Along with 45 other drawings, paintings, collages and sculpture— all from the private collection of New York art collector and gallery owner Gertrude Stein — the pictures are part of “NO!art,” an exhibit of Lurie’s early work, on view until July 17 at the Westwood Gallery in SoHo. It is the first exhibit of Lurie’s work since his death in 2008, and promises to be the first in a series of exhibitions that will revisit Lurie’s long, sometimes controversial and often overlooked career.
A founder of the NO!art movement in 1960 together with Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher, Lurie was a New York artist who never ceased to challenge the art establishment and the consumer culture he felt it served. Countering the prevailing trends of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, NO!art created an aesthetic of objection and protest, grappling with issues such as sexism, racism and the politics of popular culture.
