Deborah Sponder and Elaine Baker are pleased to announce the opening of their new space in the famed Miami Design District was well received, and attended by several hundred guests. Sponder Gallery is located on the second floor of the Cartier building at 151 NE 40th Street in a space shared with Arevalo Gallery. Sponder Gallery’s inaugural exhibition features paintings by Dan Christensen, and Arevalo Gallery features works by Miami artist Karen Rifas. Both shows will be on view until November 8th.
Dan Christensen (1942 – 2007) the American abstract painter, is best known for works that relate to Lyrical Abstraction, Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism. After graduating from Missouri’s, Kansas City Art Institute, in 1964, Christensen moved to New York City with the purpose of establishing himself as an important contemporary abstract painter. He was part of a large circle of young artists including Larry Poons, John Chamberlain, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Kenneth Noland who had come to Manhattan during the 1960’s. Christensen’s unique mastery of color, line and surface has resulted in a varied and proficient body of work. He produced the Orbs series in the late 80s and 90s, and it represents a culmination of the many Post-Painterly techniques and characteristics that he innovated. These included the use of spray guns to modify paint application, light-inflected color vibrancy and contrasting auras of tiny atomized droplets. The Orb paintings demonstrate an overall lightness that helped to make Christensen a leading figure of post-Ab Ex painting.
Christensen’s works were included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual exhibitions in 1967, 1968, 1969 and in the first biennial exhibition in 1973. He was represented by several influential New York galleries including the Andre Emmerich Gallery and Salander O’Reilly Galleries. In 1968 Christensen was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and a Guggenheim fellowship in 1969. In 1992 he was a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Ann & Norman Jaffe with Elaine Baker and Deborah Sponder

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