Babcock Galleries is proud to present Edwin Dickinson In Retrospect—the gallery’s 6th solo exhibition dedicated to the artist. This show surveys Dickinson’s paintings from 1911 to 1955, exploring his stylistic innovations from the 1920s through the 1940s, which attracted the attention and admiration of the likes of Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Jack Tworkov.

Elaine de Kooning described Dickinson as “a great artist [who] reconciles poetry with perspective.” His visual innovations and technical fluency had significant currency with the Abstract Expressionists. He regularly accepted invitations in the 1950s to exhibit with them at the Stable Gallery, but the romantic and representational elements of his artwork continued to defy the boundaries of any single art movement. Dickinson remained an independent visionary painter, and from the 1920s through the 1970s was among the most respected and prominent artists in America.

Edwin Dickinson In Retrospect will feature a range of the artist’s work, including his complex, dark “symbolic” paintings, intense self-portraits, rapidly executed “premier coup” landscapes, still life and nudes, that are harbingers of Abstract Expressionism.

Edwin Dickinson studied under William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League and was also strongly influenced by Charles Hawthorne before serving in the Navy during World War I. He matured in the age of Cubism and The Armory Show, having important early associations with Ambrose Webster, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper and Stuart Davis. Dickinson had important solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and was the lead American artist at the 1968 Venice Biennale. The Museum of Modern Art’s landmark 1952 15 Americans exhibition, curated by Dorothy C. Miller, included works by Dickinson alongside, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, William Baziotes, Clyfford Still, Bradley Tomlin and Richard Lippold. Visitors to The Museum of Modern Art’s current exhibition, de Kooning: A Retrospective, may find Dickinson’s work to be a revelation.

Babcock Galleries has represented the heirs of Edwin Dickinson for more than 20 years. Edwin Dickinson In Retrospect will be on view at 724 Fifth Avenue, 11th Floor, from Monday, November 28, 2011 – Friday, January 27, 2012. Gallery hours are 10am – 5pm Monday – Friday, and Saturdays by appointment.