Ralph Joachim Artist
Biography of the artist
I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by art in New York City in a household of artists which included my father, mother, grandmother, and uncle. My uncle and my father were both professional painters who devoted their lives to art. Their artistic personalities were very different. My father, Abraham Steinberg, was a Neoclassical/Post-Impressionist and my uncle, Ilya Bolotowsky, was a Neo-Plasticist. They shared in common their love for art from antiquity through the Twentieth century, and a deep understanding of the elements of art including color, form, structure, volume, light and dark, composition and design.
My father was the more traditional painter who emphasized figurative drawing and painting, including portraiture. But his favorite artist was Cezanne, who is one of the originators of modern art. His taste reflected the belief that underlying all art, including figurative work, was a structure in nature that had to be reflected in his own artistic expression.
My uncle was a talented draftsman who did beautiful figurative work when he was young but he, unlike my father, broke with tradition. Although Ilya Bolotowsky is not well known outside the art world, he "was among the first of his generation to paint pure abstractions, remaining faithful to the abstract aesthetics that he developed in 1933 for the rest of his long career." * While he was a disciple of Piet Mondrian my uncle's work departed from Mondrian's formal Neo-Plastic style in the richness of his colors, the boldness of his designs and in his exploration of three dimensional and two dimensional space. In addition to painting geometric diamonds, tondos (circles), ovals, squares and rectangles, Bolotowsky increasingly painted columns that seemed to soar into space.
My painting and drawing over the course of my artistic career have evolved from a Neoclassical-Post-Impressionist style with an emphasis on figurative work, commencing in 1998, to pure abstraction, in 2005.
My abstract work has occurred in phases.
The first phase focused on Neo-Plastic paintings of acrylics on canvas of fixed geometric grids (straight lines and right angles) and primary colors to combinations, and then to series, incorporating circles, curves, elongated triangles and quadrilaterals with a broad palette of vibrant colors, including iridescents.
In the last half of 2022 and 2023- after creating large combinations, and then series, for almost two decades- my art developed in two directions. First, I returned to painting individual Neo-Plastic works in a variety of configurations: diamonds, rectangles, ovals and tondos. While my pieces were painted on canvas, the tondos were an exception, being painted on a gessoed wood surface.
The other change was my creation of 3-D wood sculptures (columns). I consider these columns to be an extension of my painting.
When I added 3-D columns to my repertoire I was able to expand the painting surface from flatness to roundness of 360 degrees. This frees me to not only expand the painting surface but to seamlessly vary the design and the color relationships of the piece.
It also presents an additional challenge: to use the negative space between the paintings on the wall and the columns on the floor to create diverse visual relationships (tensions, balances and counterbalances) using a variety of perspectives involving both the paintings and the columns.
In painting geometric abstractions, I am attempting to emphasize the universal elements of shape, design, color, and space relationships that are free from the limitations of realistic subject matter.
Although I consider myself a nonobjective artist and not a semi-abstractionist, I want my work to be expressive and to evoke in the viewer a feeling that appeals to the viewer's imagination, sense of design and visual harmony.
__________________________________________
* Barbara Dayer Gallati, Associate Curator, American Painting and Sculpture, Brooklyn Museum, Catalogue The Williamsburg Murals
My father was the more traditional painter who emphasized figurative drawing and painting, including portraiture. But his favorite artist was Cezanne, who is one of the originators of modern art. His taste reflected the belief that underlying all art, including figurative work, was a structure in nature that had to be reflected in his own artistic expression.
My uncle was a talented draftsman who did beautiful figurative work when he was young but he, unlike my father, broke with tradition. Although Ilya Bolotowsky is not well known outside the art world, he "was among the first of his generation to paint pure abstractions, remaining faithful to the abstract aesthetics that he developed in 1933 for the rest of his long career." * While he was a disciple of Piet Mondrian my uncle's work departed from Mondrian's formal Neo-Plastic style in the richness of his colors, the boldness of his designs and in his exploration of three dimensional and two dimensional space. In addition to painting geometric diamonds, tondos (circles), ovals, squares and rectangles, Bolotowsky increasingly painted columns that seemed to soar into space.
My painting and drawing over the course of my artistic career have evolved from a Neoclassical-Post-Impressionist style with an emphasis on figurative work, commencing in 1998, to pure abstraction, in 2005.
My abstract work has occurred in phases.
The first phase focused on Neo-Plastic paintings of acrylics on canvas of fixed geometric grids (straight lines and right angles) and primary colors to combinations, and then to series, incorporating circles, curves, elongated triangles and quadrilaterals with a broad palette of vibrant colors, including iridescents.
In the last half of 2022 and 2023- after creating large combinations, and then series, for almost two decades- my art developed in two directions. First, I returned to painting individual Neo-Plastic works in a variety of configurations: diamonds, rectangles, ovals and tondos. While my pieces were painted on canvas, the tondos were an exception, being painted on a gessoed wood surface.
The other change was my creation of 3-D wood sculptures (columns). I consider these columns to be an extension of my painting.
When I added 3-D columns to my repertoire I was able to expand the painting surface from flatness to roundness of 360 degrees. This frees me to not only expand the painting surface but to seamlessly vary the design and the color relationships of the piece.
It also presents an additional challenge: to use the negative space between the paintings on the wall and the columns on the floor to create diverse visual relationships (tensions, balances and counterbalances) using a variety of perspectives involving both the paintings and the columns.
In painting geometric abstractions, I am attempting to emphasize the universal elements of shape, design, color, and space relationships that are free from the limitations of realistic subject matter.
Although I consider myself a nonobjective artist and not a semi-abstractionist, I want my work to be expressive and to evoke in the viewer a feeling that appeals to the viewer's imagination, sense of design and visual harmony.
__________________________________________
* Barbara Dayer Gallati, Associate Curator, American Painting and Sculpture, Brooklyn Museum, Catalogue The Williamsburg Murals
