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February 20 - April 9, 2016Info
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http://www.weinstein.com/
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(415) 362-8151
Enrico Donati. Aleppo Walls, 1960; mixed media on canvas; 60 x 60 in. Courtesy of the Estate of Enrico Donati and the Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco. Photo: Nicholas Pishvanov.
Weinstein Gallery is pleased to announce ENRICO DONATI – PRIMA MATERIA, opening February 20th and running through April 9, 2016. The exhibition includes 50 paintings and sculptures created between 1940 and 1965 and follows the artist’s transformation from the newest recruit of Surrealism to an innovator of textural abstraction at the birth of the New York School. On February 20, in conjunction with the exhibition’s opening, Weinstein Gallery will host a panel discussion featuring noted art historian Dawn Ades, author of the recently released monograph, Enrico Donati.
From as early as the 1940’s, Enrico Donati was intensely interested in the art of alchemy and its potential influence on the creative imagination. For the alchemist, the art of transforming ordinary raw materials into something precious begins with the prima materia, or “first matter,” which is the primal enigma from which all life emerges and eventually returns to. This exhibition examines Donati’s reoccurring theme of death, birth and rebirth and explores the diverse sources of prima materia in the artist’s paintings from history, archeology, and ethnography to science, alchemy and mysticism.