George Chemeche Signed Floral Serigraph
Artist: George Chemeche
Year: 1979
Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil
Edition: 260
Paper Size: 36.5" x 32.5"
George Chemeche was born in 1934 and studied at the Avni Art School in Jel Aviv and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. The style with which he is intimately associated, pattern painting, is non-minimalist, sensuous, romantic, rational and decorative. Its methods, thematic material and referents range across cultural and class lines. The style is two-dimensional, non-hierarchical, allover and acentric. Because most viewers respond with delight to patterning, it runs counter to the modernist taboo against a decorative quality in art. Though pattern painting's roots are in modern art, it contradicts some of its basic tenets as it attempts to assimilate aspects of Western and non-Western culture not previously accepted into the realm of high art.
Though most people intuitively recognize patterning, it is difficult to define. The most serviceable definition is that pattern is the systematic repetition of a motif or motifs used to cover a surface uniformly. The spaces between motifs are either other motifs or are an integral part of the repeat. Whatever f9rm the painting takes, its flat and pictorial space is at a minimum.
What makes patterning in pattern painting different from patterning in the "functional" arts-weaving, mosaics and so on, and especially in the art of non-Western cultures-is partly the use of pigment on canvas, but also, and of greater importance, intention and context. The intention is to make a high-art statement within a contemporary context by referring to, and using what to many still remains within the world of non-art.
Pattern painting, unlike abstractionism, has structure. It also has content as it refers to patterns in the real world. Usually, patterning intentionally acknowledges the decorative function of art, reconciling both the decorative and the meaningful.
INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS
1978 Goldman Art Gallery, Haifa, Israel
1977 Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York
Alexandra Monett Gallery, Brussels
1977 Givon Art GaJIery, Tel Aviv
1974 South Houston Gallery, New York
Ray Landis Gallery, East Brunswick, New Jersey
1973 Gala Gallery, Key Biscayne, Florida
Art Asia Gallery, Cambridge, Mass.
Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York
1972 Selected Artists Gallery, New York
Mabat Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1971 Goldman Art Gallery, Haifa, Israel
1970 Modern Art Gallery, Old Jaffa
1969 Dugith Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1968 Dugith Art Gallery, Te Aviv
1967 Hadassa "K" Klachkin Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1966 Rina Art Gallery, Jerusalem The Museum of Modern Art, Haifa
1965 Chemerinsky Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1963 Galerie Transposition, Paris Collective Exhibitions
1978 Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv, "Six Artists"
Biv Gallery, New York, "Chelsea Artists"
Makler Gallery, Philadelphia, Pa.
1978 "FJ.A.C.," Petit Palais Paris Galerie Naire, Paris
1977 Weintraub Gallery, New York, Print Show
1971 OHana Gallery, London
"Six Artists", Modern Art Gallery, Old Jaffa
1969 The Autumn Exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum
1965 "Young Artists", TeJ Aviv Museum
1963 Salon de La Jeune Peinture, Musee d'art Moderne, Paris
PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell Univerity, Ithaca, New York
Eversan Museum, Syracuse, N.Y.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
