Overstreet Richard

Born 1935, Oakland, CA, USA. Lives and works in Paris, France.

In speaking of these paintings, Richard Overstreet has described the settings as «Landscapes not conceived as outdoor spaces but as vast interiors. Like rooms with Romantic horizons.» Many are «interiors», but not like the primary room image flashed in the mind — not, that is, of a room of domestic scale. Rather, these are interiors inside the world — inside the globe on which we live. Vast subterranean caverns, they are often flooded with light, a light generated in some part of the work itself which seems to glow with or reflect a sharp, eerie, silver light one remembers from the carbon are of early films or the welder’s arc. Or the light of night.

These are the most dramatic works Overstreet has ever done and it is a drama of sometimes cataclysmic proportions. Occasionally forms are surrounded with light «auras» of cosmic force. In both the cataclysmic and cosmic there is a daring that is like the first drop on a roller coaster. One’s breath, or one’s stomach, is taken away. Underground rivers and waterfalls move with an extraordinary power super charged by their undermining of expectations and challenges to the literal imagination.

The contrast of represented movement and of the stasis of large geographic bodies folds the present into a time frame of geologic proportions. Electronic cyclones suddenly, if briefly, change the scale to the infinitely small. Torrents behind or below seem to be part of the causes of geographic dislocations. The familiar global surface forms of large land masses and bodies of water float away or together as if freed by — as if freed by what ? — by the forces of plate tectonics which periodically rattle parts of the world violently.

These works are not of the surface horrors of earthquakes, however, but of the wonder and playfulness in de-stabilizing of conventional expectations in representation and in perceptions of time. There is a challenge of the absurd and the unresolved, a fascination with the unknown and that which can never be comprehended in terms of the physical world around us. This is fantasy — sometimes with contradictions in form. some times dizzying. It is a world of strong and fresh contrasts, of emotional ambiguity and of dark delights.

As the artist has written, «In these pictures anything can happen at any moment. Not only in the subject but to the paint itself.»

James H. Elliott
Emeritus Director of the Art Museum
at the University of California, Berkeley.

Voûte céleste 50, 2018, Mix media on panel, 83 x 68 cm

PAINTINGS

Flowers 61, 2017
Oil on paper
64 x 50 cm

Flowers 63, 2017
Oil on paper
66 x 54 cm

Flowers 67, 2018
Oil on paper
56 x 50 cm

Flowers 78, 2018
Oil on paper
64 x 50 cm

MUSEUM AND COLLECTIONS

SOLO SHOWS

1957

Sculpture, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA, USA

1972, 1882

Galerie Lambert Monet, Geneva, Switzerland

1979, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986

Roy Boyd Gallery, Chicago, Los Angeles, USA

1984

One Illinois Center, Chicago, IL, USA

1985

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, SECA Award, CA, USA

1986

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA

1993

Galerie Montenay, Paris, France

Catalogue, introduction by James Elliot, 34 pg. ed. Galerie Montenay, Paris, France

1996

Galerie Alain Veinstein, Paris, France

1980, 1987, 1990, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2010

Gallery Paule Anglim,
San Francisco, CA, USA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1955

Nineteenth Annual Drawing and Print Exhibition of the San Francisco Art
Association, San Francisco Museum of Art, CA, USA

1956

Twentieth Annual Drawing and Print Exhibition of the San Francisco Art
Association, San Francisco Museum of Art, CA, USA

Seventy-fifth Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association, San Francisco Museum of Art, CA, USA

1957

Seventy-sixth Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association, San Francisco Museum of Art, CA, USA

1979

Bay Area Artists, The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA, USA

1981

Contemporary American Watercolor, Illinois Bell Lobby Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA

California Artists, The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CL, USA

Contemporary Images in Watercolor, Allen Priebe Gallery, University of
Wisconsin, Oshkosh, Wi, USA

1984

Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA

1987

Bay Area Artists, Janet Steinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA

1995

Quatre peintres, Galerie Montenay, Paris, France

1996

Galerie Daniel Levy, Paris, France

2017

Galerie Minsky, Paris, France

PUBLICATION

1959

The influence of Fantin Latour on the painting of Adolphe Montecelli, Rijksmusuem Journal, November, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1960

Personifications of Death in Late Nineteenth Century Symbolist Art, Masters Thesis, Art History, University of California, Berkeley, CL, USA

1966

Interview avec Joseph Manckiewicz, Richard Overstreet et Jacques Bontemps, Cahiers du Cinéma, N°178

Anyone for Venice ?Interview with Joseph Manckiewicz (Venice, Europa Hotel, Nov 14, 1965), for documentary of Charles Chaboud on Joseph Manckiewicz, televised February 8, 1966, France 1, 29 min

1969

Interviews with Film Directors, ed. Andrew Sarris, «George Cukor Interview by Richard Overstreet», Bobbs-Merill, New York; Avon Books, NY, USA

1994

Ponts de Paris, Jocelyn van Deputte, photographies de Richard Overstreet,  Éditions Sauret, Paris-Musées, Paris, France

LEONOR FINI ESTATE

1986

Vingt-Neuf boulevard Haussman, Société Générale Agence Centrale, Paris, Photographs of Richard Overstreet, text by Leonor Fini, edited and distributed by the Société Générale, Paris, France

1986

Leonor Fini Retrospective, Musée du Luxembourg, 17 juin – 16 juillet, Éditions Guy Pietres, maquette et photographies, Paris, France

1998

Becomes ayant droit of Leonor Fini and director of the Leonor Fini Archives,
Paris, France

2007

Publishes bibliography of Leonor Fini in «Leonor Fini — Métamorphoses d’un art», Peter Webb, Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, France

2008

Miroir des chats, Leonor Fini, text, Richard Overtstreet, photographs,
Slatkine, Geneva, second edition; first edition, Flammarion, Paris, 1977

2009

Publishes bibliography of «Leonor Fini in Sphinx — The Life and Art of Leonor
Fini», Peter Webb, Vendome Press, NY, USA

2010

Introduction to L’Ombre portée, Correspondance de Leonor Fini et André
Pieyre de Mandiargues 1932-1945, Le Promeneur-Gallimard, Paris, France

2016

Planned publication of The Paintings of Leonor Fini — Catalogue Raisonné,
Richard Overstreet, Neil Zukerman, Skira, Milan, Italy