Joe Orffeo (1926-2013)
Retrospective Part II (1980-2013)
Exhibition:
Friday, March 20, 2015-Saturday, April 18, 2015
Joe Orffeo (1926-2013)
In this exhibition of acrylic and watercolor paintings we can see works created during the mature years of a long and productive life of artistic exploration, and the continuation of many series that developed and reappeared throughout a half century of creative expression. From a 2004 exhibition catalog,
Wet and Fresh, A Survey of Watercolor in WNY Orffeo is quoted;
“My paintings are very personal and they express how I feel about the social and political environment, as well as the landscape I see around me.” Orffeo’s spirited ideas about the laws of man and nature are palpable and powerful in these paintings. Some erupt with vivid color, energy and shape, while others use minimal form in subtle, sophisticated hues. Just as the pen is mightier than the sword, so was the brush in the gifted hands of Joe Orffeo.
A second exhibition
Joe Orffeo, Retrospective (1980-2013) “The Sacrifice” is being presented in conjunction with Eleven Twenty Projects, the gallery space located at 1120 Main Street, in Buffalo NY, April 10 – May 9, 2015. Continuing the journey of discovery of Joe Orffeo’s later works, Eleven Twenty Projects will also host a gallery talk “A Remembrance of Joe” with Burchfield Penney Art Center director Anthony Bannon on Wednesday, May 6, at 6:30pm.
Additional images and information can be found at meibohmfinearts.com & eleventwentyprojects.com.
Catalog of Exhibition:
Please contact the gallery concerning current availability and pricing of works from past exhibits.
1.
Two Forms, 1988
22-1/2 x 15, acrylic on paper, sll
900.00
2.
Night Sky, 1988
22-1/2 x 34, acrylic on paper, slr
2800.00
3.
Figure I, 1988
22-1/2 x 6, pencil & acrylic on paper, slr
650.00
4.
Figure II, 1988
22-1/2 x 6, pencil & acrylic on paper, slr
650.00
5.
Grass Series - With Figures, 1989
22-1/2 x 34, acrylic on paper, slr
3000.00
6.
Grass Series, 1988
Triptych, 28-1/4 x 26-3/4, acrylic, pencil & ink on canvas, slr
2400.00
7.
Bone Series, 1981
38 x 9-1/4, acrylic on canvas, slr
850.00
8.
Night Garden, 1989
11 x 22-1/4, acrylic & pencil on paper, slr
775.00
9.
Opposing Forms, 1989
11 x 22-1/4, acrylic & pencil on paper, slr
775.00
10.
Abstraction, 1990
11 x 22-1/4, acrylic & pencil on paper, slr
775.00 (sold)
11.
Across the Creek, 1996
38 x 34, Acrylic on canvas, slr
3000.00
12.
Bone Series - Couple, 1995
24 x 18, watercolor, oil crayon & pencil on paper, slr
1200.00 (sold)
13.
Fragment Series, 1993-94
47-1/2 x 23-1/2, acrylic on canvas, slr
2600.00
14.
Bone Series – Three Figures, 1990
Triptych, 22 x 26, acrylic on paper, slr
2500.00
15.
Between Night & Day, 1998
42-1/2 x 32, acrylic on canvas, sll
2900.00
16.
Figures, 1989
24 x 26, acrylic on canvas, slr
2200.00
17.
Summer, 1992
24 x 18, acrylic on paper, slr
1700.00
18.
Night Sky, 2003
36 x 36, acrylic on canvas, slr
2600.00
19.
Fall Rain, 2005
14 x 20, watercolor & pencil on paper, slr
1100.00
20.
Fall Series I, 2005
14 x 20, watercolor & pencil on paper, slr
1100.00
21.
Fall Series II, 2006
18 x 24, watercolor & ink on paper, slr
1500.00
22.
Clouds, 2006
18 x 24, watercolor on paper, slr
1650.00
23.
Black Clouds Series, 2006
24 x 18, watercolor on paper, slr
1650.00
24.
Moonlight, 2006
18 x 24, watercolor on paper, slr
1650.00 (sold)
25.
Lake Reflections, 2006
14 x 20, watercolor on paper, slr
1200.00 (sold)
26.
Storm Clouds, 2008
22 x 30, watercolor on paper, slr
2750.00
27.
Red Tree, 2008
22 x 30, watercolor on paper, slr
2750.00
28.
Treeline Series, 2012
22 x 30, watercolor on paper, slr
2500.00 (sold)
29.
American Landscape Series, 2012
30 x 22, watercolor on paper, slr
2500.00
30.
Figures Emerging, 2012
30 x 22, watercolor on paper, slr
2800.00
31.
Galaxy Series, 2013
30 x 22, watercolor on paper, slr
2800.00
• All dimensions are in inches, height precedes width.
• All works are signed, dated & titled by the artist or artist’s estate.
• All works framed with conservation materials.
• sll= signed lower left; and slr= signed lower right; sul= signed upper left; sur= signed upper right.
• Additional works by Joe Orffeo are available through Meibohm Fine Arts.
Anthony Bannon, director of the Burchfield Penney Art Center, wrote this appreciation of Joseph Orffeo’s work in 1986. It was one of the first exhibitions Bannon organized at the Center.
“We share because we believe in each other, and this is a testimony of belief in the work of Joseph Orffeo (1926-2013), too long without its due. This writing is to acknowledge those who have shared allowing this exhibition to take place. Though first credit, of course, always must be directed toward the artist, who made the finest effort of all.
With Joe Orffeo, the effort is not only directed toward creating fine art. His many friends speak of other, personal efforts, which for Orffeo seem effortless. To Linda Orffeo a special thank you for all her support. Quite literally without her help this exhibition could not have taken place.
Joe Orffeo goes his own way, pledges no allegiance, steals the fire. With fierce colors, he paints of death. With a great assent to life in the present he worries about the future. Without map or guiding rules, he reiterates the modern discoveries of art, following the pictorial necessities of figure to its dissolution, and he makes his own discoveries.
In his own way, Orffeo has prefocused the moment, rediscovering the masters of our century, following their path without knowledge of the way. And this is one of the glories of art, unknown to many who dance on the outskirts of the circle, that there is a necessity to it all that is constantly reinvented and confirmed: A necessity as natural as the wheel or the stars or electricity, those elements of the physical world that are as intellectually appealing in the abstract as the expressions of the word of art: ideas of pure wonderment.
It is better that few have known about the discoveries of Joseph Orffeo. Well off any mainstream, painting for his closet, Orffeo has opened the door only for his wife and family and a few friends. Occasionally he shows work publicly. But only on occasion. Clearly, art here is the priority, not commerce, not glory, nor even the warmth and comfort of social support a larger group offers. That is what makes this art special, and rare. It confirms the beliefs in the shared endowment of art and the unique spirit of humankind. Through this work, made in private, we can confirm that indeed in some ways we are all alike, able to speak to one another in a shared voice, as, too, in some ways each of us is separate, constituted with singular attributes that make life difficult and interesting.
One should be cautioned that there is no romance in all of this. There is nothing rhapsodic in the fact that Joseph Orffeo paints for his closet. Because he must, and that is the way it is. It is the simple and very plain truth. His relationship to his work is defined in terms of private discovery, and he saves every scrap he has made. Luckily it can be communicated.
Clearly, there is a formal discovery that begins with the figures, and that begins Orffeo’s mature work in the late 1960’s and traces the dissolution and recomposition of the figure during the ensuing two decades: This elongated, existential, architectonic Image of Man burst apart in the mid-1970’s, blasted, abstracted, its pieces scattered like bits of a renegade galaxy to the four corners. Though, too there is more than the merely formal – profoundly at the level we once called content.
Throughout Orffeo’s work one finds the presence of death: A Death that stalks in skeletal figures, that appears in the fragments of body and bones, and in eerie groups, the merging graveyards of glooming masses of black. This is a death, however without fear.
“Death is a whole new experience”, Orffeo laughs, and he laughs often. “Death is where all new things will happen. Life is only one segment of what we know. Death will be the great discovery.”
If there is a sadness in his paintings, if one spots despair, it should be between the lines. His Image of Man Series, beginning in late 1968 when the Western Hemisphere was at riot and the East at war, contained hope, he insists, through to the end in 1974.
“Then, later on, I didn’t see any hope. I still don’t see and hope for civilization, going on like it is. The good things in man aren’t strong enough to overcome the bad. We just keep destroying ourselves along with everything else on earth.” Orffeo observes.
“Listen to Mozart or Brubeck. These are the things man can. Then look the people in control, the people who come into power. These are the destroyers, not the builders. The builders have no power. “And he laughs.
Orffeo has little power. He is a barber in Patchin outside Boston who paints, takes dancing lessons, enjoys his family and friends and is nervous about showing his art. These are personal images made public only with a great deal of persuasion.
In these paintings, pink as well as black can mean despair – “maybe because I am hoping it won’t be bad after all”. This was seen in the first break from the Image of Man. Called In and Out Series, it records, like the discoveries of deep space, extraordinary moments of aesthetic explosion, resulting in an entirely new physics of shape and color for his images. Where at one time only wisps of color described a form of a figure, now it flamboyantly declared a minimal abstract content – a content, in fact, that hardly exists: Man after the cataclysm: Color as a façade for despair. Created, in fact, by systematically painting out areas that might lead the viewer to a recognition of figure, these paintings give as a ground what at one time was the key to understanding the figure.
This push and pull is consistent throughout Orffeo’s work. There are brief cul-de-sacs, short circuits into special images, such as The Scrolls (1974) or Night Pond (1980), or full bodied abstractions, such as the brief Ramus Series from 1982. Otherwise, there lingers behind so much of the wok the haunting presence of that The Image of Man – exploded to shards that float in a galactic space in the NGC (National Galaxy and Star Cluster Series of 9179, then reconverging in the Death and Pacific Coast Series of 1981. Most recently, the tension returns, struck between the abstract Death forms and the referential Fallen Figures of 1985.
Orffeo’s figures, alone or in a crowd, whether articulate or abstractly hidden, starkly assert their challenge – spoken both to art as the other conditions we share: “How do you stand? Where? How?” Orffeo’s art challenges a future. Between the lines, it asks, “Do you believe in the future?”
