Sasson Soffer: painting, sculpture & works on paper

The Drawing Room is pleased to announce SASSON SOFFER [1925-2009]: painting, sculpture & works on paper, an exhibition presented in collaboration with the Sasson Soffer Foundation on the occasion of the late artist's centennial.  On view by appointment through April 14th, the show offers a concise survey of Soffer's practice over more than three decades.  Arranged to highlight thematic and formal affinities the artist explored at different scales and with a broad range of materials, the show includes a large 1961 encaustic painting,  metal and wood sculptures, ceramic tiles from 1978, and a selection of mixed media works on paper.

Born in Baghdad in 1925, Soffer emigrated from Iraq in 1948. Upon his arrival in New York in 1950, he enrolled at Brooklyn College where he studied with Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and Burgoyne Diller. His first solo exhibition in New York at the Artists Gallery in 1958 was followed by shows at Betty Parsons Gallery, and soon after, acquisitions by the Whitney Museum of Art, and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.  Beginning in the early 1960s, he participated in the Carnegie Invitational and Whitney Annual exhibitions.

 

By the mid-1960s, Soffer turned his attention from painting to sculpture, creating monumental works in steel, wood and glass that were acquired by public and private collections. Photographs in the show document some of the notable site-specific projects–from two at Battery Park where Soffer conceived compositions intended to frame views of the Statue of Liberty in the distance, to “Miss Pie in the Sky” at Lincoln Center, to massive steel sculptures on open land in rural settings.

From the 1980s onward, Soffer began to spend time on Long Island’s East End, first in Amagansett and later in East Hampton. He retained a studio in SoHo until late in life when he moved to East Hampton year-round. Town Lane Park, a  five acre public park in East Hampton features several of the artist’s monumental outdoor sculptures within a natural setting that includes trails through meadows bordered by holly, beech trees and native vegetation.