'Three Painters' exhibit opening at Newhouse Gallery

by Michael J. Fressola/Staten Island AWE

Sunday June 07, 2009, 11:00 AM

Photo courtesy of Yvonne SimonsMax Spoerri's watercolor is part of Newhouse Gallery's "Three Painters," opening Saturday.

Show highlights Max Spoerri, Yvonne Simons and Robert Civiello

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Well-established second-generation abstract expressionist Max Spoerri will join Staten Island-based artists Yvonne Simons and Robert Civiello for "Three Painters," opening Saturday in the Newhouse Gallery on the grounds of Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, Livingston.

Spoerri launched his career with a show at the Sun Gallery in Provincetown, Mass., the same year that he established his Greenwich Village workspace in 1958.

At the time, he was a member of the Village's celebrated Artists Club, a weekly get-together that drew figures like Willem deKooning and Marth Rothko, Nikki de Saint Phalle and Yves Tinguely.

He has shown work in Manhattan, East Hampton, Boston, Holland and France.

According to Ms. Simons, who is co-curating "Three Painters" (with Patrick Grenier, director of visual arts at Snug Harbor), "Max's work explores the relationship to a momentary visual experience of a room, gathering place and environment by transforming a space through paint."

Civiello, a St. George resident, is a figurative painter whose subject matter is sometimes drawn from literature and archetypes.

Ms. Simons, also of St. George, considers classical and Renaissance figurative traditions in her paintings of the human form. Her current series is based on the paintings and drawings of Hendrick Goltzius.

All are welcome at the opening Saturday, from 5 to 7 p.m. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. "Three Painters" continues through Aug. 13.