MIAMI , FL, USA, January 23, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Collectors, artists, museum representatives, and art consultants flooded the booth where works by the late artist Harold Garde—including paintings, his signature Strappo prints, and works on paper—were on view at the 22nd edition of SCOPE Miami Beach this past December.

Several large paintings sold, including Garde’s iconic 55” x 72” acrylic on canvas “Stander,” along with many works on paper. “It’s just great work, plain and simple,” said Bill Hohns, whose collection of Garde works numbers almost 200. “The amount of art movements you see just in his own career is incredible. He played with everything he saw. He didn’t allow himself to be typecast. He was constantly expanding his envelope, always digging deeper.”

A prolific, restless talent, Garde was a painter, printmaker, educator, and innovator, and kept studios in Florida and Maine until his death in 2022 at 99. His legacy will soon be honored at the University of Wyoming Art Museum—where he first studied art on the GI Bill—in a two-part retrospective of never-before-seen works beginning February 24 (the second installation is scheduled for June). At UW, he studied with Ilya Bolotowsky, George McNeil, and Leon Kelly. These artists exposed Garde to Geometric Abstraction, Abstract Expressionism, and Surrealism. Upon his return to New York, he earned a Master of Art and art education from Columbia and set about forging his own distinctive style, oscillating initially between gestural abstraction and figurative abstraction before settling most consistently into the latter. It was in this tension between figuration and abstraction, most often rendered with tremendous psychological depth, that Garde found his voice.

Kelley Lehr, who mounted the last retrospective before Garde’s death at her gallery, Cove St. Arts in Portland, observed: “Harold’s paintings and Strappos are deeply compelling, regardless of period or subject matter. Their intrigue lies not only in the immediacy inherent to Harold’s processes, amped up further by vivacious palettes, but also in the work’s rawness and viscerally registered sense of authenticity. Garde’s Neo-Expressionist figures vibe somewhere between ‘Namaste’ and ‘projected interior Freudscape,” and yet, even in his most grotesque and/or twisted humanoid forms, the artist’s joie de vivre, humor and empathy for his subjects are apparent.”

Upon discovering Garde’s work at SCOPE, Chantel Woodman, founder of South Africa-based fine art curation and consultancy platform African Art Scene, observed, “Garde’s work invites viewers to delve into the interplay between the seen and unseen, the conscious and subconscious, providing a rich terrain for contemplation and emotional resonance.”

Aside from being a prominent artist and beloved educator, Garde leaves art history the revolutionary Strappo printmaking technique, whereby he transferred paintings made on glass or acrylic to paper after they dried. His development of Strappo monotypes earned Garde international fame.
Suzette McAvoy, former director of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and former curator of the Farnsworth Museum, both in Rockland, has said: “Harold Garde was a seminal figure in the contemporary art scene in Maine from the 1980s until his death. His radically expressive art challenged the perception of Maine art as representational and nature-based. He came of age aesthetically during the post-World War II heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Though he later embraced figuration as a means to extend his exploration of the human condition, his abstract roots continued to run through his art.”

FOR PRESS INQUIRES, INTERVIEWS, OR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, please contact Amy Asher @ Studio 41 LLC (877.427.3388, info@haroldgardeart.com).

About Harold Garde:
Harold Garde was an influential American artist most often associated with his innovative "Strappo" printing technique who made many contributions to the world of contemporary art as an artist, innovator, instructor, and mentor for younger artists. Throughout a career spanning almost seven decades, Garde's work has been exhibited globally and is currently in many institutional collections, including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library (New York), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), the Portland Museum of Art, Zillman Art Museum, Bangor, ME and the Farnsworth Museum (Maine), Fine Arts Museum of New Mexico (Santa Fe), the University of Wyoming Art Museum (Laramie) and the Orlando Museum of Art (Florida). His work is also part of the private collections of Sheryl Sandberg (former COO of Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook) and former NBC News producer Thomas Bernthal; Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer; and independent curator Edward Robinson (formerly of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). To learn more about Garde and his work, visit www. haroldgadeart.com

Upcoming Exhibitions: University of Wyoming Art Museum
Harold Garde at 100: The Unseen Works in Two Acts
This exhibition features 100 never-before artworks. The exhibition will unfold in two acts with 50 artworks in Act I and the entire 100 in Act II. Paintings and works on paper from Maine, New York, and Florida were selected to exemplify Garde’s distinct vision and the iconographies he returned to across decades.
Act I: February 24, 2024 Act II: June 1, 2024 Conclusion: February 22, 2025

1000 E. University Ave.
Dept.3807, Laramie, WY 82071 www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum
@uwyoartmuseum

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