Press enter after choosing selection

Artist's Outdoor Sculptures Being Exhibited

Artist's Outdoor Sculptures Being Exhibited image
Parent Issue
Day
18
Month
May
Year
1976
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Artist's Outdoor Sculptures Being Exhibited

Artist Gerome Kamrowski deals in fantasy - both playful and diabolical.

He creates outdoor decorative windmills, whirligigs and rotors that sparkle and dance in the wind. Other of his outdoor sculptures depict rodent-like demons which mirror a darker, more frightening fantasy world.

A U-M art professor, Kamrowski is also well known for his surrealistic paintings. His most recent work includes paintings inspired by movement and colors of his windmill sculpture.

Two exhibitions of Kamrowski's work are under way in Chicago, continuing for about a month. A one-man show, titled 'Gerome Kamrwoski Then & Now" is at Gallery 2269, 2269 North Lincoln Ave. The show features about 80 Kamrowski pieces, including windmills, weathervanes, and surrealistic and windmill paintings. Kamrowski also has more than 20 art works in the World Surrealist Exhibit now under way at the Gallery Black Swan, at North LaSalle and Illinois.

Kamrowski's windmill structures include propellers, rotors, pendulums and anemometers (similar to cup-like devices used at airports to measure wind velocity). Most are made from recycled salvage material, such as old wagon wheels, barn siding, scrap metal and used washing machine parts.

When not on exhibit, the wind devices are housed at Kamrowski's backyard outdoor gallery - the "S.W. Wind Gallery" (named for the prevailing winds) - behind his home at 1501 Beechwood Dr. 

Kamrowski's most recent paintings also have a playful theme, inspired by the brightly colored wind devices. "On a nice day," says the artist, "you will usually find me outside working on my windmills. On a rainy day, I'll be making paintings of them."

Kamrowski's surrealistic paintings in the exhibit are from the period 1939-1946, when Kamrowski worked in New York as part of the surrealistic movement there. In 1947 he was represented in the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.

A gallery announcement states: "Kamrowski was associated briefly with the Chicago Bauhaus. But the determining influence on his life as a painter was the discovery of surrealism in the late 1930's, and his meeting with Andre Breton and other surrealists shortly afterword in New York...

"In 1950 Breton wrote the preface to a Kamrowski exhibition in Paris. In his text, Breton wrote: 'Kamrwoski has been entirely concerned with the function of absorption and liberations of energy which largely determines bodily structures. And, unlike those who limit themselves to presenting us with the ring of these structures, Kamrowski allows us to be present at their formation... The most secret life passes in front of us here, and is at least as generous as the other life in lavishing all sorts of charms.' 

"Nicolas Calas, active in surrealism at that time, remarked that 'not since Matta's first show, some 10 years ago, has there appeared a young painter endowed with such explosive force and such power of vision.'

"Kamrowski played and indisputably major role in the artistic ferment in New York during the Second World War... He was closely associated with painters such as William Baziotes and Jackson Pollock."

"Wind Creature" (Above) An Outdoor Sculpture And "Wind Wheel - 1975" (Right) An Acrylic Impasto on Canvas Done U-M Art Professor Kamrowski