HERMAN MARIL in New England

30 November, 2007 – 5 January, 2008

2008 marks the centennial year of Herman Maril’s birth. ACME Fine Art is delighted to open this important year with the first in a series of exhibitions that have been organized to honor this accomplished artist and educator. This will be ACME Fine Art’s second solo exhibition of paintings by Herman Maril and it will open with a reception on Friday 30 November 2007 from six to eight in the evening. From early on in his career Herman Maril’s work has been highly regarded. After a chance meeting on Cape Cod in the 1930s, Duncan Phillips became one of Maril’s most significant patrons. Today the Phillips Collection contains thirteen paintings by Herman Maril. In addition to the Phillips Collection, Maril’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art to name a few. Centennial exhibitions during the course of 2008 and 2009 are planned at the Walters Museum of Art, Baltimore, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum on Cape Cod, and the Ward Museum at Salisbury University in Maryland. Although Maril is most frequently associated with the communities of artists in Maryland –where he taught on the College Park campus for more than thirty years- and Provincetown –where he painted each summer in his East End studio for more than thirty years as well- Herman Maril should not be thought of as a regionalist artist. His work addresses in both style and substance, themes that are universal in nature. While in one sense they are timeless, in another they very much capture the spirit of the age in which they were created. As with his good friends and colleagues Karl Knaths and Milton Avery, Herman Maril’s work began with a basis in cubism, and developed into a personal modern idiom that has thus far defied art historical categorization. The theme for ACME Fine Art’s second solo exhibition of paintings by Herman Maril is IN NEW ENGLAND. The common denominator for this chronologically diverse survey is the New England region as locale. The early paintings date from the 1930s and 1940s and were painted either in Cummington Massachusetts where the artist spent several summers teaching, or on Cape Cod where many early summer vacations were spent. In 1948 Maril and his wife Esta began spending summers in Provincetown and in 1958 they bought what had been the Long Point Post Office after the building had been floated across the harbor to Provincetown and relocated on Bradford Street. The later paintings in the exhibition date from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and were painted either on Cape Cod or on frequent summer trips along the coast of Maine –including Monhegan Island. HERMAN MARIL In New England will be on view in ACME Fine Art’s 38 Newbury Street, Boston, galleries through Saturday 5 January 2008. Please contact the gallery at 617.585.9551 for further details. Gallery hours are 11:00 to 5:30 Tuesday through Saturday.