• Independent 20th Century
    September 5–8, 2024
    New York
  • Dutton is pleased to exhibit works by: Rose deSmith Greenman. American, 1898-1983 & Selby Warren, Australian, 1887-1979

    Dutton is pleased to exhibit works by:

     

    Rose deSmith Greenman. American, 1898-1983

    &

    Selby Warren, Australian, 1887-1979

     

  • The catalyst leading to a torrent of drawing began inexplicably as Greenman showed signs of cognitive decline at the age...

    Rose deSmith Greenman, Untitled, 1972, Pen on paper, 13 x 17.25 inches

    The catalyst leading to a torrent of drawing began inexplicably as Greenman showed signs of cognitive decline at the age of seventy two. She fervently composed her imaginings — or elaborated-upon still-lives — as she sat in her armchair in her tiny Newton apartment, often secluded through days and nights, or at her daughter’s house. 

     

    This presentation evokes the sense of quiet winding infinitude of working at night and is comprised of imagined drawings and depictions of dioromas within vessels using Greenman’s favored materials of everyday markers, ballpoint pen, and pencil; drawings from her later years with lively colors that push into geometric forms; and two diminutive intimate landscapes. Using scraps of paper she accumulated and versos of pieces of mail, Greenman never reflected on her making and definitively dismissed any mention of her work by inquiring family members as being “only my ‘doodles!’”, while silently rolling works up to tuck into her bedskirt and stacking bundles deep in her closet. 

  • Greenman’s drawings exist as sculpted form, time felt like layers of strata. Rooted in naturalism, her interior world shows an...

    Rose deSmith Greenman, Untitled, n.d., Pastel on paper, 14 x 17 inches

    Greenman’s drawings exist as sculpted form, time felt like layers of strata. Rooted in naturalism, her interior world shows an almost infinite capacity to access soaring unending freedoms in devising vessels, capturing trees, gardens, and flowers, and in creating dialogue with herself that includes moments of irony and humor. The outpouring of work is expressed vividly and directly with an underlay of intimacy and the ethereal. Intuitive botanical forms with tendrils in vessels seem to allude to a physicality of what is bound and entwined from within, bursting at the edges of themselves — while others, inversely — are unfurling and unravelling.


    This unfettered drive and a willingness to take chances has an enlivened, unerring nervy confidence in every energetic mark. For every iteration of her work Greenman brings a newness into sharp focus — putting all of herself and her wonder in every one of her drawings. What is evident is that her drawings are about everything but the subject itself, forged out of an outpouring of sheer necessity. 

  • Drawing was a sanctuary and a journey which conjured and inquired memory and inhabited a place to experiment, interpret, and...

    Rose deSmith Greenman, Untitled, 1972, Pen, marker on paper, 18 x 12 inches

    Drawing was a sanctuary and a journey which conjured and inquired memory and inhabited a place to experiment, interpret, and marvel. Greenman’s drawings were invariably spurred on by a neurological shift, a precedent of which can be found in late de Kooning. Alongside this, Greenman’s sensibility, unconstrained playfulness, wonder, whimsy and world-building can be seen in her contemporaries such as Calder (his flea circus), and Dubuffet, with reverberations of James Castle, skirting mark making that speaks to early Warhol. These drawings of Greenman’s are now being shown after being tucked away in obscurity, these unsung works on paper bringing a vital new voice to the fore. 

  • An Australian bushman and larrikin, Warren begun working the land in his youth as a sheep shearer, horseman, stockman, bullocky,...

    Selby Warren, Falls, n.d., Oil on tin, 22 7/8 x 27 3/4 inches

    An Australian bushman and larrikin, Warren begun working the land in his youth as a sheep shearer, horseman, stockman, bullocky, miner, fencer, rabbit trapper, and gold panner on the Abercrombie River before leading a life of manual labor.

    Taking up painting in 1965 at 76 years old, Warren explained he'd been propelled to paint all of his life, beginning to record his lived experiences with experimentation, reverence, urgency, and ingenuity - using materials like mud, sand, grass clippings, cereal boxes, glass, and mica with brushes he made with his wife's hair, often fusing his paintings with repurposed building materials that he cut into constructions for frames.

  • Near illiterate, Warren visually chronicled his recollections and the imagined within his pictures with a magnitude of memory and feeling,...

    Selby Warren, The Homestead , 1971, Oil on board, 21 5/8 x 25 1/4 inches

    Near illiterate, Warren visually chronicled his recollections and the imagined within his pictures with a magnitude of memory and feeling, and did so with an astonishingly spare modern voice. He captured subjects from his time as an itinerant laborer and the sheer expanse of the countryside of New South Wales and the Blue Mountains, to stories of rural folklore, iconic Australian landmarks, wildlife, and made portraits of political figures and authors of iconic poems and ballads with an innately incisive, gleeful, full expression of humility and sensibility - elemental in their spirit and presence and surging forth from his distinctive abstract forms.


    Warren was discovered at the age of 85 by university professor Garth Dixon who was passing through the remote rural settlement of Trunkey Creek after a fishing trip. Dixon was having a drink at a local pub and spied the corner of a painting behind a pile of bottles. After asking about the painting, the publican told Dixon "It was done by a silly old bugger who lives halfway up the hill." Dixon insisted upon a visit and entering the small house Selby had built himself from scratch was overwhelmed by paintings stacked on walls and even hung on the ceiling. At once Dixon told Rudy Komon - the legendary dealer who singularly defined the modern canon of Australian art - who quickly visited the artist and arranged to have a show held at his Sydney gallery in 1972.

  • Over a period of three years — including shows with Komon in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Warren’s paintings received a...

    Selby Warren, H G Stoker, 1969, Acrylic, crayon, and tape on cardboard, 19 1/4 x 27 1/2 inches

    Over a period of three years — including shows with Komon in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Warren’s paintings received a great deal of attention and fanfare but he was soon forgotten. Komon acquired much work himself and stated that Warren was "one of Australia's greatest art finds"... "one of a half a dozen like him in the world.” Bush Poet assembles significant, untouched, and stashed away paintings directly from private collectors and dealers including Rudy Komon Gallery and Ray Hughes Estate which held Warren’s historical collections, revealing an unsung giant of twentieth-century painting.

    With special thanks to Roger Shelley, Colin Rhodes, Noel McKenna, Josef Lebovic, Evan Hughes, Mick Warren, and Unita Knox