Andrew Stevovich: The Truth About Lola

The first major museum exhibition devoted to the glittering themes of café society will be presented in Andrew Stevovich: The Truth About Lola, organized by the Hudson River Museum and curated by Bartholomew F. Bland.

Andrew Stevovich, a noted contemporary figurative painter, depicts a world infused with colorful characters that gamble with demons and fate. Ordinary men and women in everyday situations and locations, restaurants and bars, at the beach, and on public transportation show us a mysterious world imprinted on their stylized faces, and ask that their stories be considered, whether melancholy, romantic, violent, or lurid.

Although Stevovich's paintings are set in the contemporary world, his crisp design, brilliant color, and meticulous surface finishes recall Renaissance works. .Stevovich paints in oil and pastel and is also an accomplished printmaker and etcher. Stylistically, many critics have commented on the relationship of Stevovich s work to that of the early Italian painters. Growing up in Washington, DC, he often visited the National Gallery of Art where he internalized the Italians bold colors and repetition of shape and form. Not surprisingly, almost all his paintings are boldly colored portraits with stylized figures, many sensuous lipped, like those in early Roman sculpture and Renaissance painting. He has never truly embraced landscape or still life.

Among the 75 works in The Truth About Lola is Popcorn, on view for the first time. A major new work, it provides insights into the artist s technique. Stevovich says, I work backwards. First I draw the faces and foreground objects, rather than beginning in the more traditional way by blocking colors. To increase the luminosity of color, Stevovich keeps his canvas as white and pure as possible, before applying color, At times, the disenchantment beneath the surface of many of Stevovich s paintings bursts into the open. Scenes of overt violence make up a comparatively small but distinct group of works in his repertoire. Discord contains one of the artist s few crowd scenes where everyone engages with each other, except the central female figure, who clutches her chest in bewilderment. The bottom of the panel is a rare instance in which Stevovich show a man threatening a woman. The man extends his fists like a boxer and the woman holds up a defensive hand. In the top left hand corner, another woman, in anguish, presses her hands to the side of her heard, recalling Munch s The Scream. This very German Expressionist-influenced work echoes the chaos depicted in canvases from the Weimar Republic of the 1920s, which the artist intriguingly combines with Renaissance-like painting.

Stevovich holds degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Massachusetts College of Art. Recent solo and group exhibitions include the Danforth Museum of Art, New Britain Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum of Art. Stevovich s work is in the permanent collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The show, organized by the Hudson River Museum, is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.