George McNeil (1908-1995) was born 112 years ago on this date in Brooklyn, NY. McNeil and Kriesberg were kindred spirits as Post-WWII American Expressionists, and became close friends and colleagues throughout their lives. They taught in some of the same institutions, visited each other’s studios, exchanged works of art, and corresponded regularly via written letters.
McNeil and Kriesberg are both renowned for their use of color and their incorporation of figurative and representational imagery in a mode that has Abstract Expressionist origins (McNeil started as an Abstract Expressionist, but joined Kriesberg et al in Figurative Expressionist-type painting towards the end of the 60s). Critics, art historians, and curators such as April Kingsley, have noted that their gestural and anarchic style of figurative painting, paved the way for the Neo-Expressionist mode of art, which prevailed across the international art scene during the 1980s.
In 1979, McNeil and Kriesberg exhibited alongside one another at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York. The two person show was titled Origins in Color: Irving Kriesberg and George McNeil. The exhibition was described as containing “painterly creature-like images and extracted figures emerging from color” (New York Magazine, 25 Jun. 1979, p.30). They were also included together in the following exhibitions: The Interior Self: Three Generations of Expressionist Painters View the Human Image (Montclair Art Museum, 1987) and Emotional Impact: New York School Figurative Expressionism (1984-1986, U.S. traveling exhibition).
In 1975, Kriesberg dedicated a painting to McNeil, titled Homage to George McNeil. Regarding the subject matter within the painting, Kriesberg wrote: "I was very much impressed by a show of McNeil's. Dancers are in unison, one large, the other small.” The painting features strong geometric shapes that depict familiar Kriesberg imagery from the 1970s. The elongated legs stretched across the canvas, are reminiscent of the abstract-figurative “walkers” that Irving painted beginning around 1971. Another signature element are the contorted anthropomorphic forms of the dancers, which Kriesberg repeated in paintings throughout the decade. Dancers also graced McNeil’s canvases, as seen through Dancer #12 (1970) and others.
