Gary Komarin

Komarin gets paintings that vibrate with historical memory, echoing such things such as Matisse's driest most empty pictures, Robert Motherwell's spare abstractions of the 1970's, or the early New Mexico and Berkeley paintings of Richard Diebenkorn. 

 

Kenneth Baker, 2007

GARY KOMARIN creates stalwart images that have an epic quality which grips  the viewer with the idea that he or she is looking at a contemporary description of something timeless. His style, a merger of painting and drawing, pays tribute to his mentor, Philip Guston.

 

Gary Komarin has been honored with the Joan Mitchell Prize in Painting, the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in Painting, the Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship in Painting, the Elizabeth Foundation Prize in Painting, and the Benjamin Altman Prize given by the National Academy of Design Museum, New York. Articles and reviews of Komarin’s images and paintings have appeared in Art in America, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, and Arts Magazine, among others. His work is included in countless public and private collections worldwide, and has exhibited extensively internationally alongside Philip Guston, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Motherwell. Notable recent solo shows include the Denver Art Museum, The Musee Kiyoharu Shirabaka in Japan, and the Mougins Museum in France. His work can be found in many noted public collections including: MAMBO, Bogota, Columbia; The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; The Crocker Museum, Sacramento, California; Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Yoshii Foundation, Tokyo; Kiyoharu Shirakaba Museum, Japan; Musee d’Art Classique de Mougins, France; Boise Art Museum, Idaho; The Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; Boston University Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Microsoft Corporation; Galerie Proarta, Zurich; Blount International, Atlanta, Georgia; The United Bank of Houston, Texas; The Hyatt Corporation and American Airlines. Gary Komarin lives and works in a house and studio in the wooded hills of Roxbury, Connecticut.