Artists

James Bishop

Press release

James Bishop belongs to a small group of artists who resolutely opted for painting in the intense era of the 1960s. Encouraged by the important generation of post-war American painters, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky und Franz Kline, as well as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Clyfford Still and Robert Motherwell, Bishop, from 1965 onwards, found his very own artistic form.

He was equally interested in materials and the painting process. For Bishop, painting had to do with touch and surfaces. The act of painting is a gesture that begins in the body and manifests its presence and realization on the canvas or paper.

Using earthy hues and off-whites, he constructed what he himself called “uncertain scaffolds” on large-format square canvases and small sheets of paper, made of horizontal, vertical and diagonal bars that abut or overlap each other. On top of this he superimposed skins of paint in varying densities, which combine to form a resonance chamber spanning the interval between pictorial surface and depth. Detached from expressive gestures, the canvas and paper, color, surface, line and structure become artistic substance. James Bishop’s paintings make the process of creation tangible and oscillate between abstraction and remembrance of the figurative.

In addition to his artistic roots in American painting, the history and rich tradition of European painting remained a weighty reference from the outset. In 1957 he made his first trip to and through Europe, and from 1958 he lived in Paris for many years without interruption. Paul Cezanne, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Henri Matisse, Bram van Velde now offered an additional source of stimulating ideas and set a further standard for his own artistic activity. In 1962, he set off on a trip to Italy lasting several months. He wanted to experience the history of light and colour, Piero della Francesca, Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo Lotto and the Venetians of the 16th century first-hand.

James Bishop’s life and work bring together profound insights and achievements in art and culture that transcend time and place. With the concentrated instruments at his disposal, he has made an important contribution to the renewal of painting since the 1960s and, like his contemporaries Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman, testifies to its undiminished and enduring relevance.

In 1976, the first of ten solo exhibitions took place at the Annemarie Verna Gallery, marking the beginning of a 45-year intensive collaboration and friendship.