FINE ARTIST RESEARCH
Raymond Hendler was a first generation action painter whose mature work began in Paris in 1949, independent from the New York scene. While in Paris, supported by the GI Bill, Hendler was one of the founding members of Galerie Huit and studied at Academie de la Grande Chaumiere.
Upon his return from Paris in 1951, he became active in the New York art scene. He was a voting member of the original New York Artists' Club from 1951 until its end in 1957. He met and befriended important figures of the time such as Franz Kline, Harold Rosenberg, David Smith and others. He participated in numerous exhibitions including The Stable Gallery Invitational in 1953.
From 1952-1954 he was founder and director of the Hendler Galleries, the first "avant-garde" gallery in Philadelphia, PA. He exhibited: Willem de Kooning, Sam Feinstein, Sanford Greenberg, Philip Guston, Shirley Jaffe, Robert Keyser, Franz Kline, George McNeil, Al Newbill, Stephen Pace, Jackson Pollock, Melville Price, Milton Resnick, Robert Richenburg, Ludwig Sander, Joseph Stefanelli, Yvonne Thomas and Jack Tworkov. He was the first to introduce to America the work of friends whom he met in Paris: Paul-Emile Borduas, Sam Francis, and Jean Paul Riopelle.
The Rose Fried Gallery in New York City represented Hendler for over 12 years, until her death in 1970. For a one-man show at Rose Fried in January 1962 his friend, Franz Kline wrote:
"Since first I saw Hendler's paintings in 1952 they have developed into a larger simpler form arriving at a personally abstract image controlled within a painted space. The direct auster design and color complexes paint the image without undue nuances - with clarity and mature independence."
He exhibited in many major museums, universities and galleries throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. His exhibitions included: Musee D'art Moderne, Paris, France, Museum of Modern Art, NY, NY, Baltimore Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Phildelphia Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. Hendler is also represented in many important public and private collections.
In 1963, he received the Longview Foundation Purchase Award (Walker Art Center), juried by Willem de Kooning, Thomas Hess, Philip Guston, Harold Rosenberg and David Smith.
In 1964, noted curator and art historian, Georgine Oeri wrote in Quadrum (The International Magazine of Modern Art);
"Raymond Hendler's work has vitality and freshness, a joyful, even playful exuberance. In his early work (which was close to, but independent of Pollock); he spread the overall web of linear forms as so many borderlines, between that first place of human awareness and that which is outside it, between the discovered and the undiscovered world, between "l'etre et le neant" ("being and nothingness").
Hendler outlined his painting concepts in a statement for an exhibition:
"The artist has always worked from what Joseph Campbell has called, 'The Focal Point of Human Wonder'. Today, that point, the crucial mystery, is man himself. To make such a focus manifest the artist must reveal the reality (the what is) that is the razor's edge between his conscious and his unconscious. Such is my endeavor."
Hendler was a professor at the University of Minnesota from 1968-1984. He retired to East Hampton, New York and painted vigorously until the end of his life.
For more information contact: Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, The Fuller Building 41 East 57th Street 13th floor, New York, New York 10022 (212) 644-7171 or email: