Reviews
New York Sun - April 7, 2005
Gallery-Going
A few floors below in the same gallery building, the exuberant landscapes of Henry Finkelstein, a painter in his mid-40s, make an intriguing contrast with (Nell) Blaine's. Mr. Finkelstein's bold palette convincingly evokes the atmosphere of the French countryside he paints, his rich hues maintaining their full colorfulness even in the extreme lights and darks.
Despite his looser, larger strokes, his spaces are persuasively rendered; no less than Blaine, the artist knows how to hold down a distant point in space with a sudden note of blue or green. In "Pond, Gray Day," a cacophony of hues-greens, browns, blues-cluster in the foreground as reflections on the pond's surface: so nuanced is the artist's sense of light that these colors instantly hold as a single plane stretching luminously into the mid-distance.
Mr. Finkelstein tends to be less patient than Blaine, however, less inclined to linger and savor an object's location to see what it portends. But his extravagant brushwork delivers, energetically, the effect of the frittering of clouds in a wide sky, the craggy tower of a tree trunk, and the scruffy edges of the late afternoon shadows on grass. - John Goodrich
Art in America - September, 2003
Henry Finkelstein at Kraushaar
A graduate of Cooper Union and the Yale School of Art and the former Fulbright fellow, Henry Finkelstein currently teaches drawing and painting at the National Academy of Design in New York. In the 11 large (48-by-54-inch) oil paintings in his second solo show at Kraushaar, he renders the landscape in a loose, lyric manner that makes him heir to the abstract-leaning, nature-based esthetic of his much-admired parents, Gretna Campbell and Louis Finkelstein.
Gardens, ruins and orchards are some of the motifs found in recent canvases inspired by Maine islands and the French countryside. (In 1992, Finkelstein won a French government grant that enabled him to paint at the Chateau de Rochefort en Terre in Brittany.) His paint-handling is loose and fast throughout, which sometimes gives a particular work an unfinished look, an impression supported by the bits of primed canvas that often show through.
On a few occasions, Finkelstein introduces a prop to the scene, such as the painter's hat in the immediate foreground of "Apple Grove". More often, the view is left alone. "From the Road to Malansac" depicts only verdant fields and blustery trees. The palette runs the gamut of greens, yellows, browns and other traditional landscape colors. An exception is the ultramarine often employed for the trunks of trees. Such expressionist tendencies mark "Barn from the Orchard" and "Willow Tree".
Many of these paintings seem reactive and spontaneous, as if a specific view suddenly triggered an outburst of painting. In "Pond, Rochefort III", unchecked brushwork seems perfectly in sync with tangled nature, as trees shoot up through the picture plane. Patches of blue water and sky accent the lush landscape. Various structures, a barn, a country house, sometimes lend a simple geometry to the view. In "The Greenhouse", the glass structure near the center of the canvas is surrounded with overarching branches and greenery and seems built into the land. Making a more prominent statement are the old walls and arched entrance in "Ruins at the Chateau".
Something Finkelstein's father once said seems apropos to the work in this exhibition: My involvement in painting is in the exploration of painting language, not simply in making products. - Carl Little
Vision - Fall, 2001
Color Them Bright, A scouting report on three rising stars in America's art world.
Veteran art dealer Barbara Ingber tells the story of the time she ran into famous art critic Hilton Kramer on the street and asked, "How are you?" He shook his head and said, "Barbara, I just came from a gallery where they had sneakers hanging on the wall! That was the art!"
Ah, yes, the fickle, but always fascinating American art world. One day, you're looking at sneakers, another at the next Jackson Pollack. Finding an artist whose work thrills you is a bit like searching for true love: Where do you start looking? And how do you know when you've really found it?
"It's the kind of painting that goes right to your heart," Ingber answers bluntly. "You can't intellectualize your feelings about it," says Ingber, head of the Artists' Museum, which curates shows of the New York School of Artists across the country. "A good artwork poses questions," adds Patricia Cloutier, who runs the Patricia Cloutier Gallery in Tequesta, Florida. "It demands extra time from you. It's compelling: it's fresh."
On these pages we spotlight three up-and-coming stars who are turning heads in the art world, artists who just may make you fall in love for life.
Henry Finkelstein is a romantic who wears a floppy straw hat like an old-fashioned French painter as he creates his riveting portraits of nature – cottage gardens awash in buoyant blues, yellows and lime-greens, and groves of deep purple plum trees rendered in rich, textured brush strokes.
While he admits to an occasional worry that his paintings aren't more modern, the New York-based artist is one of the few with that concern. Finkelstein's first solo show this year at Manhattan's Kraushaar Gallery was a sellout, and The New York Times art critic Roberta Smith has praised his original take on nature. His growing fan club loves the way he sweeps them into his intense vision of landscape and the bold ways he plays with light and dark, sometimes even veering toward abstraction, yet always retaining a warm sense of place.
Daily Record - Morris County, NJ 1999
Representational art may not be cutting edge, but there is no denying the enduring appeal of a finely crafted, well-composed painting when it's easy to understand and pleasing to look at.
Audiences have indeed been looking at large, attractive oils by two artists who are currently featured at the Simon Gallery. Although they both work in representational style, Nancy Friese and Henry Finkelstein each have a distinctive spin on reality as interpreted through landscape and still life: Friese with her dramatic, flat analysis of color and form, Finkelstein with a soft-edged and painterly interpretation.
Henry Finkelstein, the more unabashedly romantic of the two, engages the audience with a delicious palette resonant with soft corals, pinks, greens and blues. He lives in Manhattan, has a studio in Brooklyn and teaches in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Two of Finkelstein's large still lifes are outstanding, each of which offers different perspectives on the same group of objects. "Still Life with Quince," measures 48 inches square, and makes a big statement with effective grouping of porcelains, fruits and flowers.
Nancy Friese is Acting Dean of Graduate Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. She concentrates on landscapes, and several appear to have been painted in the same location around a tree ringed pond.
In this particular group of oils, Friese's palette is dominated by autumnal tones spiked with purples and blues. She reduces the elements of landscape to flat areas of color in subject and which every branch and shadow is unmodulated and crisp. Although her technique differs from that of Finkelstein, the two artists hang well together because of the scale, subject and essentially representational focus of their work. The Simon Gallery is open noon-6pm on Saturdays. For more information call (973) 538-5456. - Marion Filler
Art New England - Oct./Nov., 1992
This exhibition of oil paintings and pencil drawings is Henry Finkelstein's first one-person show in Maine, where he maintains a summer studio on Great Cranberry Island. A graduate of Cooper Union and the Yale School of Art, and a former Fulbright fellow, last year Finkelstein won a French government grant to work at the Chateau de Rochefort en Terre. Thus, besides some fine Maine island landscapes, the current show also features a substantial group of paintings of Brittany.
While Finkelstein's approach to landscape is fairly consistent throughout this show - he paints loose and fast, often fearlessly, at times to extremely abstract ends - he manages to capture the character of the locales he is working in. It is not simply by its rendering of area architecture that, for instance, a painting like Madame Rubaud's House evokes the French countryside. An allee of trees, a hillside green, a bridge leading to a chateau, a valley accented with a blue jug - these images and others, painted freely and forcefully, transport us to a distinctly European paysage.
Finkelstein's palette relies a lot on greens, with bright hues - purple, yellows, blues - livening up the landscape, especially the houses and gardens of the artist's Maine milieu. Like Deer Isle artist Karl Shrag, Finkelstein views his surroundings through expressionist eyes; even a nocturne such as the mysterious House Lit Up At Night has a vivid glow to it. With its heated hues, Weigelia and the Studio, Morning recalls the Mediterranean as much as it does Maine. The show includes a couple of still lifes, including a notable one of a mess of oysters. There is also a handful of drawings, interesting enough as studies, but detracting from the main course at hand.
Finkelstein loves best the play of light and dark in a landscape, obscured vistas, noting gardens, dappled days, and off-kilter habitats. There's something of Soutine in his aesthetic, although the overall effect is generally warmer and lighter. Finkelstein is clearly enamored of the world; we, in turn, are caught up in his energetic vision. - Carl Little
The New York Times - Friday, January 3, 1986
Henry Finkelstein (Prince Street Gallery, 12 Wooster Street)
Henry Finkelstein is a young, essentially expressionist painter recently out of art school who is having his first one-man show in New York. His subject matter is traditional - still lifes and landscapes of Maine, New Jersey and Umbria. What is engaging is the artist's willingness to jump in with both feet. When a mood, instinct or compositional idea hits him, he goes with it.
Paint is the artist's means of fixing contact with the world around him. In most of these paintings, whenever lose sight either of him or his subject. The Umbrian hills may have the colors of Bonnard, but we still roll right through the familiar, undulating land. We recognize the Maine coast immediately, but the colors can be hot and the rocks and land seem barely able to restrain the wild sea. In the painting of a New Jersey farm, everything is predictably quiet, except for the vegetable garden, which seems to be erupting with paint and light. - Michael Brenson