[Rarebooks] FS: Ernest Briggs Exh. Folders/Catalogs w/Handwritten Letter to Komei Wachi

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

[Gallery K / Briggs]  Three Ernest Briggs Exhibition Folders/Catalogs 
with a Handwritten Letter to Komei Wachi.

This lot consists of three exhibition catalogs featuring Ernest Briggs- 
"Oil Paintings", April 19-May 8, 1980 at Landmark Gallery in Manhattan 
(with a 1-page press release), "Recent Paintings", November - 25 
December 20, 1880, at Gruenebaum Gallery in Manhattan, and "New 
Paintings", April 13 - May 8, 1982, also at Gruenebaum Gallery. The 
April, 1980 catalog also has two gallery postcards for the show, one 
hand-addressed to Komei Wachi at Gallery K, along with a handwritten 
letter on yellow legal paper, dated 3/8/80 and addressed "Dear Mr. 
Wachi", and providing an extremely detailed description of how he mounts 
the canvas for his paintings on home-made temporary pine stretchers for 
shows, with several diagrams. "Ernest Briggs (1923–1984) was an active 
participant in the later wave of Abstract Expressionism, the revolution 
in abstract painting that secured New York City's position as the art 
capital of the world in the post-World War II period. His June 14, 1984 
obituary in the New York Times said, "Ernest Briggs, a second-generation 
Abstract Expressionist painter known for his expressive, sometimes 
calligraphic brushwork and his geometric compositions…continually 
struggled to reconcile an approach to painting identified with David 
Park, Richard Diebenkorn and other Abstract Expressionists of San 
Francisco, where he studied art, and an approach identified with first- 
and second-generation artists of the New York School, such as Hans 
Hofmann and Giorgio Cavallon. His work is in the collections of the 
Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Walker Art 
Center, the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art and the San Francisco 
Museum of Modern Art."

The Washington Times reported on January 20, 2006- "The deaths of 
Gallery K co-owners H. Marc Moyens and Komei Wachi just 2-1/2 years ago 
ended the District’s most exciting art era. Theirs is a unique story. 
French-born art aficionado Marc Moyens came here in 1945 to work as a 
multilingual interpreter, landed a job at the World Bank, collected 
intensively and founded Gallery Marc in 1969. It was part of the city’s 
first “gallery rows” — this one on the “P Street strip” in Northwest — 
which included the eccentric Henrietta Ehrsam’s Henri and Cuban-born 
Ramon Osuna’s Pyramid galleries. Described by one writer as “creepy and 
menacing,” the Frenchman’s “H. Marc Moyens Collection” played to mixed 
reviews at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1969. When Mr. Wachi, a 
Japanese-born mathematician, joined the gallery in 1975, the two formed 
an unbeatable team that bucked art trends — such as that of the 
then-fashionable Washington Color School — with Hieronymus Bosch-like 
surreal evocations. At first glance, Mr. Moyens and Mr. Wachi couldn’t 
have been more different. The rotund, suave Frenchman liked to hold 
forth at gallery openings, but the soft-spoken, diminutive Mr. Wachi, 16 
years Mr. Moyens’ junior, sat behind the gallery desk offering Japanese 
tea and encouraging artists. They died within six weeks of each other, 
Mr. Moyens of an apparent heart attack at 83 in April 2003 and Mr. 
Wachi, 67, of pancreatic cancer in May. These two expatriates, both 
impassioned art lovers, changed the art history of the nation’s 
capital."

3 exhibition folders, each 8.5"x11", several pages and illustrations in 
each, plus a letter. Minor soil, light wear.  [41941]  $75


Pictures ->
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Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
on the decorative and fine arts & design

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