Leonard Tourné Gallery

STRONG-CUEVAS DRAWINGS: IDEAS ON PAPER

Exhibition opens April 5, 2018 at Leonard Tourné Gallery

March 2018 — New York, NY — Leonard Tourné Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Strong-Cuevas Drawings: Ideas on Paper, a solo exhibition and launch of the book by the same title. The exhibition, featuring sculpture and works on paper by Strong-Cuevas, opens April 5, 2018  and runs through April 20, 2018. Signed copies of the artist's newly released book will be available for purchase.

Strong-Cuevas's work explores universal consciousness, space and time, and inner mediation, themes that are evident in her drawings as well as her sculpture. In the words of distinguished art critic Donald Kuspit, "Strong-Cuevas's sculpture is rooted in primitive art, with its bold structures, expressive directness, communal symbolism, and conviction of cosmic absolutes. It is also rooted in Cubism, with its awareness of the dialectical ambiguity of appearances, perhaps most evident in Picasso's use of frontal and profile views of the face in a single image, at once integrating them yet allowing them their difference. Primordial expression and sophisticated perception are the alpha and omega of modern art."

The influence of ancient civilizations – the Egyptians, Aztecs and Mayans – is particularly evident in Strong-Cuevas's abstract faces and large-scale works. Her ten-foot bronze, Arch III, was chosen in 2014 by the New York City Parks Department to be exhibited in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations and several of her works are currently exhibited at Grounds for Sculpture. 

The latest book on the artist's work, Strong-Cuevas Drawings: Ideas on Paper, published by Abrams, spans 40 years of the artist's career with 190 color and black-and-white drawings. With a forward by esteemed art critic Jan Garden Castro, the book serves as a companion to Strong-Cuevas Sculpture: Premonitions in Retrospect, published in November 2015.

Born in Paris, Strong-Cuevas lives and works in New York, where she studied under John Hovannes at the Art Students League of New York and worked on projects with Toto Meylan. Her work has been exhibited in dozens of solo and group exhibitions, including the IIème Biennale de Sculpture in Monte Carlo, Monaco, and is represented in the collections of the Bruce Museum (Greenwich, Connecticut), Heckscher Museum (Huntington, New York), Guild Hall Museum (East Hampton, New York), Grounds for Sculpture (Hamilton, New Jersey) and the Smithsonian-affiliated Long Island Museum (Stony Brooke, New York).

Strong-Cuevas's work has sold at Christie's, Sotheby's, Doyle and several European auction houses in Monte Carlo, Paris and Brussels.

For additional information, please contact Leonard Tourné Gallery at (212) 219-2656 or info@leonard-tourne.com.