Frederic Matys Thursz Celebrated at Jeff Lincoln Art + Design

An installation view of artworks representing the most influential period of Frederic Matys Thursz career on display in The Light Within at the Jeff Lincoln Art + Design, New York.

ART REVIEW

Important works by Frederic Matys Thursz, one of the founders of the Radical Painting Group, are on display at the Jeff Lincoln Art + Design in New York in celebration of the artist’s artistic career.

BY KAZAD

SOUTHAMPTON, NY.- Presently at the Jeff Lincoln Art + Design in New York is Frederic Matys Thursz: The Light Within, The Late Work: 1980-1992, an exhibition focusing on the works of the late Frederic Matys Thursz. Thursz was a co-founder of the Radical Painting Group founded in New York City in the late ‘70s.

The Light Within brings together a large collection of Thursz’s late work that has never been together in one exhibition in many years. The collection represents the most influential period of Frederic Matys Thursz’s career. It includes a seminal work exhibited at Documenta 9 in 1992.

The exhibition coincides with the recent publication of a comprehensive monograph on the life and work of Frederic Matys Thursz. An influential artist, Thursz died at the height of his career in 1992. He has largely slipped from public recognition until recently.

About Frederic Matys Thursz

Born in Germany, Thursz arrived in New York in 1941. He received a BA from Queens College and an M.F.A from Columbia University. From 1956 to 1957 he studied in Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship. He died in Cologne, Germany.

In the 70s, Frederic Matys Thursz joined other artists to form the Radical Painting Group. The main objective of the group was to find a way to re-establish the relevance of painting at a time when the act was fully out of favor. In the group were Marcia Hafif, Phil Sims, Günter Umberg, and Joseph Marioni. Others are Jerry Zenuik, Andreas Exner, Rudolf De Crignis, and Christiane Fuchs. Others include Ingo Meller, Eric Saxon, Peter Tollens, Dieter Villinger, Ulrich Wellmann, Olivier Mosset and Winston Roeth.

The Radical Painting Group

The Radical Painting Group borrows from other artistic traditions like Constructivism, Suprematism, and Art Concret to actualize their thoughts and ideas. There was a general belief among group members that art should be appreciated on its own merit. That art should be devoid of any external motifs. For this reason, works by artists in the group were mostly monochrome. There is a particular focus on color effects, shading, and material properties. This approach enables the observer to experience the picture with its independently perceived color and light values, uniquely achieved by the painting technique, subtle coating methods, or change of flows.

Like other members of the group, Thursz was a believer in the paint itself as the conveyor of meaning. The artist “concentrated from a surprisingly early date on the complexity of paint as a material and color as a perceptual phenomenon, and with their limitless interplay with light,” explained art historian Bettina Kames.

In creating his work, Frederic Matys Thursz went through the laborious process of performative repetition. He achieved his deep, luminous colors by applying layer after layer of viscous boiled paint, scraping, glazing, and reworking the surface. That approach to painting is evident in Rouge, an oil on canvas painted in 1958. The brilliant red and high impasto personifies what The New York Times described as “a prismatic intensity.” With the pains taken effort that went into creating his work, it is not surprising that Frederic Matys Thursz took years to produce a single finished work. For him, applying paint had a transformative power because “Color and light are the totality of painting.”