Pentimento Paintings – Greg Goldberg

July 16th –  September 4th, 2022. Artist’s Reception, July 16th –  5-7 pm.

In art history classes, professors sometimes refer to pentimento in rapturous tones. Particularly when discussing paintings from, say, the Renaissance, or the oil panels by 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painters. In Italian, pentimento literally means repentance, and in English art historical speak, it refers to the underlying layer of drawing or painting that was later deliberately covered by the artist. It’s exciting because it reveals evidence of an artistic thought process; a glimpse into the stages of a work of art. Artist Greg Goldberg employs this term for the title of his exhibition on view at The Cornwall Library from July 16 through September 4th. In doing so, he refers to the visual evidence of the underpainting being intrinsic to how he creates these images.

Goldberg’s Pentimento Paintings were made in rural West Cornwall, Connecticut over the last eleven months. While abstract, the works respond to their natural surroundings and seasonal changes in color and light. And of course, those unseen layers are an integral part of the work as they help to determine the ultimate visual structure. They are visible as edges along the perimeter of individual marks, at the intersection of colors, and beneath transparent and translucent colors. The marks range from sweeping to staccato and develop slowly, over many months, to gradually create a visual and spatial logic that implies the passage of time. Both meditative and dramatic, each painting is a visual history of this accretion of defined brushstrokes.

Using oil paint on linen, Goldberg’s choice of colors is sensual. Inspired by the radical palette of Renaissance master Jacopo Pontormo, transparent ultramarine blue and quinacridone violet are played off against opaque tones (tertiaries, muted grays and earthy browns). Many of the colors are found in the natural surroundings of Cornwall while others are overtly artificial. Structurally, there is nothing predetermined – the works are a flowing improvisation.

A native of New York City, Greg Goldberg splits time between the Garment District in Manhattan and Cornwall, Connecticut. His works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Estée Lauder Foundation, and numerous private collections. In 2014, he was commissioned to create a series of large-scale paintings for the Freedom Tower at One World Trade Center in New York City. In 2021, he had a solo exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York and was part of Galerie Koenig’s Messe in St. Agnes show in Berlin, Germany. His website is: https://www.greggoldberg.art