Morris Barazani, 1966 paintings

In the fourth iteration of North Gallery 20th anniversary shows, CvsD presents Morris Barazani, 1966. 

Morris Barazani (1924-2015) was a painter and collage maker dedicated to the different methods of abstraction. Based for most of his life in Chicago, Barazani was an important teacher (University of Illinois at Chicago; DePaul University) whose steadfast interest in the implications of Abstract Expressionism as well as other modes of painting along what he called the "formal/informal" divide gave him grist for a brilliant body of work that spanned six decades. Barazani's work was arguably at its peak in the middle of the 1960s, the same period that saw the rise of the Imagists in Chicago, from whose work his could not have been more dissimilar. In this focused exhibition, Barazani's paintings from 1966 take center stage – seven luscious medium-size canvases with complex palettes and soft, cloud-like forms, composed to suggest an image as subtle as a thought. A single black-and-white painting is comprised of whipping lines and an implied figure, somewhere between de Kooning and Kline, while "Winter's City" succeeds in evoking the icy blue-whiteness of Chicago mid-blizzard.

Barazani was an important figure for CvsD at a formative stage of the gallery. He introduced us to many artists, helped guide us in various ways, and gave us a richer understanding of the real politics underlying Chicago's art scene. Barazani's own work, which we were lucky to see in the home in which he and his wife Gail lived in the Lakewood/Balmoral neighborhood, was a constant source of conversation and revelation. This presentation is in honor of Morris and Gail Barazani, dear friends and allies.