Michael Gross: Abstraction I & II

Opening reception – American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC

Abstraction I
American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
June 13 – July 26, 2015
Washington, DC

Abstraction II
July 8 – August 8, 2015
Gallery B
Bethesda, Maryland

About the Exhibition

Michael Gross, painter and printmaker, offers expressive and emotionally filled works using a kaleidoscope of color. Gross creates art as “a means of grappling with the impulses and struggles that make up the way I see my place in the world.” Through his visual lexicon,which is devoid of ideological reference, Gross seeks to create order from chaos. His lyrical compositions of concatenated lines, textured surfaces and rich hues, invoke Abstract Expressionism and pay homage to artists who inspire his work: Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Jackson Pollock. Curated by Myrtis Bedolla

Artwork

Michael Gross

Born in 1944 and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Gross showed artistic promise from a young age. His talents were influenced and nurtured by his artist mother, with whom he would travel to the Art Institute of Chicago where they took classes and his father, an advertising executive who took Gross to his office on weekends, where he would set him up at a drafting table with crayons and paper, allowing him to draw for hours. As a fledgling artist at the age of ten, Gross won an art competition and received a $500 savings bond.

Gross would go on to earn a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law, becoming a corporate attorney, and in the 80s, a real estate developer. But art-making always remained an integral part of his life, as he continued to take classes at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC and develop his techniques under the watchful eye of friend and mentor, artist William Christenberry.