“Mike is a natural painter, he was born that way.” -Willem de Kooning, 1966.
Ghostwolf is delighted to bring the work of Michael Fitzhugh Wright to Old Town Albuquerque. An abstract expressionist painter, Michael is one of the few remaining members of the New York School, having been a friend and colleague to Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and David Smith in the famous days of the Cedar Bar and Eighth Street Art Club. Michael studied with Paul Brach, was an assistant to Willem de Kooning, and has had an impressive career spanning almost 70 years. Please join us for an evening with him First Friday, September 1st from 5-8pm. The evening will include a Q&A session. Exhibition runs through September 25th, 2023!
Biography:
Born in New Rochelle, New York in 1931, Michael Fitzhugh Wright studied art at the Yale Music and Art School, Albright Art School, and the Brooklyn Museum School. After serving in Korea as a regimental artist, he began his career as a painter in New York City in 1954.
As a young painter, he was a friend and colleague of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and David Smith in the famous days of the Cedar Bar and Eighth Street Art Club. He studied with Paul Brach through the New School and showed in several Tenth Street galleries with Howard Kanovitz, Aristodimos Kaldis, Earl Kerkam and Philip Pavia.
After ten years in New York City, he moved to East Hampton and assisted Willem de Kooning from 1964 through 1967.
While in East Hampton, Wright had several solo shows at the Guild Hall and in 1966 won the prestigious Long Island Painter’s Award. Although he has remained life-long friends with de Kooning, he wanted to further explore his own personal vision and did not want to be identified as a regional Long Island painter.
In 1972, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Feeling the need to be closer to nature, Wright moved his studio in 1976 to the isolation of the woods in Barnstead, New Hampshire. For the next ten years he continued to expand his expression through the personal use of the line, the stroke, and the paint itself, creating well-defined groupings of forms, always influenced by nature.
He has traveled extensively through Europe, North Africa, the Caribbean, Indonesia, and India. Traveling has always provided him with new inspirations for his work.
Wright’s first visit to the Southwest in 1974 left an impression on him. Intrigued by the clarity of light and variety of forms, he made annual visits and finally moved his studio to Santa Fe in 1986.
Wright has always loved to explore the land, as well as, paint the forms of nature, to hunt for birds, and fish the streams. In recent years his paintings have evolved into natural abstractions, as he simplifies the shapes and forms he sees and remembers from nature. Powerful, often sensual, often surreal, his shapes always seem to breathe.
Michael Wright is an accomplished craftsman and his line remains an integral part of his work. He has always loved drawing the figure. His mediums are most often oil, acrylic, watercolor, and colored paper. He continues in printmaking. His exceptional vision of nature, through lyrical imagery, is always there.
In 1998 Michael suffered from a stroke which left him legally blind in his left eye; amazingly it has not interfered with his ability to produce high quality work.
Wright now paints in his new studio on Agua Fria St., Santa Fe, New Mexico.