Philosphically, my INFINITES…are an emphatic statement of the unitary nature of existence.
Edward Renouf
This work is from Renouf's Infinites series in which he used what he referred to as “sgraffito,” a technique of scratching minute scribbles through wet black oil paint with a pin point, revealing tiny traces of the gray acrylic beneath. Emanating from his long fascination with “the aleatory richness of random, often messy, and evidently impulsive quick lines” in Rembrandt's drawings, Renouf's planes of tiny jittery gestures culminate as “abstract drawings of a calligraphy that represent nothing but itself.” Intensely aware of the Far East's “aesthetic and intuitive genius and the so convincingly rational philosophical religions,” Renouf approached painting as object and image at once, seeking “the holistic grasp of existential unity” and “paradox without which no profound understanding is possible.”
Founded in 1960 by art dealer Allan Stone (1932–2006), the New York gallery known today as Allan Stone Projects has been admired for over half a century. Celebrated for its eclectic approach and early advocacy of pivotal artists of the 20th century, Allan Stone Gallery was a leading authority on Abstract Expressionism, the New York dealer for Wayne Thiebaud for over forty years, and showed the works of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Joseph Cornell, John Graham and John Chamberlain. Stone also promoted the work of a younger generation of artists that were in conversation with other artists in his collection, working in the mediums of assemblage, collage and new modes of abstraction. In addition to modern masterworks and contemporary art, Allan Stone also collected and exhibited international folk art, Americana and important decorative arts and industrial design.
Edward Renouf 1906–1999
Edward Renouf was a prolific artist who worked in a variety of mediums, and is known for his paintings, drawings and sculpture. He was born in China of an American Father and German mother. He graduated from Andover Academy in 1924 and received a BA from Harvard 1928. After three years at Columbia University he spent time in Europe where he studied drawing. He spent fifteen years in Mexico finally settling in Connecticut in 1958 when he began exhibiting. His work has been shown across the US, with several solo exhibitions at the Allan Stone Gallery. Renouf's work is held in numerous public collections including the Boise Art Museum, ID; the Huntington Museum of Art, WV; Las Vegas Art Museum, NV; Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. His work was exhibited in several of these institutions in 2011 as part of The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States.
