LA Art Show Highlights Women-owned Galleries & more...

This month we're pleased to highlight four of our exhibiting galleries that are owned and directed by women: Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, Daphne Alazraki Fine Art, Simard Bilodeau Contemporary and Melissa Morgan Fine Art. We look forward to welcoming all four galleries back to the LA Art Show in 2024.

Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

With gallery spaces in London and Miami, Australian-born director Rebecca Hossack deals in art from all around the world and has established herself as a champion of non-Western artistic traditions and a pioneer in the support and promotion of non-traditional and non-Western art forms, techniques and practices. Her London space was the first art gallery in Europe to exhibit Australian Aboriginal painting. Since the gallery was established in 1968, Hossack has curated exhibitions of work from the Bushmen of the Kalahari and from tribal India and Papua New Guinea, introducing this art in the UK for the first time.

The Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery exhibits across a broad spectrum of Western Contemporary Art with a particular focus on mid-career female artists. Coming up from July 1 to 29, Rebecca Hossack will showcase a summer exhibition of works by a number of internationally renowned mid-career female artists represented by the gallery. Featuring work by Barbara Macfarlane, Nikoleta Sekulovic, Esther Nienhuis, Carla Kranendonk, Emma Haworth and Sophie Charalambous, the exhibition will celebrate femininity, motherhood and sisterhood by praising female forms and exploring the subversive potential of the female gaze.

Daphne Alazraki Fine Art

Daphne Alazraki Fine Art is a New York-based gallery offering European and American paintings from the 19th Century through Contemporary fields, with an emphasis on French Post-Impressionist works and American Abstract paintings. Director Daphne Alazraki, a California native, has dealt in fine art services for more than 37 years. After working at Christies New York, Alazraki moved to Europe where she built a business infrastructure. Founded on her expertise in Northern Old Masters, Alazraki has since developed an emphasis on 19th Century and French Impressionist works, becoming well-known as one of the few women dealers specializing in Old Masters.
Featured artists:

Le Pho

Born in Vietnam, Le Pho (1907-2001) studied art in Vietnam and France. His early work focused on depicting Vietnamese landscapes remembered from his youth. He later went on to paint female subjects, landscapes and still life compositions. Le Pho succeeded in weaving Impressionism, Surrealism and traditional Chinese painting into an almost spiritual level of artistic consciousness, realizing a refined poetic elegance. The artist was primarily concerned with painting semi-Impressionist paintings of flowers, intricately rendered in a graceful form and unconstrained transparency of color. He lived most of his life in France.

Grace Hartigan 

Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) was an American painter who worked as a draftsperson in a New Jersey airplane factory during World War II. She studied painting in New York and where she became acquainted with Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. After viewing Jackson Pollock's 1948 exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery, she began a series of gestural abstractions (1948-1952). Through Pollock, she met Willem de Kooning, a formative influence and friend. Her colorful works often challenged the non-objective tenets of Abstract Expressionism by including references to contemporary life.

Camille Bombois

Camille Bombois (1883-1970) was a French artist whose work has been compared to that of Henri Rousseau for its naïve drawing, crisp delineation of form and attention to detail. Bombois loved the massive darkness of the black paint he applied so heavily. He also liked the billiard green, velvet red, strong yellow and saccharine violet of circus posters and the interiors of bordellos, which correspond to the crude objectivity of his drawings. In both his landscapes and still life paintings, Bombois was a brilliant colorist and a genius of depth.

Simard Bilodeau Contemporary

Located in downtown Los Angeles, Simard Bilodeau Contemporary has a focus on international emerging and mid-career artists. Directed by Eva-Marie Bilodeau, the gallery is currently featuring the exhibition, Michael Nauert: Walking in My Own Shoes, on through July 1, 2023. Nauert's first solo exhibition traces the process that led him to shape his work as it is today. Through his paintings, the viewer may follow his creative exploration from 2015 to 2023.

Nauert's paintings slip in and out of the familiar through abstract mark making, as he draws parallels between nature and humanity. His forms coalesce into landscape and figure, eventually dissipating into abstract impressions. This limbo state creates a vortex for multiple forms, ideas and shared memory. Through his practice, he integrates movement with layers of paint which are removed and repurposed as "mosaic" –– paint scraps (color and movement) taken from previous paintings and paint pallets, achieving more sculpted three-dimensional paintings.

"Nauert's works are highly texturized where one feels movement, energy and living elements that appear in constant flow. For a few years, I have been fascinated by his paintings. I find myself mesmerized and deeply moved when looking at his paintings, feeling inner calm and serenity. Beauty from nature is inherent to his work. His works impelled a purpose for all to be a part of the artwork as an invisible and magnetic energy," said Bilodeau.

Melissa Morgan Fine Art

As the founder and owner of Melissa Morgan Fine Art, director Melissa Morgan has 23 years as a gallerist, having established herself as a leading figure in the contemporary art world. The 6,000 square foot gallery and the half-acre outdoor sculpture garden located on El Paseo Drive in Palm Desert, California, Melissa Morgan Fine Art represents an eclectic assemblage of established, award winning artists and cutting-edge, rising contemporary stars, producing 2D, 3D and new media artworks. The gallery has presented numerous exhibitions featuring works by artists including Carole Feuerman, Anthony James, Ed Moses and James Surls.

Current Exhibition: Eric Zener 

Melissa Morgan Fine Art is presenting a selection of new work by Eric Zener, including unique paintings and editioned mixed-media resin works. Zener is best known for his work centered around water through portraying figures that float, swim or are completely submerged. Water communicates a variety of narratives: spiritual and physical renewal, nostalgic memories of childhood summers and our relationship with nature – from its transformative qualities to produce joy, to its equally transformative quality of fear and danger.

Featured Artist: Anthony James

Melissa Morgan Fine Art is proud to represent sculptor Anthony James, one of the world's most sought-after contemporary artists. A British/American artist based in Los Angeles, James is known for his monumental and experiential sculptures and installations. His work focuses on materiality and alchemy with a. regard for light and space. James recently became the only living artist to have his works installed on all seven continents. An edition of his Portal Icosahedron was featured in the 2022 Netflix film, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, starring Daniel Craig and Edward Norton.

On the cover: Daphne Alazraki Fine Art

Source: LA Art Show