The card announcing the show, “Burning Point”
The art on this card tells us that our country and the world are already in flames. The artist has used abstract means to portray a far-too-real and frightening situation.
“Lincoln Memorial and Protester.” Oil and alkyd on wood, 48 x 36 in.
Also completed in 2026, this painting uses the artist’s signature combination of representation and abstraction as a massive Lincoln looks out tearfully at the erosion of civil rights and the reigniting of violence in the nation.
“Maelstrom.” Oil and alkyd on canvas, 62 x 78 in.
This is a more abstract painting, completed in 2024. But elements of humanity hide beneath the turbulent, swirling, ironically lush colors.
“Cityscape-Upheaval.” Oil and alkyd on canvas, 65 x 84 in.
Completed in 2022, this painting vividly silhouettes two figures against a city in shreds.
The current show stresses Grace Graupe-Pillard’s horror at a world of fear and hatred. But she is anything but a one-sided artist. Indeed, the earlier article reproduced here illustrates also her love of humanity through tender portraiture.
The Dialectical Art of Grace Graupe-Pillard
(originally published Spring 2021)
INSTALLATION: ARCHITECTURE: HOMELESS: pastels on canvas 140×360 inches 1987.
An earlier prototype for continued investigations.
Graupe-Pillard's work has sometimes been expurgated for its frank nudity and explicitness. But it has never crossed the line into pornography; indeed, she frequently includes her own nude body with complete honesty, unafraid to show imperfections and aspects of aging.
This New Jersey artist cheerfully acknowledges her seventy-nine years. An artist her entire life, she continues to be as prolific as ever – if not more so. Although she has an apartment in New York City, and spent decades roaming its streets, photographing the city, and visiting museums, galleries, and movie theaters, Covid has kept her away this past year, and she has had to turn inward.
On February 20, 2021, we had a Zoom session: I asked how the pandemic has affected her art and her life. "I have worked every day,” she said. “I have to work. It calms me down."
These days she cares less about careerism, and more about communication. She showed me numerous works from different stages of her career, and we chose 13 pieces:
WEAR ONE: 4×3 ft oil alkyd on wood 2020. This very recent self-portrait reveals an anguished Graupe-Pillard, hair tousled, with a bright yellow background and polka-dotted mask.
JARRETT: 4×3 ft oil alkyd wood 2021. A brand-new portrait of an artist she met with fabulous hair that seems to have a life of its own.
ADELE RAE WITH WINGS: 66×48 inches oil on canvas 2021. Recently completed, this little girl, a friend's child, cheered the artist up. Graupe-Pillard added a hummingbird to enhance the joy.
END OF TIME: 4×3 ft oil on wood 2020. She came across a black and white photo of her father, and re-created in oil paint the pain of his last days. She was surely internalizing Covid in this personal but universal statement.
DILLON WITH MASK: 60×48 inches oil on wood 2020. The Colin Kaepernick T-shirt and coveralls emphasize Dillon’s young masculine body, hands as always important, and the pink background with his shadow.
WHAT'S INSIDE MET GREEK VASE: 2013 – a funny photo-collage group, of Graupe-Pillard "exploring" art (though there is also the serious side of the pun: she really does know and love art history), placing her naked presence into mostly historical male sculptures. Graupe-Pillard changes the context and meaning of the works.
PROTESTS: 48×72 inches oil/alkyd/wood, two panels, 2019. At the same time that Graupe-Pillard made portraits and photo-collages, she painted many political/abstract panels, such as this large painting combining politics, abstraction, and color.
JUPITER AT HOBOKEN 2ND ST. STATION PLANETARY PARK: painted steel and fiberglass 204x48x120 inches in diameter 2004. One of the artist's many public art installations.
INSTALLATION THE DAY THE WORLD STOOD STILL. 9/11: oil/alkyd/canvas. Each painting is 96×65 inches. Done over a five-year period (2014-2019), addressing the tragedy and horror of September 11, 2001, and still in progress. Abstract, but not abstract.
REFUGEES III: 90×60 inches. oil/alkyd/canvas 2003. Brilliant, jigsaw-like, colorful, chaotic; political, but … reminded me of Jacob Lawrence (whom she loves).
KEYHOLE SERIES: GRACE WEEPING VIRGIN (ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN): oil/alkyd/canvas, 1995. Early intervention into masterwork plus self.
KAY AND JOE: oil/canvas. 60×84 inches. 1979. Earlier nude placed into the canon of Art History: ordinary bodies being extraordinary.
Born in NYC, Grace Graupe-Pillard is a painter, public artist, educator, and videographer who writes about art and movies. One-person shows include Untitled Space, NYC, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago IL, The Proposition, NYC, Hal Bromm Gallery, NYC, Bernice Steinbaum, NYC, and Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA. She participated in group exhibitions at Arsenal Gallery, NYC Cheim & Read Gallery, NYC, Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ, P.S.1, NYC, The Drawing Center, NYC, and The Frist Center, Nashville,TN. Website: 
Greta Berman is Art Editor of Persimmon Tree. She received a B.A. from Antioch College, an M.A. from the University of Stockholm, and a Ph.D. from Columbia. She has recently retired from her position as Professor of Art History at Juilliard, where she taught for 46 years. In addition to writing a monthly column, “Focus on Art,” for the Juilliard Journal, she co-curated and co-edited Synesthesia: Art and the Mind with Carol Steen, at the McMaster Museum of Art in
Hamilton, ON, Canada, in 2008. She and Steen also published a chapter titled “Synesthesia and the Artistic Process” for the Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia (Oxford University Press, 2013). She has published numerous articles, as well as lectured on synesthesia, and other subjects.