set in motion. Citing foundational inspirations in Matisse and Guston, who she later studied with at the New York Studio School, Belag’s work can also be related to vanguard practitioners of 80s abstraction such as Bill Jensen, David Reed and Mary Heilmann. Her immediate peers Christopher Wool and Joyce Pensato are also compass points in the stripped down dedication to raw painterly brio they share. 

Belag attended Boston University, Bard College and the New York Studio School. Between 1995 and 2020 she taught abstract painting at The School of Visual Art. Her paintings and works on paper have been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including at the Jewish Museum, NY; Pera Museum, Istanbul; Mead Museum, Amherst; Newark Museum, NJ, and Heinz Holtmann, Cologne. In 2023, Belag had a solo show at Bienvenu Steinberg & J entitled Currents. She is the recipient of two public art commissions, the MTA Arts and Design Commission in 2015 and one for an outdoor installation in Far Rockaway by the New York City Cultural Council, to be completed in 2026. Belag has been awarded an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize (2022), as well as the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Painting (1999), and is a three time recipient of the Yaddo residency. 

This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Bienvenu, Steinberg & J.