BRONZE

Hackett Mill is pleased to present an exhibition of Manuel Neri’s latest bronze sculptures. Neri is known for his prolonged engagement with the female figure in a variety of materials, starting with plaster in the 1960s and moving into bronze and marble. The figures in this grouping range from table-top to life-size in scale and reference Neri’s origins with plaster and his expressionistic manipulation of the medium. By casting the plaster in bronze, the tactile surfaces are preserved and enhanced. The works on display are unified by a new patina, the Alborada or Dawn patina. In his essay for the exhibition catalogue, Bruce Guenther, former chief curator at the Portland Art Museum, elaborates on 
the finish:

Neri’s Alborada patina, as the poetic name implies, suggests the warming sunlight of morning through an opaque white pigment finish rubbed with a yellow glaze that highlights and deepens the visual power of the sculpture’s surface complexity. It is a finish that is immanently alive and reveals the singularity of Neri’s development of form and surface over the decades. Settling into the fissures and hollows, warming the taut, smoothly sanded passages, the Alborada patina allows the eye a truer perception of the artist’s hand at work...[1]

Neri's sculpture and painting is included in the following selected public collections: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Corcoran Gallery of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among others. In 2006, Neri received the Lifetime Achievement in Sculpture award from the International Sculpture Center, and in 2008, he received the Bay Area Treasure Award from the SFMOMA. His sculpture is currently on exhibit in A Work in Progress: Plaster in the Nasher Collection, in Dallas, TX. His work will also be featured in the inaugural exhibition at the Jan and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum in Davis, CA.

[1]Guenther, Bruce. Manuel Neri: Plaster to Bronze. San Francisco:Hackett | Mill, 2016.

Click here to watch Bruce Guenther's video
Manuel Neri: Plaster to Bronze.

A limited edition catalogue with a new essay
by Bruce Guenther is available, please call gallery
for more information.

Read the Visual Art Source review here.