The New York Studio School, in collaboration with Bookstein Projects, presents Paul Resika: Allegory (San Nicola di Bari). This series of paintings is derived from an obscure engraving made of a panel from an altarpiece predella (ca. 1437) by Fra Angelico on the life of St Nicola of Bari. Ranging from somewhat-faithful reinterpretations to sparse abstractions painted in fantastic colors, this series offers a range of styles that Resika has made all his own. The first one was made in 2018, shortly after Resika came across an etching of the predella, and the last one was completed in 2021. The show will be on view from January 31 – March 6, 2022. A full-color catalog with essays by Christopher Busa and John Yau is available.

Bookstein Projects is hosting a concurrent exhibition, Paul Resika: Self-Portraits, 1946-2021, including both self-portrait paintings and works on paper executed over the last eight decades, on view January 14 – February 25, 2022, 60 East 66th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10065.

Paul Resika (b. 1928, New York, New York) studied under Hans Hofmann as a teenager in New York and Provincetown before departing for Venice and Rome in 1950 to study the old masters. After casting aside Hofmann’s abstract principles, his Italian palette turned sober and descriptive. Upon his return to the United States, Resika devoted himself increasingly to the exploration of light and color, and the synthesis of abstraction and representation. Over his eight decade-long career, Resika has exhibited at Bookstein Projects, New York, the Peridot Gallery, Graham Modern, Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, Meredith Long & Company, Houston, Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York and Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York. Resika splits his time between New York and Truro, Massachusetts.

Resika’s work is included in the collections of the Hood Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Addison Gallery among numerous others. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984) and has been elected Academician at the  National Academy of Design (1978) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1994).

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New Criterion, Gallery chronicle by James Panero, March 2022.

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