Philadelphia Inquirer - January 7, 1968
Victoria Donohoe
Sidney Goodman's show of 56 paintings done since 1963, now on view at Johnny Aiello's "Gallery Pane Vino", 20th St. at Pine does an unusual thing by bringing together not only preliminary studies for finished paintings but scores of informal notebook sketches that as a rule are not seen in gallery exhibitions. Pencil, paper, charcoal and watercolor are used for realistic figure subjects, landscapes and still life. (Perhaps it should be mentioned in passing that young Sidney Goodman and Andrew Wyeth are the only local painters currently represented at the Whitney Annual in New York, and surprisingly this is the first local Goodman drawing exhibit since the Print Club featured his travel sketches about five years ago.) Here the artist proves himself a strong image-maker as well as a suspenseful story-teller. He seems to enjoy himself while retaining full control of his disciplines. It is a delightful show.
Labels: EXHIBITS OF OTHER ARTISTS
Philadelphia Inquirer - 1967
Victoria Donohoe
VIETNAM DRAWINGS: The purpose of Isa Barnett's show at Johnny Aiello's "Gallery Pane Vino", 20th St. at Pine is to present everything involved with "the total illustrator" in one environment - props the artist collects such as Civil War uniforms, weaponry and primitive art objects found at old battle sites, together with the originals of some of Barnett's recent, widely circulated magazine illustrations on the Civil War in color, and some of his latest charcoal drawings made in Vietnam on a special assignment for the U.S. Marine Corps. No doubt about it, Isa Barnett is an accomplished historical illustrator, and the puzzling out of meaning plays no part in the appreciation of his work.
Labels: EXHIBITS OF OTHER ARTISTS
Philadelphia Bulletin - April 30, 1967
Dorothy Grafly
One of the most promising art signs of the times is the interest being taken in young artists, supplemented by growing concern over what would seem to be a current lack of appreciation for the teaching of fundamentals.
Three galleries devoted to such problems have opened within the last year in city center: "Gallery Pane Vino" has opened with an unusually provocative show: "Anatomy's Anatomy."
Operated by young Philadelphia artist Johnny Aiello, the gallery is more interested in educating students and the public than in making sales. Nothing, in fact, may be bought from the current show since the greater part of it has been loaned by individuals and institutions.
Time was when anatomical casts were taken for granted in art school equipment. Now it is difficult to find them. There are two at "Gallery Pane Vino", one dealing with the muscular structure of the arms, the other with that of the leg.
A skeleton lies in a glass case, and there are books on anatomy and fascinating anatomical notebooks spiced with color by Martha Erlebacher who, with husband Walter, came here from Pratt Institute, New York, to teach at the Philadelphia College of Art. (Presently Walter has embarked on the herculean task of translating the several hundred figures in Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling from painting to sculpture.)
How closely anatomical structure is tied in with modern art is suggested in figures by Jacob Landau who works more from knowledge of muscles and bones than from the externals of the human form.
Not dissimilar are improvisations on that form by Matisse, Giacometti and Di Chirico.
One anatomical sequence (also in a glass case) points up the bony structure of skulls from seagull and members of the canine family to the human head.
Philadelphia's own Sidney Goodman introduces into one of his cryptic figures conceptions the anatomical construction of the rib cage, and a wing-like stretching out of what might be arm muscles.
Albert Gold contributes nude studies made for his students at the Philadelphia College of Art, and Dante Cattani, who also teaches there, offers plates from his anatomy book.
Labels: EXHIBITS OF OTHER ARTISTS
Philadelphia Bulletin - 1967
Dorothy Grafly
Run by artist, Johnny Aiello, "Gallery Pane Vino" is not a run-of-the-mill gallery.
Although it does stage solo of group shows, it likes to get its teeth into something less restricted.
Presently it has organized an exhibition that pairs the work of art with its reproduction to demonstrate visually that, however expert the printer, there is nothing like an original.
Resorting to work by masters, old and modern, and that by living local artists, the show amplifies its contention by presenting not one color reproduction of a specific work, but two or three ---each being slightly different in color value.
Black and white reproduction fares better when confined to drawings (line or wash), but worse when used in lieu of color.
Simultaneously the gallery offers another explanatory exhibition dealing with the development of a lithograph. Including a process chart, the survey points up the many variations possible in the handling of a particular medium.
Labels: EXHIBITS OF OTHER ARTISTS
Dorothy Grafly
VIETNAM DRAWINGS: Isa Barnett, one of four illustrators sent to Vietnam to sketch the war is exhibiting at Johnny Aiello's "Gallery Pane Vino", 20th St. South of Pine.
Featured in U.S. News and World Report, some of the original drawings are now on view here.
Barnett's war coverage, however, goes back in history to the Revolution and the "Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown," and progresses through the Civil War to the present. But while prior wars have been reconstructed via props (swords, uniforms, etc.), many of which are also included in the present show, the Vietnam conflict, with eye-witness experience, has a poignant first-hand validity that is not confined to battles and artifacts.
Barnett is a master in the handling of line, and among his unforgettable drawings are those of a Vietnamese mother, protectively fondling her baby; and a dead baby, prone and nude on the prongs of barbed wire.
Labels: EXHIBITS OF OTHER ARTISTS
The Philadelphia Inquirer - Sunday, November 12, 1967
ART NEWS
Victoria Donohoe
The Earl Kerkam (1891-1965) show at Johnny Aiello's "Gallery Pane Vino," 20th Street at Pine, must surely be one of the best contemporary drawing exhibitions displayed in a gallery here. These 62 drawings have been lying unseen, mostly unknown except to a few scholars, and they come from the only large source of supply of the artist's work--- a collection of about 400 drawings and 200 oil paintings belonging to his son, E. Bruce Kirk, of Chestnut Hill, who displayed a few of the paintings at Wanamaker's last season and will show a larger group of the oils at New York's Zabriskie Gallery in January.
The drawings are nearly all spontaneous, unpretentious studies of the nude female figure and were created around the early 1950's as notes of fact and ideas rather than as developed essays. In their concentration of the artist's style, the few swift, decisive lines with a brush, chalk and watercolor speak with a personal intensity that tells us more than his painterly Cubist self-portraits or even his sensuous still lifes. And the finest of them have a weight, a sense of fleshiness and elegant informality of line that swing their lift into high art. Since drawings are an art for close-range inspection, the close grouping here, sometimes in double rows, favors them. This small gallery must be congratulated on its initiative in organizing the present show---a step that should long since have been taken by some of our more august institutions. It is also worth remembering that at the time of Kerkam's death, his friends deKooning, Guston, Rothko, Spaventa and Vicente petitioned the Museum of Modern Art to plan an exhibit in honor of this man who "in our eyes is one of the finest painters to come out America."
Labels: EXHIBITS OF OTHER ARTISTS