Forum Gallery

Forum Gallery Founded in 1961, Forum Gallery in New York presents American Modernism, Post War and Contemporary Art with a focus on humanism, narrative and figuration.

By appointment through May 18, 2026. Forum Gallery was founded in New York City in 1961 as a gallery of American figurative art. Forum Gallery was founded in New York City in 1961 by Bella Fishko, as a gallery of American figurative art. Among the first artists represented were Raphael Soyer, Chaim Gross, David Levine and Gregory Gillespie. The gallery is a founding member of the Art Dealers Assoc

iation of America. From inception, Forum Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program has been augmented by mounting curated, thematic exhibitions of historic importance, in keeping with the gallery’s focus on humanism. Forum Gallery’s program expanded internationally in the 1980’s, and the gallery soon represented the American artists William Beckman and Robert Cottingham as well as the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum. Today, Forum Gallery represents more than thirty American and European artists and estates, including Chilean born masters Claudio Bravo and Guillermo Muñoz Vera, Spanish realist Cesar Galicia, and Austrian artist Xenia Hausner. American artists whose work is now represented by Forum Gallery include Steven Assael, Linden Frederick, Alan Magee, Alyssa Monks, Clio Newton, Brian Rutenberg and Tula Telfair. Forum Gallery regularly exhibits at art fairs throughout the United States. The gallery exhibited at the inaugural edition of The Art Show (ADAA – Park Avenue Armory) and has since participated twenty times. An early exhibitor at the Chicago International Art Exposition at Navy Pier, Forum now exhibits at ExpoChicago annually. In 2000, Forum Gallery mounted an Odd Nerdrum exhibition at the FIAC in Paris, and today the gallery exhibits regularly at fairs in San Francisco, New York, Miami, Houston, Seattle and Chicago. A service business focused on customer satisfaction, Forum Gallery looks forward to every opportunity to assist collectors, experienced and new.

Forum Gallery is pleased to announce our move to a new location on the 7th Floor of The Fuller Building, 41 East 57th St...
08/31/2026

Forum Gallery is pleased to announce our move to a new location on the 7th Floor of The Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, New York, effective September 11, 2026. From August 28 until September 10, the gallery will be open by appointment only while we prepare our new space; please call or email if you would like to visit during this time.

Our temporary residence on the 11th floor of The Fuller Building continues until September 10. We have enjoyed sharing the space with DFN Projects for the summer, and wish to thank Rick, Zach and Lisa for making us feel comfortable and at home.

We are looking forward to Forum Gallery's next chapter in our beautiful new space. Beginning September 14, we will exhibit a group of paintings by Raphael Soyer that accents our one-person presentation of the Artist’s work at Independent 20th Century at the Breuer Building, Madison Avenue at 75th Street, September 24 – 27; we urge you to attend; it promises to be a great exhibition.

At the new gallery, we will also install a curated selection of works by Brian Rutenberg to celebrate our 25 years of working together. The works will be on view from September 14; we will hold a reception for the Artist at the gallery on a date in October, to be announced soon. Please stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is our new address and open hours:

Forum Gallery
The Fuller Building
41 East 57th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10022
(212) 355-4545
Monday through Friday, 10am to 5:30pm, and by appointment.

Forum Gallery is pleased to announce that this coming September, we will present a special exhibition of paintings by Ra...
08/26/2026

Forum Gallery is pleased to announce that this coming September, we will present a special exhibition of paintings by Raphael Soyer (1899-1987) at Independent 20th Century, September 24-27, 2026.

This year's edition of the fair will take place at The Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York, the iconic landmark of 20th Century architecture that has served as home to the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Met Breuer and the Frick Collection, and is now the global headquarters of Sotheby's.

Raphael Soyer, called the “dean of American Realist Painters” by The New York Times in 1972, was one of the most celebrated and admired figurative artists of the 20th Century. The Whitney Museum of American Art, then at The Breuer, organized and presented a major retrospective of his work in 1967. The exhibition traveled to six museums across the country.

Independent 20th Century is the art fair that seeks to revitalize appreciation of 20th Century art by presenting artists of diverse origin, style, and generation. Reporting on this year’s edition of Independent 20th Century, ARTnews states, “The fair’s focus on overlooked histories, rediscoveries, and alternative versions of the 20th-century canon feels particularly well-suited to a building that has hosted some of New York’s most important museum exhibitions."

Forum Gallery has represented Raphael Soyer’s work since its founding in 1961. Soyer, who came to America as a twelve-year-old boy in 1912, grew up on the Lower East Side, studied art, and documented his surroundings in his earliest works. In the 1930’s, his focus turned to the working class and the dispossessed. During the depression and later the World War II era, he became an important and beloved New York artist whose contribution is a vital and irreplaceable component of 20th Century American Figurative Art. For Independent 20th Century, we have rigorously selected exceptional examples, including paintings that were in the 1967 Whitney retrospective and outstanding early and later works from private collections.

Always dedicated to and focused on the people around him, Raphael Soyer once said, “…if the art of painting is to survive, it must describe and express people, their lives and times… It must communicate.” Narrative paintings and portraits from every decade of Raphael Soyer’s career are in every major museum collection in America.

Forum Gallery will be sharing more information with you about our presentation in the coming weeks. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Independent 20th Century
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

VIP Preview
(by invitation only)
Thursday, September 24th

Public Days
Friday, September 25th, 11am - 7pm
Saturday, September 26th, 11am - 7pm
Sunday, September 27th, 12pm - 6pm

Images:
Raphael Soyer in his studio with "Avenue of the Americas", 1969
"Self-Portrait", c. 1930, oil on panel, 10 x 10 inches
"Love Story (Sentimental Girl)", 1933, oil on canvas, 36 x 34 inches
Independent 20th Century 2026 at The Breuer. Photography by Colin Miller for Sotheby's

Final Week! "Summer of Love", an exhibition imparting the frolicsome fever of summertime love and play, is on view throu...
08/24/2026

Final Week! "Summer of Love", an exhibition imparting the frolicsome fever of summertime love and play, is on view through this Friday, August 28th.

Artnet declares Forum Gallery's "Summer of Love" a must-see exhibition. "Tapping into the vibrant, jubilant themes associated with summertime, 'Summer of Love' features over 20 works on paper, paintings, textiles, and sculptures by 17 artists that capture the season’s emotional flair. Featuring work by both Modern and contemporary artists, what is revealed is a varied landscape that transcends place and time period, and reflects an ongoing engagement with the deeply human aspects of the season."

Read the full article: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-york-exhibitions-artnet-gallery-network-2796589

Ethereal, rapturous works by Amélie Chabannes, Nathaniel Aric Galka, Chaim Gross (1902-1991), Brian Rutenberg, and Ben Shahn (1898-1969), transport us to dreamy worlds of spiritual transcendence. The expressions of these artists defy the earthbound physicality of their distinctive hand and textural mediums.

Alongside these otherworldly gems are atmospheric depictions of places and spaces rendered with the unique talents of visionary artists Frederick Brosen, Davis Cone, Linden Frederick, Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000), Bernard Karfiol (1886-1952), and Anthony Mitri.

Furthering the mood are tender and spirited moments by Rance Jones, Béla Kádár (1877-1956), Clio Newton, Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), Michael C. Thorpe, and Max Weber (1881-1961) also on view in Summer of Love.

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here: https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
"Summer of Love", Forum Gallery, New York, July 6 - August 28, 2026

Continuing at Forum Gallery is "Summer of Love", an exhibition presenting more than twenty modern and contemporary paint...
08/20/2026

Continuing at Forum Gallery is "Summer of Love", an exhibition presenting more than twenty modern and contemporary paintings, works on paper, quilts and sculpture by seventeen artists. Works by Ben Shahn (1898-1969), Amélie Chabannes (b. 1974) and Béla Kádár (1877-1956) explore the desire, intimacy and bliss of romantic relationships.

"Love Sonnet: I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong" is a charming watercolor painted by Ben Shahn in the early 1960s as part of a series of illustrations for "Love Sonnets", a pocket-sized anthology edited by Louis Untermeyer and published by Odyssey Press in 1964. It features romantic poems with notes by Untermeyer and Shahn's distinctive color paintings, each accompanied by a love sonnet expressed in calligraphy and illumination in Shahn’s own hand. The poem that Shahn's spiritual evocation illustrates is titled "Renouncement", written by British poet, Alice Meynell (1847-1922):

“I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—
The thought of thee—and in the blue heaven’s height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.”

Also on view in "Summer of Love" is Amélie Chabannes' "Bride of the Wind #2". The Artist's feminist interpretation of Oskar Kokoshka's best known work, "The Bride of the Wind" (also known as "The Tempest"), an allegorical painting from 1914 featuring Kokoshka's self-portrait lying alongside his lover, Alma Mahler. Chabannes portrays the intense and volatile nature of companionship by abstracting the lovers even further than in the original. The female figure is dominant, represented in an agitated schema of colored linework, while the figure of her male counterpart is subdued, silhouetted with textural white dots on black. The figures are intrinsically different and disconnected despite their physical proximity.

Chabannes follows a strict and systematic process. A map of the original document is built upon numerous layers of tracing paper; the data is endlessly flipped over, transferred and overlapped on a wood panel until the borders of each of the protagonists fade away. The image and its representational aspect is altered by its own repetition. Then, the drawing and the wood panel it lies on are partially or entirely demolished. She writes for One Art Nation, "Not only I aim to challenge the highly established icons and predominant art history narratives and values; I also hope to face up to my own work, the conventionality and sacralization of its fabrication, the endurance and time, the production involved and its new inner possibilities."

"Untitled (man and woman, at table)" depicts with modernist abstract flare a couple dining in an elegant restaurant. With sparse use of line and rich shadow, Béla Kádár (1877-1956) surprises the viewer with a graphic image that is simultaneously decorative, seducing us to linger longer to absorb the Artist's technique and use of the charcoal medium. One of Hungary's leading artists of the 20th century, Kádár combined themes from folklore and peasant life with the styles of expressionism, constructivism and cubo-futurism.

In 1918, in the wake of the first World War, Kádár fled Budapest for Berlin, the epicenter of art at the time. In Berlin, his works were regularly included in group exhibitions alongside Marc Chagall, Franz Marc and Paul Klee. Kádár’s early style changed during the course of his Berlin years. The powerful graphic tone that characterized his work before the 1920s was replaced with a more romantic mood and complex surfaces.

"Summer of Love" is on view through August 28, 2026.

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here: https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
Ben Shahn, "Love Sonnet: I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong", c. 1962
graphite, watercolor, gouache and gold leaf on paper, 7 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches
Ben Shahn, "Love Sonnet: I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong", c. 1962 (verso)
Amélie Chabannes, "Bride of the Wind #2", 2010, acrylic, ink and tracing paper on wood panel, 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches
Béla Kádár, "Untitled (man and woman, at table)", n.d., charcoal on paper, 9 7/8 x 13 3/4 inches
"Summer of Love", Forum Gallery, New York, July 6 - August 28, 2026

Included in "Summer of Love" is Gregory Gillespie's "Lani’s Game", 1999, a uniquely charming depiction of a casual baseb...
08/11/2026

Included in "Summer of Love" is Gregory Gillespie's "Lani’s Game", 1999, a uniquely charming depiction of a casual baseball game organized by the Artist's friend and the painting’s namesake. While the inspiration is innocent enough, a large shadow looms over the bright green grassy field introducing an unsettling, ominous atmosphere to the scene. Some of the players, in shadow, have turned away from the game to acknowledge the Artist's presence.

The eeriness of the scene is quintessential Gillespie, as described by Abram Lerner in his catalogue essay for the Artist’s 1978 Hirshhorn Museum retrospective: “…one is conscious of human estrangement and isolation as a constant and brooding presence. Gillespie’s universe is filled with strange and sparkling detail, with small groups of forlorn figures in a city square or in intimate landscapes which remind us of those precious Gothic fancies in which every tree and hill represents all of the known world."

Also on view in "Summer of Love" are atmospheric works by Frederick Brosen (b. 1954), Rance Jones (b. 1965), and Davis Cone (b. 1950). With the prodigious talents of these American artists, the scenes in "Thunderbolt", "Bicicleta Rosada", and "York / Walking the Dogs" capture celebrated summer activities and amusements with luscious color and ambiance.

"Summer of Love" is on view through August 28, 2026.

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here: https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
Gregory Gillespie, "Lani's Game", 1999, oil on wood, 10 1/2 x 28 1/4 inches
Gregory Gillespie, "Lani's Game", 1999 (detail)
Frederick Brosen, "Thunderbolt", 2025, watercolor over graphite on paper, 35 x 25 inches
Rance Jones, "Bicicleta Rosada", 2023, watercolor on paper, 12 1/2 x 10 inches
Davis Cone, "York / Walking the Dogs", 2019, acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 inches
"Summer of Love", Forum Gallery, New York, July 6 - August 28, 2026

"Summer of Love", an exhibition imparting the frolicsome fever of summertime love and play, continues at Forum Gallery t...
08/04/2026

"Summer of Love", an exhibition imparting the frolicsome fever of summertime love and play, continues at Forum Gallery through August 28th. Michael C. Thorpe (b. 1993), Rance Jones (b. 1965), and Nathaniel Aric Galka (b. 1975) are three contemporary artists included in Summer of Love whose works portray the dreaminess of mid-summer.

Michael C Thorpe's "Amongst all the complaints is a title", 2024, is an inventive quilt of stunning craftmanship and creativity. Taking as his launching pad the parody of Henri Rousseau’s famous jungle scene, "La Rêve", 1910, seen in Season 1, Episode 11, “The Crepes of Wrath” of the iconic television show, The Simpsons, Thorpe embraces the show’s irreverence with good spirited humor, remodeling its reimagination of Rousseau’s masterpiece of western art into fabric and stitches. "Amongst all the complaints is a title" playfully references art history while remaining fresh and distinctive.

Thorpe is a storyteller who uses quilting as an artistic vehicle to connect to his rich and complicated history. Quilting is a skill passed on intergenerationally by the matriarchs of the Artist's family who were part of the quilting community in New England. Thorpe’s subsequent discovery of the Gee’s Bend community of African American women quilters in Alabama offered the Artist deeper personal meaning in his chosen medium and a connection to his African American heritage.

Rance Jones' "Jade", 2020, is, on the surface, a masterful watercolor depicting a street scene observed by the Artist, but upon closer inspection, the viewer is confronted with a complex interiority. The subjects' introspection is felt palpably through her body language and intense, direct stare. The young woman at the center of the composition is seated in a simple chair by the side of the road, framed within the weathered, jade colored stone walls of a Cuban building. “Jade” may also apply to the name of the woman, while the color is often associated with notions of growth and protection.

Jones does not shy away from depicting intricate and nuanced scenes. His ongoing series of paintings about Cuban life explore themes of economic hardship and resilience of the spirit. In the new Rance Jones monograph "Watercolors of Cuba", Andrew Walker, the Executive Director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art at the time of writing, notes, “In each watercolor, he paints not just the landscape or the architecture, but stories of the individual who inhabit those spaces. And those stories touch something familiar, universal even; they seize on the essence of a shared human experience and foster empathy through his brushstrokes…By focusing on the stories, struggles, and celebrations of the Cuban people, Rance’s art demonstrates the power of visual art to transcend geographical boundaries, connect with audiences, and evoke emotional resonance.”

Nathaniel Aric Galka thinks of his paintings as fables created to communicate moral lessons. In "You can feel happiness return..." hope and potential are represented by the thriving plants, fluttering birds, and insects that fill the frame. The fox and hare, potent symbols of the duality of nature, predator and prey, are harmonious in Galka's enchanting, imagined world.

Unlike a traditional fable, Galka invites the viewer to imagine their own narrative. The Artist employs a similar technique as early Disney animation artists, using a scrim style to create hundreds of layers to each painting. In the May/June 2024 issue of Connect Magazine, Galka explains, “How I paint is by literally adding one more ‘gel of a cartoon’ on top of the other until I have this full forest that’s invented layer by layer. And when you get down to it, I probably have anywhere between 40 and 300 layers of scrim, like you would in a cartoon.”

"Summer of Love" is on view through August 28, 2026.

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here: https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
Michael C. Thorpe, "Amongst all the complaints is a title", 2024, quilting cotton, batting, thread, crayon, 42 1/2 x 57 3/4 inches
Rance Jones, "Jade", 2020, watercolor on paper, 21 x 17 inches
Nathaniel Aric Galka, "You can feel happiness return…”, 2026, oil, gold leaf, ink and cold wax on marble plastered jute wrapped panel, 40x40 inches
Summer of Love, Forum Gallery, New York, July 6 - August 28, 2026

Continuing at Forum Gallery is "Summer of Love", an exhibition presenting more than twenty modern and contemporary paint...
07/28/2026

Continuing at Forum Gallery is "Summer of Love", an exhibition presenting more than twenty modern and contemporary paintings, works on paper, quilts, and sculpture by seventeen artists. Physical connections flourish in works by Max Weber (1881-1961), Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), Chaim Gross (1902-1991) and Clio Newton (b. 1989).

Following his immersion in the Parisian avant-garde between 1905 and 1909, Max Weber returned to the United States brimming with ideas that launched a pivotal early period of creative experimentation, ultimately spawning his own original, hybrid Cubism. Max Weber is widely regarded as the first American Cubist.

At the height of this period in 1917, Weber painted "The Sisters". He described the work as “an expression of withheld emotion or ecstasy – a subconscious state of the spirit." The Artist portrays the bond between siblings as primitive and complex. Situated in an ambiguous domestic setting, his subjects, with their matching features and subtly intertwined bodies, are profoundly close.

"The Sisters" was exhibited in the retrospective exhibition given to Max Weber by The Museum of Modern Art in 1930. That same decade, the painting was shown in Weber's solo exhibition at The Downtown Gallery.

Featured in "Summer of Love" is an endearing, intimately scaled painting by Raphael Soyer, "Lovers in the Park", c.1945. Humanity was Soyer's subject, and in this painting, he captures the rapture of a couple in a passionate embrace. From within the park - skillfully conjured by way of a single distant tree amid a delicious wash of green hues - the affectionate couple find comfort in one another; they are oblivious to the external world.

Writing in The Washington Post in 1982, Abram Lerner, first Director of the Hirshhorn Museum asserted, "Since Edward Hopper's death, Raphael has been the dean of American realist painters. If I had to label him, I'd call him a 'romantic realist,' 'romantic' as we use to term to disassociate a work of art from the formal, the impersonal, the classical, and the cold."

As a young man in 1927, Chaim Gross learned the technique of direct carving (taille directe) from the immigrant French master Robert Laurent at the Art Students League. In the years to follow, Gross displayed great ingenuity in direct carving, applying his skills to marble, both white and pink, as well as to serpentine and lithium stone.

Carved in milky pink alabaster in 1951, "Embrace" is a lyrical composition of two figures floating together in a mid-air arabesque. It is a wonderful example of the acrobatic performers for which the Artist is well-known. For Chaim Gross, the subject was a metaphor for the human interconnectedness, and it remained a central theme in his work throughout his life. Gross drew inspiration from his childhood memories of the circus in Austria, during happier times before the war tore apart Europe and drove him with his family to New York City in 1921.

Clio Newton's "The Lovers", 2024, is a larger-than-life drawing in charcoal of two figures merging to create a serene and nearly abstract graphic composition of their union. Wrinkles, pores and individual strands of hair imbue this work with a striking intimacy and honesty. With both faces concealed by their embrace, the subject is not of two individuals but the couple as an entity.

Describing Newton's work, Eleanor Heartney, Art Scholar and Author, writes, "These drawings short-circuit our normal ways to seeing. Newton renders her figures with a delicate precision that conjures such often denigrated styles such as academic drawing, illustration or photorealism. In doing so she draws on modes of representation that blur the boundaries between the ideal and the real."

"Summer of Love" is on view through August 28, 2026.

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here: https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
Max Weber, "The Sisters", 1917, oil on canvas, 35 x 20 inches
Raphael Soyer, "Lovers in the Park", c. 1945, oil on canvas, 10 x 7 inches
Chaim Gross, "Embrace", 1951, pink alabaster, 15 x 12 1/4 x 5 inches
Clio Newton, "The Lovers", 2024, compressed charcoal on Coventry Rag paper, 50 x 38 inches
"Summer of Love", Forum Gallery, New York, July 6 - August 28, 2026

"Summer of Love" By The SeaForum Gallery presents an exhibition celebrating the summer season, continuing through August...
07/21/2026

"Summer of Love" By The Sea

Forum Gallery presents an exhibition celebrating the summer season, continuing through August 28th. Works by Bernard Karfiol (1886-1952), Frederick Brosen (b. 1954), and Rance Jones (b. 1965) consider the joy and tranquility of being near the water.

Frederick Brosen's "Dayglow, Provincetown" offers a concise sense of summer: calm, anticipation, and potential for adventure. The midday sun shines without a cloud in the sky. Brosen, who typically depicts urban landscapes, found inspiration in the beloved seaside town of Provincetown, Massachusetts for two watercolors on view in Summer of Love. He muses, "Walking the flats at low tide along Provincetown Bay is one of the great summertime treats shared by all." In this atmospheric work, the anchored boat faces the horizon, ready to set sail.

Friends enjoy the splendor of nature in the vibrant and dynamic "Bathers in Boats" by Hungarian-born, American modernist Bernard Karfiol. Coastal landscapes of swimmers and other leisure-enthusiasts were a frequent subject of Karfiol's, and his "Bathers in Boats" is an expressive example that encapsulates the joy and exhilaration of cooling off on a hot summer day. The scene was inspired by the Maine coastline where, as a member of the Ogunquit (Maine) School of Painting and Sculpture, Karfiol summered regularly after 1914.

Since 2018, the American watercolorist Rance Jones has traveled to Cuba on extended visits, inspiring a meaningful series of works that offer sensitive and revealing observations of daily life for today's Cuban people. In "Siren Tattoo", 2023, the subject is turned away from the viewer, captivated by the shore. The man's colorfully tattooed body is on full display, his reverence for the ocean indicated by an ornate tattoo of a mermaid at sea which Jones faithfully depicts in marvelous detail. Although we cannot see the man's expression, there is a profound sense of peace in this work, as if we have fortuitously witnessed a private, meditative moment at the end of a long beach day.

"Summer of Love" is on view through August 28, 2026.

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here: https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
Frederick Brosen, "Dayglow, Provincetown", 2024, watercolor and graphite on paper, 14 x 11 inches
Bernard Karfiol, "Bathers in Boats", c.1920, oil on canvas, 25 x 35 inches
Rance Jones, "Siren Tattoo", 2023, watercolor on paper, 12 1/2 x 10 inches

"Summer of Love": NightsContinuing at Forum Gallery is "Summer of Love", an exhibition offering more than twenty modern ...
07/14/2026

"Summer of Love": Nights

Continuing at Forum Gallery is "Summer of Love", an exhibition offering more than twenty modern and contemporary paintings, works on paper, quilts, and sculpture by seventeen artists. Works by Davis Cone, Anthony Mitri and Linden Frederick evoke the splendor and serenity of summer nights.

A subdued indigo sky gives way to warm neon in Davis Cone's "York / Walking the Dogs", 2019. Since the 1970's, the Artist has had an unwavering attraction to the documentation of Art Deco cinema facades. In his finely executed paintings, Davis Cone captures the theatres at carefully selected times of day and weather conditions, heightening the atmosphere of the scene. Historically the nucleus of American towns, we can all recall carefree summer nights cooling off in the local movie theatre. In "York / Walking the Dogs", Cone is at his most effective: the hypnotic glow of the York marquee becomes a beacon in the night, and our senses are awakened to the idea of high spirits and pleasant air.

"Sens Unique: New York City" is Anthony Mitri's stunning work in charcoal of a curiously tranquil Washington Square Park. New York is a frequent inspiration for the Artist. “Just as a portrait artist may be inspired by the face of a certain individual, a specific setting may inspire an artist of a cityscape." he explains. "The ‘architectural face’ of an old city such as New York—at once aged and young—possesses a personality as much its own as that of each individual who has come to be a New Yorker.”

An arrow on the left that gives the work its title punctuates the composition directing us into the park seemingly illuminated by moonlight alone and alive with the full bloom of summer foliage. Long shadows and the meticulous detail of distant elements give the empty city park a mysterious allure, the absence of color allowing Mitri to focus entirely on mood.

Linden Frederick's "Sea Street" depicts a quiet road in Northport, Maine, populated by colorfully painted houses illuminated by a single shining streetlamp. Near Belfast where the artist resides year-round, the location is a favored summer destination for many. But, in Frederick's painting the human presence is only implied and, although it appears as though it could be the middle of the night, the lit horizon in the distance suggests bustling life across the bay.

Frederick has described the tension of his work arising from the atmospheric shift of day to dusk, “the hour when the dog becomes a wolf,” he says. “Something happens then. People, animals, birds, they all change. They seek shelter. When I take a walk or drive at this time of day something happens to my psyche. What it is, I’m not sure, but it’s enough of something that I want to get it down on canvas to relearn it, rethink it, and share it.”

"Summer of Love" is on view through August 28, 2026.

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here: https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
Davis Cone, "York / Walking the Dogs", 2019, acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 inches
Anthony Mitri, "Sens Unique: New York City", 2025, charcoal on paper, 10 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches
Linden Frederick, "Sea Street", 2010, oil on linen, 40 x 40 inches

Forum Gallery is pleased to present "Summer of Love", opening today and continuing through Friday, August 28th.  "Summer...
07/06/2026

Forum Gallery is pleased to present "Summer of Love", opening today and continuing through Friday, August 28th. "Summer of Love" offers more than twenty modern and contemporary paintings, works on paper, quilts, and sculpture by seventeen artists, imparting the frolicsome fever of summertime love and play.

Ethereal, rapturous works by Amélie Chabannes, Nathaniel Aric Galka, Chaim Gross (1902-1991), Brian Rutenberg, and Ben Shahn (1898-1969), transport us to dreamy worlds of spiritual transcendence. The expressions of these artists defy the earthbound physicality of their distinctive hand and textural mediums.

Alongside these otherworldly gems are atmospheric depictions of places and spaces rendered with the unique talents of visionary artists Frederick Brosen, Davis Cone, Linden Frederick, Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000), Bernard Karfiol (1886-1952), and Anthony Mitri. Furthering the mood are tender and spirited moments by Rance Jones, Béla Kádár (1877-1956), Clio Newton, Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), Michael C. Thorpe, and Max Weber (1881-1961) also on view in "Summer of Love".

To preview "Summer of Love", you are invited to visit our Online Viewing Room here:
https://viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/summer-of-love

Images:
Clio Newton, "The Lovers", 2024, compressed charcoal on Coventry Rag paper, 50 x 38 inches
"Summer of Love", Forum Gallery, New York, July 6 - August 28, 2026
Frederick Brosen, "Thunderbolt", 2025, watercolor over graphite on paper, 35 x 25 inches

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10022

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