Exhibitions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE & LISTING

The Maxwell Davidson gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition entitled The Painted Lady: Women in Art from 1945 to 2000, on view from April 19 - June 1, 2007. The Maxwell Davidson Gallery is located at 724 Fifth Avenue, New York.

The Painted Lady: Women in Art from 1945-2000 is a survey of various ways that women have been depicted as subjects in American art since World War II. Among its many allusions, the title of the exhibition calls to mind the brightly eclectic style of house painting made famous in San Francisco and New Orleans. Fittingly, the title also references a species of butterfly by the same name, which is known for its beauty, adaptability, and existence on all continents.

The Painted Lady begins chronologically in the 1950s with Milton Avery's Nude, and finishes with Michaël Borremans' The Ulcer. The irony of Avery's 1950s nude shown with Borremans' present-day depiction of a female "yesteryear" reveals the wide range of differing views about women and womanhood found at any moment in the last sixty years. While the 1950s are not synonymous with nudity and figurative painting, Avery's subtlety as a plein air painter shows the female form at its most classic, even though the subject matter could, at the time, be considered risqué.