The Anita Shapolsky Gallery & AS Art Foundation are pleased to present John Hultberg - Painter of the In-Between – a show that continues a nearly four-decade relationship with the art of Hultberg. Also on display are works by Martha Jackson, Lynn Drexler, Michael Loew, William Manning, and Zero Mostel, all artists who crossed paths on Monhegan Island.

The art dealer Martha Jackson, herself a painter, would champion the causes of many artists she admired, including Hultberg. In 1961, they traveled together to Monhegan Island. Hultberg was immediately taken by the place, which was reminiscent of where he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She assisted him in acquiring a home where he would spend much of the next 40 years, greatly influencing his oeuvre.

Hultberg’s works are featured in 140 international institutions, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Carnegie Institute Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Smithsonian Institution; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Stedelijk Van Abbe Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; and many others.
 
Hultberg’s work is abstracted, yet his representational vistas and interiors suggest an almost cinematic or ‘graphic novel’ look. These ‘mindscapes’ hint at surrealist symbolist and metaphysical painting. As Hultberg explains, “I am a painter of the in-between.”

Lynne Drexler would marry Hultberg and together they would spend summers on the island. Drexler was inspired by the island's beauty, its community of artists, as well as her appreciation for colorists, notably Cézanne and Matisse. Her work has recently seen a surge in popularity.
 
As a loose confederacy, Jackson, Drexler, Loew, Manning, and Mostel shared a sense of Hultberg’s ‘in-betweenness’. They were attracted to romantic notions of the rational world; however, they would filter their experience through an expressive existential prism.

For more information about John Hultberg and the artworks featured here, visit the Anita Shapolsky Gallery.

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