The Maxwell Davidson Gallery is pleased to present George Segal: Women. This is the first-ever exhibition for George Segal at the gallery. The gallery is working directly with Carroll Janis and the George and Helen Segal Foundation to curate this exhibition. It is the first time that an exhibition has been devoted solely to Segal’s depictions – both sculptures and pastel drawings – of the female form.
Segal emerged as one of the preeminent artists of the Pop era. Along with his contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann, Segal combined his considerable artistic abilities with an in-depth understanding of art history to create a vision that was classical in approach and emotional in content, yet at the same time wholly his own.
This exhibition is comprised predominantly of these plaster cast sculptures for which he is most well known, but includes a series of pastels as well – all of which depict women. As John Wilmerding writes:
...Of all Segal’s subjects, perhaps the most moving and haunting were his renderings of women, and the selection here covers the gamut of his inventiveness and range of expression.
The fully cast forms and fragments in the show utilize many found objects and set pieces, and range in subject matter from erotic to athletic, from mundane to mesmerizing. The pastels are mostly line drawings, but the elegance of their simplicity and the vibrancy of the color showcase Segal’s ability as a draughtsman.