Summer Shadows
June 21 – July 29, 2004
Woodward Gallery
Woodward Gallery is proud to premiere Andy Warhol: Shadows I-V, the complete 1979 diamond dust edition- opening on the first day of Summer, 2004. A special, historical exhibition of Warhol’s entire diamond dust Shadow print series will be exhibited together for the very first time. Woodward Gallery will sizzle this summer with Warhol’s glittering bold colors and curiously darkened shapes.
In the beginning of his career, Andy Warhol moved away from the abstract art of the time to create art from images of popular culture. Ironically, in the final decade of his life, Warhol became preoccupied by abstractions.
In 1979, Warhol embarked on a journey to isolate images cast by shadows. With his studio assistant Ronnie Cutrone, Warhol took photographs of shadows generated by maquettes devised for the sole purpose of creating abstract forms.
Warhol used these shadow images to develop a silkscreen print series designated in five parts. There are twenty-two prints which comprise one complete Shadow series. Each 43 x 301/2 inch screenprint is unique in color and degree of diamond dust application. Each part of the Shadow series I-V was produced in small editions that were numbered and signed. Warhol also completed paintings of this subject.
Reacting to the paintings in 1998, The New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith wrote that the “…Shadows displayed together have a cinematic effect reading as repeated outtakes from one or two of Franz Kline’s big beamed abstractions….Shadows still retain some
resonance characteristic of Warhol’s icons of Liz, Marilyn or Elvis….they convey a similar combination of glamour and remoteness that triggers fantasy and the desire for something that can’t be possessed or known.”
Although the work is void of recognizable forms, it is as full of imagery as any other Warhol project. In 2000, art critic Richard Kalima wrote about Warhol’s Shadows suggesting that they remind one of film frames, he said, “…which afterall, cast a kind of shadow in projection.”
The complete Shadow print series is organized and premiered through July 2004 at Woodward Gallery, NYC in association with The Malloy Family Foundation. The Shadows exhibition will continue to tour this Fall traveling to the Quincy Art Center, Illinois; and to The Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University, New Jersey. In 2005, the exhibition will be presented at select locations throughout the USA courtesy of Woodward Gallery.
