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Ad Code: 3
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An example of work by Herb Aach
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| The following,
with permission from Doris Aach, widow of the artist, is from that
website:
"I've been using a color stroke that tries for
discernment at three feet as well as walk-on distance. For a clarity
and distinction without blending in the eye. No large masses tilting
with each other. My masses are density without heavy texture. That
would get in the way of what I want to do..." (From the artist's
journal)
Herb Aach was recognized by the New York art scene of
the 1960s-80s for his individual and unique use of color. Born in
Cologne, Germany in 1923, Aach studied painting as a young boy with
expressionist Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966), for whom he also served as
atelier boy, until Nazi persecution forced his immediate family to flee
to New York, where he arrived in 1938. He enlisted in the U.S.
Army in 1942 and became a United States citizen in 1943. The Army
sent him back to Europe where he later served in Military Government in
Kassel, Germany. Upon his return to New York in 1946, he resumed his
art studies at The Brooklyn Museum Art School with John Ferren and
Rufino Tamayo. He would always consider himself an American
painter. In 1948, after marrying, he moved to Mexico for two
years to study art at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura in Mexico City.
It
was in this period that, in part due to the influence of John Ferren,
Aach acquired the strong preoccupation with color that shaped the rest
of his career. For nearly 10 years, between 1954 and 1963, he
experimented with and consolidated his thinking about color, developing
a style he called color expressionism in the relative isolation of
Hazleton, PA, where while formulating paints for the Art Crayon
Company, he gained access to otherwise unobtainable pigments. A
note on the back of one painting from this period reads "This is most
likely the first painting to use the new Monastral reds, yellow, and
blue shades, developed by Dupont. Pigments were lab samples prior to
plant production given to me and began use on April 30, 1958." He
made his own paints and packed them with pigment, and by the mid 1960s,
because of their intensity and inner light, he turned to fluorescent
pigments.
Aach continued to develop these ideas on his return
to New York in 1963. He began teaching at Queens College in 1965,
where he taught studio courses and color theory. Seeking a purer
framework in which to explore color relationships, Aach abandoned the
sensuous brush strokes of his earlier paintings and began working with
larger regions of color (see "Three Muses"). He quickly became a
favorite of students and was featured in the 1968 yearbook in a special
section entitled "We love you Mr. Aach!"
By 1969, he began
working out a theory of color through experiments that featured large
series of paintings whose colors and shapes were programmed.
Color relationships were central, built on innate physiological
predispositions, and color was therefore too important to waste as a
mere "label" for establishing objectural references. He credited
as influences the impressionists, post-impressionists, and
expressionists (thus, e.g., Bonnard Country), whom he revered as having
first liberated color from form and subject matter. He also cited
Giotto, whose "dry, matter of fact, but not local" color was both
non-personal and non-intuitive.
Aach produced a major book in
1971 as American editor and translator of the Matthei edition of
Goethe's Color Theory, and a major series of paintings in 1974 based on
his color theory (see "Precession of the Equinoxes"). Interested in a
fresco-like Giotto surface, he grounded his canvases with thin layers
of gesso. Despite the sharp lines between color regions and the optics
of joining fluorescent hues, Aach did not feel these were "hard edge"
paintings. Instead he believed the edges were overpowered by his highly
saturated volumetric colors.
As the 1970s progressed, Aach took
part in a broad range of activities. He participated in a series
of trips to East Germany under the aegis of IREX (International
Research and Exchanges Board) to encourage cultural exchanges with the
West, against the backdrop of the ongoing politics of "detente."
This gave him the opportunity to study at the Goethe archives in
Weimar. He took up an interest in Gothic rose windows.
In
New York, dissatisfied with the dull and fading blue color used to
paint bridges throughout the city, he agitated authorities to use a
more uplifting palette. The Madison Avenue bridge on 138th street
was ultimately painted lavender on his recommendation, inviting it to
be seen as a light and lacy construction rather than as a massive steel
bulk, emphasized by the drab blue. In 1979 Aach was diagnosed with
cancer. Though weakened by disease, he maintained his busy
teaching and travel activities, and when painting became too difficult
he still continued to draw (go here for drawings). He died in
1985.
In a catalog to a memorial exhibition at Queens College in
1986, his colleague Louis Finkelstein summarized the achievement of the
early "color expressionism" which represented Aach's maturation as an
artist:
"It is too soon after the artist's death and too
abrupt an occasion to trace and to evaluate the many threads of import
and development in these works, which represent a limited, but
extremely vital, place in Aach's entire oeuvre. His relation to a
number of predecessors and contemporaries is manifest. One thinks
first of his teacher John Ferren, but also of Pollock, of
Pousette-Dart, of Gorky, Rothko, Tamayo, Matisse, Redon, of Manfred
Schwartz, and also of Irish manuscripts, Persian textiles, Chinese and
pre-Columbian art in many of their forms, so that as a late modern, he
is densely located in a cultural tradition. Yet these relations
are not simple borrowings. There is not only indebtedness but
also repayment and enlargement of that tradition. There is
commentary and extension of the world's themes, which remain to be
explored and recognized."
SELECTED ONE-PERSON SHOWS
* Ingber Gallery, New York, 1988
* Queens College Memorial Show, New York, 1986
* Oberlichtsaal, Gebaude Van de Welde, Weimar, Germany, 1980
* Aaron Berman Gallery, New York, 1977
* Gramercy Park Fine Arts, New York, 1977
* Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York, 1975
* Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1974
* Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, 1971
* Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1967
* Jacques Seligmann Gallery, New York, 1964; 1966; 1968; 1970
* Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, 1962
* Albert Landry Gallery, New York, 1961
* Everhart Museum, Scranton, PA, 1959
* Art Direction Gallery, New York, 1958
* Creative Gallery, New York, 1952; 1953; 1954
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS
* The Artists' Museum, New York, 1992
* Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, 1991/1992
* Blue Hill Plaza, Pearl River, New York, 1989/1990
* Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1987
* Bronx Museum, New York, 1977
* OK Harris, (AFDA) New York, 1974
* Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 1974
* University of Texas, Austin, 1972
* Portland Museum of Art, Washington, 1970
* US Information Agency, traveling show, India, 1970
* Jacques Seligmann Gallery, New York, 1965; 1969
* Pace College, New York, 1966
* Cranbrook Institute, Detroit, 1966
* Everhart Museum, Scranton, PA, 1958
* American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York, 1957
* Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1956; 1957
* Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia, 1955; 1957
* Stable Gallery, New York, 1954; 1955
* Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1952; 1956
SELECTED PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
* Albright Knox Museum
* Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta, India
* Chase Manhattan Bank Collection
* Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Univ. of N. Carolina
* William Penn Memorial Museum, Harrisburg, PA
* Grey Gallery, New York University
* IBM
* Ciba Geigy
* Corcoran Gallery of Art
* Willem and Elaine de Kooning
* Harold Hart
* David Anderson
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