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Homage aux Nabis, The Pont-Aven Suite
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Fundacion-Museo Eugenio F. Granell, Santiago de Compostela, May, 2025:
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Curated by Allan Graubard
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Text by Allan Graubard
Vegetal beings in flourishing choreographies Processional groups turning in circles |
The Artist with Processional Group
Into the Swirl
acrylic on canvas, 40" x 54", 2023
| A
garden for Hermes, herald of the Gods, creator of the arts and sciences,
where transformations multiply Close by, water spirits hover, amphibious clusters in geomantic combustion |
The Garden of Hermes acrylic on canvas, 30" x 34", 2019 |
Water Spirit gouache and pastel, 27.5" x 23.5", 2019 |
| The
moon rises for Max (Ernst, that is) with its yellow-green penumbra above
distant low mountains with their geologic script written by metals scored into their cliffs |
Moon For Max
acrylic on canvas, 34" x 42", 2018
| Couples – exuberant, warm – take
to them, embracing then singing of their triumphs and struggles and hopes and despairs. |
The Couple
gouache and pastel, 23.5" x 27.5", 2019
| Jeweled figures they are, ever
in duet above clawed landscapes |
Jeweled Figure gouache and pastel, 27.5" x 23.5", 2019 |
Clawed Landscape gouache and pastel, 23.5" x 27.5", 2019 |
| Then
at a fork in the Breton country road is the arrow to Pont-Aven. With brushes, oils, acrylic, gouache and pastels, Gregg Simpson has made its shimmering, luminous horizons his own |
The Road to Pont-Aven
acrylic on canvas, 63.5 cm x 177.8 cm / 25" x 70", 2022
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| Originating in Pont-Aven then translated
to Paris, a small group of artists, inspired by Gaugin and tutelary sources in the occult and hermetic sciences, sought in color the free expression of emotion as the 19th century ended They called themselves the Nabis, a Hebrew word for prophet, animating the transition to abstraction, which launched modern art |
(Lt.) The Father C.R.C. Memorial Painting, acrylic on panel, 1975
(Rt.) The Talisman, acrylic on canvas, 1970
| Bridging epochs and places, the
dance continues. Compelled early on by the occult and hermetic sciences, which fed Simpson’s founding of the first surrealist group in Vancouver in 1977, he offers this homage -- as much to an art that was as to the landscape and culture he encountered there, replete with shifting forms and lyrical talismans |
Cyclopean Dancer
acrylic on canvas, 34" x 30", 2023
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Along the way, on this camino, beings both hieratic and vivacious lick their
lips, adjust their costumes and enter, stage right or left. A “Cyclopean Dancer,” stock still, gazes out, if not directly at us then almost so; its single solar eye burning through the blackness of space. Its blue smile, stretching from dawn to dusk, keeps the temporal pace while behind it another being, arm raised in benediction, effloresces in greens and purples |
The Initiates
acrylic on canvas, 61 cm x 81 cm / 24" x 32", 2022
| Where
“The Initiates” have clustered, waves suddenly pearl and break on light-brown sandy banks as intimate conversations aerate portable issues. What they are, Simpson does not tell us. Does it matter? No. An offshore wind roves in. And in it, brightened by its salty tinge, if only for a moment, we can recall what happened, when, and how we responded, alone or with others we love or hate or enjoy simply for whom the are, friends, family, acquittances, strangers and enemies, too |
Hermetic Landscape
acrylic on canvas, 36" x 30", 2018
| What then is this “Hermetic Landscape”
with its trees bent by gales, distant waves glistening, a bikinied bather drawn by the girth and roll of an ocean that links continents, but which when crossing it, between betweens, sets her free to conjure what she will and what you might, happy like her to dream with eyes open |
Sunshine Arch
gouache and pastel, 27.5" x 23.5", 2019
| “Sunshine
Arch” with its bent Oryx, Ibex or Gazelle head balanced by twin horns transports us to an imaginary landscape whose measured chromatic refracts that of our life-giiving star Has Simpson fashioned a visual Ark against the crashing elements that we are prey to as our century evolves? Or is this his paen to Neolithic hands whose secretive, cave-drawn imagery of animals and humans has startled us since we first discovered them, the rocks on which they were done their musculature? The choice is yours |
Moon Ritual
acrylic on canvas, 52.07 cm x 122 cm / 20.5'"x 48", 2022
| But whatever you choose, know this: in
this exhibition Simpson’s art roots in and flowers from his created Brittany, with all its Celtic ghosts and munificent specters, its female covens, its wind carved escarpments and wave sculpted, twisted rock pinnacles, its radiant moon cycles, its agrarian communes and their seasonal celebrations in this and that hamlet or village or city as if, when gathered, they crafted |
Les Paradis Artificiels
acrylic on canvas, 30" x 34", 2018
| “Les Paradis Artificiels” from
two ensembles, nature and culture; each transfiguring the other. The earth, air, light and water we come from and the values we give back to them and exchange among ourselves ... In this sense, Simpson’s Homage aux Nabis: The Pont-Aven Suite attends to our needs and desires, revealing each anew. In gazing at his art, windows sparkle and doors open in a dwelling as transparent as crystal- a ritual homage that plays… then to now, there to here … |
Allan Graubard
New York, 2025
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