Hosfelt Gallery is pleased to announce its representation of the esteemed painter, calligrapher, and Rinzai Zen monk—Max Gimblett. Born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1935, he trained at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1960s and has since lived, studied, traveled, taught, and exhibited extensively across the globe. Gimblett lives and works in New York and Auckland with the scholar, curator, writer and 2020 recipient of the prestigious Dan David Prize—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett—to whom he has been married for 56 years.
His first solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, juggernaut, will open 8 September 2020.
Gimblett’s paintings are a harmonious postmodern synthesis of American and Japanese art. Often working on shaped panels or canvases—tondos, ovals, and his signature four-lobed quatrefoil—he marries Abstract Expressionism, Modernism and Spiritual Abstraction with mysticism and traditions of Asian calligraphy. Masterful brushwork, an eccentric and sophisticated color sense and sensuously glossy surfaces are punctuated with gilding in precious metals—a nod to alchemy, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (in which he was raised) and Japanese lacquerware, ceramics, and temple art.
With an oeuvre that encompasses a half-century practice of creating unique artist’s books and ink paintings on paper, Gimblett is both a storyteller as well as a teacher who frequently guides Sumi ink workshops.