Polly Apfelbaum
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Works
Polly Apfelbaum
Heart and Soul - Yellow, 2020Woodblock
Fuji DHM-11 Kozo Misumi 536gsm16 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches
(41.3 x 41.3 cm)Edition of 30© Polly Apfelbaum/Durham Press, 2020Heart and Soul, a portfolio of nine woodblock prints, was developed in tandem with a series of monoprints, titled There Are Many Hearts, both of which feature an interlocking grid...Heart and Soul, a portfolio of nine woodblock prints, was developed in tandem with a series of monoprints, titled There Are Many Hearts, both of which feature an interlocking grid of hearts in a variety of colors and sizes. This pattern draws from Pennsylvania German folk art and twentieth-century modernism, which Apfelbaum has adapted into a repeating yet playful design as she new chromatic combinations in a range of colors and sizes.
The folk art of Pennsylvania that once decorated Apfelbaum's childhood home and has long fascinated her has now served as the impetus for her most recent prints. Specifically, Apfelbaum's new works have been inspired by the Pennsylvania German who have often sewn heart shapes into quilts and included them on hand-painted "barn stars" that adorn the sides of many of the region's agricultural buildings, as well as incorporating them on Fraktur - illuminated calligraphic drawings used to document occasions such as births, baptisms, and new homes.
At the Durham Press Studio, Apfelbaum first used the featured heart shape to create monoprints, conceiving an interlocking composition that recalls the designs of Alexander Girard and other modernists. Featuring square formats with 14, 25, or 79 inch edges, the three sizes range from intimate to all-embracing, with various scales and palettes imbuing each with a singular temperament – an attribute affirmed by the series title, There Are Many Hearts, which references a valentine Apfelbaum’s great aunt made for her grandmother. “There are many hearts,” it reads. “Broken, yellow, sad, beware, black, one pure gold.”
These monoprints quickly gave rise to Heart and Soul. Compared to many other of Apfelbaum’s collaborations with Durham Press, often comprised of dozens and sometimes hundreds of separately inked blocks, these prints were created through a relatively pared-down process. As a result, the artist chose more experimental palettes – rather than focusing on primary and secondary hues, she mixed colors into colors, yielding unique shades that she then combined on paper in various compositions. Some, whether by uniting one chromatic family or pairing complimentary colors, are easy to love at first sight. Others challenge the eye, revealing conflict and tension – but perhaps leading to a greater love in time.
Viewing rooms
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Polly Apfelbaum | Solar Eclipse - Stripe for Stripe - Rainbow Monoprints
2008 - 2024 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Barn Star monoprints
2022 - 2023 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Heart and Soul – There Are Many Hearts
2020 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Targets
2019 – 2020 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Hudson River Valley Nirvana
2016 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Love Series
Come see how Polly Apfelbaum's celebrated prints were inspired and produced over two decades and launched the ambitious collaborations between Polly Apfelbaum and Durham Press, including several limited edition print projects. -
Polly Apfelbaum | Color Exercises
2002 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Three Flowers
2004
BiographyPolly Apfelbaum | Working on Love Park 9 Woodblock Mono Print 2006B. 1955, PHILADELPHIA, PA
New York based artist Polly Apfelbaum has been showing consistently in the US and abroad since the 1980s. She has been making prints with Durham Press since 2002 and exhibited a survey of that work in the 2017 exhibit Chromatic Scale: Prints by Polly Apfelbaum at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.
Solo exhibitions include Alexander Gray, New York (2017); Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2016); Bepart, Waregem, Belgium (2014); Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA (2014); Electric Zinia Factory, Germany (2014); lumber room, Portland, OR (2014); Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai, India (2013). T-Space, Milan, NY, (2012); Galerie Nachst St. Stephan, Vienna, (2012); D’Amelio Gallery, New York, (2012); Carlow Visual Center for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Ireland, (2009); and Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK, (2009); Frith Street Gallery, London, (2007). A major mid-career survey of her work opened in 2003 at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, PA and traveled to Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (2004).
Her work has been featured in important group exhibitions including Abstranded: Fiber and Abstraction in Contemporary Art, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2021); Pattern II, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel, Switzerland (2020); Maneuver, Hunter College, New York, New York (2019); An Irruption of the Rainbow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Wall to Wall, MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH (2016); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA (2015); Three Graces, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2015); Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today, Museum of Art and Design, New York (2015); AMERICANA: Formalizing Craft, Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL (2013); Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (2012); Lines, Grids, Stains, and Words (2008), Comic Abstraction (2007), and Sense and Sensibility: Women and Minimalism in the 90’s (1994) all at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Extreme Abstraction, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, (2005); As Painting: Division and Displacement, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, (2002); Operativo, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, (2001).
Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of Art of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; The Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and the Perez Museum, Miami.
She was the recipient of a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant in 1987, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993, an Artist’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1995, an Anonymous Was a Women Award in 1998, a Richard Diebenkorn Fellowship in 1999, a Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 1999, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2002, and the Rome Prize in 2012.
Apfelbaum is represented by Frith Street Gallery in London.
