Even if you’re not headed for Paris any time soon, you can still rediscover its many charms in Southport Galleries through the eyes of artist Robert Bizinsky. His joyful, brilliantly colored paintings capture the beauty, energy and spirit of this alluring city in a new exhibition, Robert H. Bizinsky: An American in Paris, from November 5 through December 31.
“This is the most important exhibition in the history of Southport Galleries,” says Philip Eliasoph, Ph.D., professor of art history at Fairfield University and a leading expert on American Realist paintings of the twentieth century. Curator of the show, he notes in the exhibition’s beautifully illustrated catalog, “You don’t have to be a Hollywood producer, Broadway lyricist or best-selling novelist to capture an irresistible story. Add into the mix the picaresque adventures of a dashingly handsome young man…armed with a box of paints ready to brush into raw canvas fantastical images in a symphony of colors.”
According to Eliasoph, the works reveal Bizinsky’s joie de vivre and the seductive pleasures of artistic expression. “The biography of ‘Biz’—as he was affectionately called—unfolds as an American enraptured with Paris in the halcyon days of the late 1940s. His canvases reflect his inheritance of the visual rhythms of Cezanne, Matisse and Derain, and later of Dufy and Utrillo. With his discerning eye and responsive brush, he conducts an American symphony orchestrated in the mood of a resurgent Paris after WWII,” he notes.
One might imagine that had Gershwin been a painter, these could have been his melodies on canvas. The exhibition represents a major artistic rediscovery of Bizinsky’s talents, thanks to Connecticut art expert and dealer Gene Shannon, who purchased the remaining assets of the late Bizinsky’s estate from his widow in Los Angeles, pledging to shepherd the future legacy of these important works.
Southport Galleries is located at 330 Pequot Ave., open Tues.–Sat., 10 a.m.–5 p.m., 203-292-6124; southportgalleries.com.