PASADENA, CALIF.- Jack Rutberg Fine Arts presents a significant exhibition of works by New York artist George Nama. Located at 600 S. Lake Avenue in Pasadena, this exhibition continues the gallery's presentation of museum quality exhibitions since its move to Pasadena, as one of the longest established fine art galleries in Los Angeles.


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The exhibition, "George Nama: 60 Years of Selected Works" includes bronze sculptures as well as painted collages. Some are large, but in contrast, included are a group of small scale works from 1958, with Nama’s intent to create monumentality on an intimate scale - in notable contrast with the predominant tendency of Abstract Expressionism at that formative time.

The works of George Nama defy easy categorization. They are at once monumental and yet, ephemeral. Figuration is the root of his imagery, but Nama’s forms are as invented as any non-objective painting or drawing might be, since nature is but a starting point while poetry, music and musings are most often the catalyst in Nama’s body of work.

It’s no wonder that some of the 20th century’s most significant artists in other media have sought to collaborate with Nama in the realization of their literary works. Among them are the great 20th century French writer/poet, Yves Bonnefoy, Alfred Brendel, the renowned pianist and celebrated writer/poet, and Charles Simic, Pulitzer Prize winning poet laureate, former editor of The Paris Art Review, and recipient of the MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant, and George A. Romero, the profoundly influential filmmaker. Romero's final work – a poignant short story, “Liberator” - was a collaboration with Nama’s related etchings and gouaches, which are included in this current exhibition.

All these collaborations resulted in sumptuous projects about which Bonnefoy, whose writings on artists such as Goya, Giacometti, Miro and so many giants of the 20th century, declared he “would not hesitate to place [Nama’s artist books] among the most remarkable creations in the past twenty to thirty years, in the United States or France, where the genre has a long tradition.”

Other important art critics agree. New York Times critic Grace Glueck wrote on the occasion of Nama’s exhibition with Alfred Brendel’s poetry, Nama’s works have “achieved a life of its own [apart from Mr. Brendel’s celebrated poetry]”, while Art in America critic David Ebony labeled the work “visual poetry”.

The etchings from 2000 in this exhibition, related to Yves Bonnefoy’s “Threshold’s Lure” affirm these critical notes as Nama's surreal sculptural “gardenscapes” offer an extraordinary tonal range evoking Rembrandt’s greatest etchings.

George Nama’s works reside in major museum collections internationally including: the Smithsonian Institution National Collection of Arts; Bibliotheque National, Paris; National Japanese Collection; Musee Jenisch, Vevey, Switzerland; Herzog August Bibliothek, Germany; Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Brooklyn Museum; the Morgan Library; National Academy of Design; Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Carnegie Institute Museum of Art; Boston Athenaeum; Yale University Art Gallery; The Hammer Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, etc.


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