A recent exhibition titled Remaking the World, at the Ringling Museum of Art, highlighted the diversity among the generations of American painters who painted within the Expressionist mode during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. The work came from the museum’s permanent collection, which includes Irving Kriesberg’s Maternal Image (1958). This painting is an example of Kriesberg's seminal use of the figure within a painterly mode akin to Abstract Expressionism. The gesturally painted figure, made from arranging colorful shapes and forms, resembles some of the earliest known works of art: Upper Paleolithic statuettes portraying the form of a woman known as ‘Venus figurines.’
Below is an installation photograph from the museum with Kriesberg’s painting on the wall. It is the second painting from the far right.
