Viola Frey | Nancy Hoffman Gallery

VIOLA FREY: A LASTING LEGACY

Viola Frey in her studio, 2004

Viola Frey, Studio View, 2004

Viola Frey Traveling Exhibition 2005

Viola Frey, Man with Portland Vases

Viola Frey, Determined Woman

Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York, New York, September 16 - October 20, 2005

Viola Frey, Determined Man

Viola Frey, Studio View, Paint Brushes, 2004

Louise Wells Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, North Carolina, June 2 - September 4, 2005

Viola Frey, Resting Woman I, Cascading Tresses

Viola Frey, Stubborn Woman, Orange Hands

Avampato Discovery Museum, Charleston, West Virginia, January 13 - March 28, 2005

Viola Frey, Detail: Man Balancing Urn

Viola Frey, Seated Man Foot Poised on World

Viola Frey: A Lasting Legacy

"Viola Frey: A Lasting Legacy," is the first traveling museum exhibition of a selection of the artist's final works created in 2003 and 2004, before her untimely death on July 26, 2004 in Oakland, California. Included are three small figurative assemblages called bricolage and eight monumental figures - two reclining females nudes, a seated female nude, a standing female, two seated males, and two standing males - and a large cylindrical sculpture with painted figures encicling it, topped by a large, upturned hand. Shown for the first time publicly are three unglazed, monumental pieces: an urn, a seated female nude and a standing male. Also shown for the first time publicly are six blown glass amphorae decorated with china paints by Frey.

In 1992 Frey turned her attention to glass at the Pilchuck Glass School north of Seattle. Created with Chuck Vannatta, an independent glass blower in Oakland, these amphorae evidence Frey's constant search for new ways to express her creative genius.

Viola Frey, Column/Hand/World

Viola Frey, Studio View, 2004

The distillation of Frey's life and art into a few pages will, of course, fall short of any expectations because of the complexities of the artist's life and art. A keen observer of people and the world around her, Frey has been called a visual anthropologist and an urban archaeologist. Her phonomenally prolific career in painting, drawing, ceramics, bronze, glass, and photography does not fall easily into convenient categories or periods because she did not think or work in that manner. She worked in several materials at the same time and would rework pieces later or return to subject matter from an earlier period. Indeed, each pieces in this exhibition reiterates Frey's fundamental preoccupation with the human figure and her habit of making references to other artists and art from other cultures and times.

A cursory glance of Frey's life reveals a significant truth: she was driven by an insatiable need to create art. Frey once noted that she was able to do her work because she adhered to two priorities: to survive and to create art. For Frey, art and survival - life - were inseparable. Like many driven, creative people, Frey was not only an artist and a teacher, but was also a consumer of art. She lived with art in a fully engaged way. There was no separation between her art and her life; one flowed into the other in a circular gestalt.

Viola Frey, Standing White Majestic Man
Viola Frey, White Amphora

Viola Frey, Seated White Majestic Woman

From an early age Frey knew she wanted to be an artist, although she had no idea what art was or what it meant to be an artist. She did intuit, however, that art was impractical, especially for a girl born on a farm in Lodi, California in 1993 in the midst of the Great Depression. Following graduation from high school, Frey attended Stockton Delta College in 1952, but moved the next year to the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in Oakland, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She studied painting with Richard Diebenkorn and took an elective course in ceramics with Vernon Coykendall and Charles Fiske.

Auspiciously, the direction of her future life in art was set: painting and ceramics would be her calling. Throughout her career Frey moved easliy from painting to ceramics; in fact, she approached paint like clay and clay like paint, taking advantage of the plasticity of each medium...

Excerpt from the essay by Kenneth R. Trapp