Some
artists seem to belong naturally to the limelight; their works raucously
declare themselves and they joust furiously with each other for the
center of the stage. There are other artists whose nature it is to dwell
within the shadows of their own private visions. Aubrey Schwartz is
quintessentially one of the latter. It is no accident that he is a passionate
admirer of William Blake; like Blake, he suffers and exults, despairs
and triumphs not within the circus of society but within the purlieus
of his own thoughts and feelings. His work is frequently sombre and
contains subtle warnings. The tiny rat set low midst a vast expanse
of white hints at the mystery of inequality; the lithographs and prints
of roadside flora at seed time are microscopic jungles of past, present
and future. His work can be sombre but it is not sad; poignant but never
mawkish. Eros is present within it. And as the Greeks knew (and we have,
perhaps, forgotten), Eros is not sexuality alone but the great life-giving
principle and force which includes all that is creative: despair, triumph,
suffering and exultation.
John Sherry
AUBREY
SCHWARTZ took his place in the front rank of contemporary lithographers
when the Gehenna Press published his portfolio, Predatory Birds, in 1958.
With the work he did at Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1960, The Midget
and the Dwarf, he probed even more deeply into problems of form and content
and came up with some forceful and poignant images. Now he has created
a Bestiary which fully justifies and, I believe, even surpasses the high
expectations of those who have followed his career. It is not easy to
say something new, fresh and original in this genre after Toulouse-Lautrec,
Bonnard and Picasso, but AubreySchwartz has succeeded in doing that. Within
a remarkable unity of style, he has achieved a wide range of contrasts:
Some pages are monstrous and somber, others tender and delicate, still
others humorous, but none are trite, flippant or merely pretty. Everywhere
one senses the artist’s deep and sympathetic insight into the essential
character of our fellow creatures. HAROLD JOACHIM, former
Curator of Prints and drawings
THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
Aubrey
Schwartz has been in the top ranks of American printmakers for many years.
His reputation was established and has been maintained on the basis of
the steady production of etchings that combine technical elegance and,
for the most part, ordinary everyday subject matter. In addition to individual
prints, he has regularly executed series of prints or livres-de-luxe on
such themes as birds of prey; mothers and children; midgets and dwarfs;
wildflowers; cats; infants; Edvard munch; Gargoyles; dogs and even appropriately
his own version of that classic print subject, a bestiary, as well as
a series of monotypes titled, Homage to Claude Lorrain. For
some years now, Aubrey Schwartz has been breaking new ground both in printmaking
and sculpture. His most important innovation in printmaking has been the
monotype; making it an art form of suavity and grace. Similarly in his
sculpture he has taken ancient methods and materials, combined them in
new ways and produced an art that is always compelling, often haunting
in his effects.
It
is not Schwartz's assets of technique, however ingenious and admirable
they can be; it is rather the union of his vision and material that sets
his work apart. Certainly the art comes out of the materials and what
is done to them by the artist; it could not otherwise exist. Surely, too,
the techniques are a part of the vision but it is the vision, the mind
and the matter together, that finally compels and repays our attention.
Frank Getlein