William Baziotes: Mid-Century Modern
May 14 – September 25, 2022

This engaging exhibition features more than sixty works by American modernist William Baziotes (American, 1912–1963). Sketchbooks, drawings, watercolors and gouaches, oil paintings on canvas and board, and archival material representing the full scope of the Pennsylvania-born artist’s career from the early 1930s through the early 1960s. Much of the material is part of a recent gift from the Ethel Baziotes Trust and the Estate of William Baziotes.

The artist was born in 1912 in Pittsburgh to Greek immigrant parents. The family moved to Reading the following year to pursue business opportunities, which included a partnership with the well-known Crystal Restaurant. By the time he reached his early twenties, he made the decision to move to New York, where he enrolled in classes at the National Academy of Design in the mid-1930s. His work at this time was deeply influenced by Surrealism and Symbolist poetry, which was introduced to him by Reading poet and fellow Greek, Byron Vazakas (1905 – 1987). Baziotes quickly joined the circle of fellow artists, including Roberto Matta, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock, who were all exploring Surrealism and automatism or “automatic writing.” By the end of the 1940s, Baziotes had developed his own unique style and technique –one that blended aspects of his interests in Surrealism, Cubism, and trends in contemporary Expressionism. The result was a vocabulary that enlisted symbols, figures, and biomorphic forms, and reflected the influence of Jungian psychiatry and nature.

The exhibition includes a group of Pennsylvania landscapes and a large number of his colorful and sometimes violent Surrealist gouache and watercolors on paper from circa 1934–1936. These works depict contorted and strained figures and animals such as bulls, birds and fish. Classic geometric paintings such as Souvenir, The Children, Opposing Mirrors, and Bird and Puppet date to the early-to mid-1940s, and Mannequins from 1947, and a group of mature-style watercolors with delicate white abstracted forms floating against a landscape of colors that date from the 1950s and early 1960s.

Exhibition generously sponsored by the Kraras Family. 

Join RPM on Thursday, June 23 for a reception honoring William Baziotes. Click HERE to learn more!