On October 20 an exhibition of Joseph Raffael’s monumentally-sized watercolors opens at Nancy Hoffman Gallery. The exhibition, which takes place at the gallery’s SoHo address, continues through November 28. A catalogue with an essay by Christopher Finch, and an interview with the artist, accompanies the exhibition. All works are now in the gallery and available for viewing. Stay tuned for news on the gallery’s move to its new Chelsea location at 520 West 27th Street in the near future.

Spirit, 2006, watercolor on paper 60 x 85 inches

Since Raffael’s exhibition two years ago, an evolution has taken place in his work. Nature remains the artist’s subject and passion, which he approaches with new eyes and a new hand. While Raffael’s earlier watercolors focused on the riches of the world around his home and garden--the carp ponds, the flowers in his garden, the birds in his aviaries--the new work invites the viewer to new depths in the exploration of similar themes with a renewed view. The artist’s passion is palpable, the heartbeat of nature throbs in each color vibration that accompanies the subject of each new work. In watercolor, Raffael strives to penetrate the very essence of nature, to get inside the core of an iris and be dazzled by its light and glow, to gaze at roses in refulgent bloom parading across the paper unfurling their petals bearing their perfume visually. This is Raffael at his most sensual.

In 2006 Raffael painted a diptych entitled “Stegner,” a watercolor measuring 52x76 inches, of white-blossomed branches against a vivid clear blue sky. Gone were the jewel-encrusted, detail passages of the earlier watercolors, replaced by a sky of lucid, open blue. A window was opening for the artist into new terrain. And open it did in his next work entitled “Herald,” one of his own birds painted full scale, almost as tall as the paper, 66 inches, surrounded by a kaleidoscopically abstracted background of myriad colors: red, green, blue, purple. In this piece a new drama is present in the juxtaposition of representational (the bird) and swirling abstraction (the background). The energy of the highly “real” and the highly abstract continues in each ensuing watercolor.

Grace, 2007, watercolor on paper, 54 x 83 inches

In several of the new works, Raffael has captured his carp pond in all its variability. A few of the watercolors depict multi-colored carp in motion, surfacing, sinking to depths, moving through the waters; in others Raffael has captured something new about the pond, its peacefulness, its sacredness as an inspiring and residing presence on his property. In “Prayer,” a diptych measuring 55x85 inches, the artist paints the surface of the pond, its shimmering ripples and the reflection of the greenery surrounding it. The blue is a new hue for Raffael, a Mediterranean blue that suggests the blue of Chartres’s glass windows. There is a meditative quality to his work, a numinous moment of light on the water, a sacred moment in time and space.

Joseph Raffael was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1933. He attended Cooper Union, New York and received a B.F.A. from Yale School of Fine Arts. While at Yale he studied with Josef Albers. He also received a Fulbright Fellowship to Florence and Rome.

Emergence, 2006, watercolor on paper, 59 x 39 1/2 inches

Eternal Loizos, 2006, watercolor on paper, 69 x 44 1/2 inches

The artist’s work has been exhibited in this country at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; ARCO Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; Arts Center Galleries, Old Forge, New York; Bergstrom-Mahler Museum, Neenah, Wisconsin; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; The Canton Museum of Art, Ohio; City University of New York, Baruch College; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Davenport Museum of Art, Iowa; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; The Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Elvehjem Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin; Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Indiana; Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Gibbs Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina, Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee; The Jacksonville Museum, Florida; Las Vegas Museum of Art, Nevada; Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, Saint Louis; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida;

The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Academy of Design, New York; Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island; Newport Harbor Art Museum, California; Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida; San Francisco International Airport, California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Scottsdale Art Center, Arizona; Sioux City Art Center, Iowa; State University of New York, Stony Brook; Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; Wichita Art Museum, Kansas;

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin; among other institutions. His work has also been shown at the Musee d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France; Fukui City Art Museum; Hokodate Museum of Art, Hokkaido; Iwaki City Museum; Iwate Prefectural Museum; Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo; Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art; Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai; Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama; Sogo Museum of Art; National Museum in Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland; Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts; Tokushima Modern Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, Shiba; and Kochi Prefectural Museum of Folk Art, all in Japan, and Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan.

Raffael’s work is represented in many museum collections, among them: Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; The Canton Museum of Art, Ohio; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; The Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Jacksonville Art Museum, Florida; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Long Beach Museum, California; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Museum of Outdoor Art, Englewood, Colorado; National Collection of Fine Arts of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Oakland Museum, California; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Rahr West Art Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; The Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Maryland; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The artist resides in France.