Sun Light & Air

Whether an artist is guided by their inner conception of luminosity, the rich sunlight of the Mediterranean or the silvery flickers of light in New York City, light is invariably a universal source of joy and inspiration. As the summer light treats us with longer days and richer sunsets, we look to the different ways disparate sources of light have inspired a selection of artists at Mary Ryan Gallery.

An important early Abstract Expressionist painter and printmaker, Robert Motherwell was particularly struck and influenced throughout his career by the special Mediterranean light that emanated from Southern France, and that he found again in his native California and trips to Mexico.

Among other modern European artists, Motherwell was particularly influenced by Henri Matisse, who was one of the first artists to interest him in modern aesthetics and French culture. “Growing up in prewar California was why I understood Matisse so quickly,” Motherwell said in a 1984 interview with the New York Times. “The light and shadows and textures in his work were the same as the semitropical, Mediterranean landscape of California. I took Matisse—mistakenly as it turned out, for he really represented international modernist culture, of which France was a leading exponent—as an emblem of French art.” In its hues of yellows and blues, this 1991 lithograph conveys a strong sense of place that harkens back to the southern French light that has historically served as a source of inspiration for generations of artists around the world. This ambitious work was one of Motherwell’s last prints.

In his new body of 2019 prints, Ugo Rondinone studies the everyday commonplace as a gateway for the commonly sublime. By manipulating and combining two sets of bright colors in concentric circles, Rondinone’s sun prints offer a hypnotic experience, “like looking into the sun,” he noted in a 2019 interview.

Throughout the year 2003, celebrated photographer Robert Weingarten embarked on a year-long project that involved photographing the sunrise at 6:30 every morning from his ocean-view residence in Malibu, California. A modern iteration of Claude Monet’s daily study of how light projected on the Rouen Cathedral, the 6:30 A.M. series studies the countless variations of a sunrise. Weingarten was inspired to begin this series after coming across an Alfred Stieglitz quote asserting that it is important for photographers to find inspiration locally. The 6:30 A.M. images are faithful and unedited translations of the stunning variety of colors that can be observed during sunrise in Malibu.