Renowned Artist Sigmund Abeles Traces SC Roots in Retrospective

Wednesday, 16 May 2007 21:44

Myrtle Beach, SC - For internationally acclaimed artist Sigmund Abeles, home and heart are in South Carolina, and he displays both in a strikingly personal retrospective exhibit in May to the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum.  From Whence I’ve Come: Drawings, Paintings and Sculptures by Sigmund Abeles comprises 46 works (plus artist sketchbooks) created over some six decades. The exhibit continues through September 3.  Abeles, who lives and works in New York City, is considered one of the foremost figurative artists in the country.  His paintings, drawings and etchings grace countless museums and private collections around the US and Europe.

Although he graduated from the University of South Carolina, Abeles credits two other SC masters, painter Gerard Tempest and photographer Truman Moore, as well his mother and his visits to Brookgreen Gardens as the major formative influences in his artistic life.  Abeles began his career in the 1950s as a painter, but he soon branched out into drawings, etchings.  His work is characterized by close observation of the human figure, often in domestic settings. Because of the emotional content of his creations, his style has been called “expressive realism.” 

“I'm a figurative artist – but not in a straight representational way,” the artist has said about his work “When I look at a figure, I don't see just form; I see who the person is and what the person is feeling.”

Abeles notes that he likes his art to tell stories, and many of those stories represented in the current exhibit are intensely personal to the artist.  Among them are several portraits of himself, his mother and father, and his son, Max, now grown, who was born prematurely and struggled for survival the first few months of his young life.  Other pieces range from deeply pensive – in works dealing with 9/11 and the Vietnam War – to whimsical. A sculpture titled The Life-Cycle: Toaster began its existence as a pink toaster given to Abeles and his wife as a wedding gift, which Abeles abhorred.

Though Abeles avers in his artist’s statement that he likes to think his work speaks for itself, he nevertheless offers a sort of last word in the explanatory panels accompanying each piece: “What I add to the art on the wall and pedestals is what I would tell you should you be standing beside me, taking in each picture or sculpture.”

The Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum is a wholly nonprofit institution located across from Springmaid Pier at 3100 South Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach.  Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free, but donations are welcomed.  Components of Museum programs are funded in part by support from the City of Myrtle Beach, the Horry County Council and the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.  For More Information visit : www.MyrtleBeachArtMuseum.org