Format: Digital
Pages: 176
Publisher: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
Contributors: Ruth Fine
Editors: halley k harrisburg and Francesca Leszynski

VIEW THE CATALOGUE
Read Norman Lewis: Give Me Wings To Fly

This 176-page, fully-illustrated digital publication includes sixty-four rich plates and features a new essay by curator, art historian, and Norman Lewis scholar Ruth Fine.

“Drawing and painting on paper frequently provided a preview of what would subsequently develop in Lewis’ paintings on canvas,” Fine writes. “His paintings often integrate drawing media with oil paints, especially ink and pastel. The selection of works on paper included in this exhibition covers most aspects of Lewis’ visual concerns, enabling viewers to grasp the many strings that tie the works together, an oeuvre of great variety that likewise is linked across decades by a complex, comprehensive vision. Deep readings of Lewis’ art as he presents it require some sense of how these many subjects—and beautiful as well as horrifying experiences—impact his life, and thus his work. Equally possible is a deep reading that is instigated by the important qualities of viewers’ lives. In either case, it must be understood that while the works in Norman Lewis: Give Me Wings To Fly may visually jump off their pages at a single glance, a more sustained examination is suggested to fully appreciate their value.”
—Ruth Fine

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Norman Lewis.

About the Essayist

Ruth Fine is a practicing artist and was a curator at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) from 1972–2012. In her curatorial roles at the NGA, she organized dozens of exhibitions on such artists as Romare Bearden, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe. In 2016, Fine curated the widely acclaimed exhibition, Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine; the catalogue for this exhibition was awarded the College Art Association’s 2017 Alfred H. Barr Award for Museum Scholarship. Fine continues to work as an independent curator, chairs the board of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, and serves as a consultant for the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as well as the Smithsonian Archives of American Art African American Collecting Initiative. In October 2023, she will receive the Archives of American Art’s Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History.