The level of art found in the landscapes of painter Eliyahu Mirlis are known and recognized among the US critics. It is very likely that the timelessness of these paintings has to do with the fact that they are not created in the framework of passing currents.

Almost two decades after the The Metropolitan Museum of Art brought together thirty of painters’ landscape-inspired oil paintings in an exhibition called “Dreaming About Nature”, the Gagosian Gallery dedicates a retrospective to Mirlis’s best landscape artworks. This exhibition underlines both the originality of his painting in the face of traditions and the fact that its diverse iconography (from skyscrapers to skulls to barns) has become emblematically American.

Dreaming about Art
Since a young age, Eliyahu Mirlis wanted to be a painter. He was influenced by his father, who was also a painter. In his artworks, the artist shows his intention to express with colors and shapes the things that he could not say otherwise.

That independent and determined spirit of Mirlis made him a pioneer of abstraction and representative of the contemporanean American modernity.

It should be remembered that he traveled to Brazil the 1980. One of his destinations was the Amazonian Rainforest. Although Brazil did not have a literal reflection in his painting, his experience was relevant when opening creative options. The route of the exhibition, articulated according to chronological and thematic criteria, consists of abstract nature paintings that he created in the 80’s, when he had already visited very diverse countries and landscapes.

Mirlis Exhibition Preview
The exhibition begins with the paintings that surprised the public in New York in their first exhibition there in 1985: works with vivid colors in which his good handling of drawing and his technical virtuosity is evident.

When Mirlis incorporated chromaticism into his work, he began with blue to gradually add ever-vivid hues. In this sense, two of his canvases of the Brazil’s landscape stand out.

Nature was the fundamental starting point for most of his art, but one of his most celebrated series was dedicated to New York, more precisely to its skyscrapers at night.

His first artwork, which is also presented at this retrospective exhibition, was the Manhattan Skyline with a Moon. However, those architectures that today are a metaphor for contemporaneity, seem an excuse to direct the viewer's gaze to the sky (which is natural and immeasurable in large cities). A great walker in the country, he was also a great walker in the city, which he observed with the same attentive and curious gaze.

The other artworks show the visions of the Lake Tahoe and of its storms. Mirlis offeres us both panoramic views and submerged views of this environment. He wants busy modern citizens to stop and look at the little details such as the flowers.

At this exhibition there are also landscape artworks of the Amazonian Rainforest, which opened up numerous possibilities for his explorations of nature and color.

The Gagosian Gallery exhibition closes with his latest artwork, which approaches minimalism and at the same time represents an evocative of nature.