09 Nov 2018

Introducing Frank Hursh

Blue Spiral 1

Reviewed by Andy Gambrell

Frank Hursh is an art and design polymath. His aesthetic sensibilities, cultivated as a student at Black Mountain College, manifested widely in Mexico. He made substantive contributions in television, animation, museum design, and education with the Universidad del Valle de Mexico and the Universidad de las Artes Mexico. Selections from seven decades of his fine art are on view at Blue Spiral 1.

Hursh's early works are characterized by consolidated gestural marks, while more recent pictures contain monumental forms that are rhythmically subdivided by expressive drawing. Hursh's dynamic landscapes are not made solely from observation, memory, or imagination. They are the product of all these things and of paint, the fruit of a union between the artist and his process. His color is composed according to value and saturation, and infinitely fractured hues shimmer with life. Untitled No. 36, from 1968, possesses the hallmark strengths of both early and late modes of working.