It is with distinct honor and a heavy heart that Bill Hodges Gallery presents Linda Touby, a commemorative exhibition in celebration of a talented abstract expressionist and dear friend of the gallery.
Born with a penchant for art, Touby began attending night and weekend classes at Pratt Institute to hone her skills at the age of eleven but had been creatively experimenting with clay, wood and other natural materials for years prior. In adulthood, Touby continued her studies at the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts and Art Students League in New York City, where she met one of her mentors, abstract expressionist and founder of the New York School of painting, Richard Pousette-Dart (1916 – 1992).
By the 1980’s, Touby’s style shifted drastically, from figuration to abstraction, as the world around her changed. The feminist movement in New York in the 1970’s coincided with Touby’s decision to end her marriage in 1974, which allowed for her to feel “to live her own dreams on her own terms, not vicariously through others” 1. Her chance encounter and ensuing mentorship with Pousette-Dart then encouraged her to explore the infinite language of abstraction, challenging her to paint from a more spiritual place and allowing Touby to tap into the “expressive instincts [she] intuitively felt as a child” 2.
Linda Touby was a true art history zealot and was not at all bashful about the ways in which her inspirations nurtured her work. The very basis of her technique, incorporating wax into her oil paintings, speaks to the reverence she had for old masters like Rembrandt – while her horizontal compositions reference the frenzied landscapes of Giotto di Bondone. The energy imbued into her works embodies intensities found in the virile, figurative scenes of legendary painters yet on a different plane – where color, texture and dimension form and inform the elements of emotion. Touby’s practice unified traditional and even antiquated styles of art making into the revolutionary and improviso genre of abstract expressionism.
Linda Touby, the exhibition shows works from multiples eras of Touby’s life and practice including selections from her series Homage to Giotto – which debuted at Bill Hodges Gallery in 2006 then showed at Timothy Yarger Fine Art in Beverly Hills, CA the following year; Ra, a series commenced in 2000, that was inspired reflections and meditations Touby had during a 1999 trip to Florida and select works from her 1996 and 1997 series, respectively, Wish You Weere Here and Starlight on Dark Water.
Linda Touby was an internationally exhibited artist. Her work has be featured at the Museum of Realism and Atheism, Lvov, Ukraine; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA; Museum Fur Knonkrete Kunst Igolstadt, Munchen, Germany and more. She has also had solo exhibitions at Tribeca Gallery, New York; Blanvar Estudio Galeria de Arte, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Galerie Rieder, Munchen, Germany; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York and many more.