NEW YORK, NY.- Forum Gallery will participate in Independent 20th Century, with a presentation dedicated to four decades of painting by Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000). The art fair opens this week at Casa Cipriani in downtown Manhattan with an invitation-only VIP preview on Thursday, September 4th. Public days begin on Friday, September 5th and continue through Sunday, September 7th.

Gregory Gillespie painted memorable self-portraits, haunting fantasy landscapes, disturbingly surreal genre scenes and monumental, dimensional paintings, incorporating astonishing trompe l’oeil illusions and imaginary themes. His unerring eye for detail, masterful technique and uncompromising independence combined in deeply personal, often hallucinatory visions of the world. Impossible to categorize, Gregory Gillespie captivated diverse and devoted collectors, critics and curators.

Gregory Gillespie’s first New York exhibition was at Forum Gallery in 1966. The 30-year-old artist was then at the American Academy in Rome on a Fulbright grant, followed by three Chester Dale fellowships. At age forty, Gillespie burst into the national spotlight with a retrospective exhibition at the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1977. Forty solo museum and gallery exhibitions followed. He was shown regularly by the Whitney Museum of American Art, in International exhibitions of American contemporary Art, and a second retrospective, A Unique American Vision, organized by the Georgia Museum of Art traveled to four more diverse institutions in 1999.

Now, twenty-five years after his untimely death by suicide in 2000, Gregory Gillespie’s complex, psychologically charged paintings, propelled by his visual anarchy and consummate skill, are as fresh and compelling as they were during his lifetime.

Coinciding with the fair, on view at Forum Gallery will be highlights of the forthcoming presentation, Gregory Gillespie, an exhibition featuring more than thirty paintings dating from 1963 to 1999. The exhibition opens at 475 Park Avenue on September 12th, continuing through November 8th.