Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Untitled,1959
Ink on paper
7 7/8 inches diameter (image)
11 11/16 x 9 inches (paper)
Signed in lower left: PEARSON 1959
Promised gift of Terry and Ed Duffy

The Poetry of Line: Drawings by Henry Pearson
September 11-November 18, 2001
Special Exhibitions Gallery I

Henry Pearson (b. 1914) is perhaps best known for a mildly optical manner of painting, featuring a mutable labyrinth of undulating parallel lines, which somewhat inadvertently linked him to the Op Art movement of the 1960s. Although included in the Museum of Modern Art's landmark exhibition The Responsive Eyein 1965, his work displays an intuitive rhythm and poetic elegance that falls well outside of the calculated, often hard-edged quality normally associated with the Op group of artists.

Pearson came late to the visual arts. His first career, in theatre design, was cut short by the Second World War. He entered the U.S. Army in 1942, and at warÕs end requested duty in occupied Japan, where a prolonged contact with Japanese culture nurtured a passion for painting. Upon his discharge from the army, in 1953, he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York City, where he studied with, among others, Reginald Marsh and Will Barnet. Inspired by Malevich, he turned to rectilinear abstraction, and employed it as the dominant means of expression in his painting between 1954 and 1961.

As early as 1959, however, sensing an incipient decadence in his geometric canvases, Pearson began to develop a new direction in his work. During the war, he served for a year in Culver City, California, where his interpretive drawings of secret imperial maps were employed to construct three-dimensional scale models of the Japanese islands. Recalling the hypnotic movement of those earlier efforts, he produced a series of exploratory sketches, first in pencil and then in ink, which over a period of several years gradually transformed illusionary mountains and valleys into purely non-objective exercises. By 1961 these drawings, reflecting a personal vision now well removed from any topographical transcription, heralded a new era of linear abstraction in Pearson's work. Quickly celebrated as well on canvas and in print, the idea became central to his oeuvre for the next fifteen years, a period which coincided with his rise to some prominence in the New York art world.

Most of the works in The Poetry of Linedate from between 1959 and the mid-1970s, when the artist shifted once again toward geometric abstraction. The period is critical from the standpoint of draftsmanship, for it was the only time in which Pearson's drawings regularly achieved a status above that of sketch or study, standing on their own as complete, albeit relatively intimate, statements. Included in the exhibition are several of the earliest experiments on paper, a sampling of the first color drawings, and numerous variations on the linear theme that the artist did not, or could not, approach in his canvases. Among this latter group is a sphere, entirely covered in subtle convolutions, which represents one of the more original manifestations of Pearson's signature technique.

Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Study for Demon F.S.P #22,1955
Graphite and watercolor on paper
ca. 5 3/4 x 8 inches (image)
8 x 10 inches (paper)
Promised gift of the artist

Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Untitled, 1960
Ink on paper
6 x 11 inches (image)
10 x 13 3/8 inches (paper)
Signed in lower left: PEARSON 1960
Promised gift of Terry and Ed Duffy

Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Black Sun,1965
Ink on paper
15 5/8 x 20 1/4 inches
Signed lower right: PEARSON 1965
Collection of the artist

Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Crucible I,1967
Ink and watercolor on paper
15 x 15 inches
Signed in lower right: Henry Pearson 1967
Collection of the artist

Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Study No. I for Lincoln Center New York Film Festival Poster, 1968
Ink and graphite on paper
22 7/8 x 15 inches (image)
23 7/8 x 16 1/4 inches (paper)
Collection of the artist

Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Ethical Movement II,1982
Ink on paper
14 1/8 x 17 1/8 inches
Signed in lower right: PEARSON 1982
Promised gift of Terry and Ed Duffy

Henry Pearson
(American, b. 1914)
Judgement of Paris with 1924 Lagonda,1979
Ink, watercolor, and vinyl on paper
7 1/2 x 8 5/8 inches (image)
8 15/16 x 10 inches (paper)
Signed in lower left: PEARSON 1979
Promised gift of Terry and Ed Duffy

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