Delfina Nahrgang Art

For over three decades Delfina Nahrgang has been exhibiting her lyrically expressionistic paintings in New York and Europe. Employing a palette of vivid light colors and rich darks, Ms. Nahrgang draws equally upon Abstract Expressionism’s subconscious probings and her own responses to the environment. Her lushly worked surfaces assert the materiality of paint, even as her abstracted compositions restlessly suggest – without ever delimiting – “real-world” events. As her forms mingle and evolve, they seek out the essences behind the seen: the atmosphere of spiritual interiors (both physical and psychical), the rhythms of music and nature, emotional turns of mind, shifting intimations of the epic and exotic.

A recipient of numerous awards, the artist has shown her paintings and sculptures in over two dozen solo and group exhibitions in New York City, North Carolina, Italy, and Macedonia. Her paintings have also appeared in many juried and invitational exhibitions including several at the National Academy of Design.

The artist lives and works in New York City and Pietrasanta, Italy. Delfina Nahrgang maintains dual artistic citizenship with a permanent studio in Pietrasanta, Italy. Like many international artists before her, Nahrgang found in Pietrasanta a living, breathing sense of visual culture of history — as well as a stunning countryside, and epiphany-inspiring Renaissance architecture and art. Unlike many Americans, however, Nahrgang never regarded Italy as a place ‘simply for touring.’ She arrived there for the first time in 1981, and since 1983, essentially remained. Spending most of her year in New York, however, she has maintained a somewhat more peripatetic urban studio practice, studying first under such artists as Knox Martin, and Frank O’Cain, and Leo Manso at the Art Students League, then, over the course of the 1970s to the 1990s, working in a studio on Gansevoort Street, then West 14th Street, and later at the Elizabeth Foundation in Hell’s Kitchen. It was at the latter, around 1996, that the beatitudes of Italy and the urban energy of New York City most fully fused in her work, specifically in her use of color — or lack of it.

Prior to the mid 1990s, Nahrgang thought of herself primarily as a colorist, and an exuberant one at that. She might paint a fountain in Rome, for instance, capturing a spray of water in yellow and white as the sunlight filtered through from behind. Or, when working from memory of travels to places like Greece, she might also use intense color and its radiance as a way to convey the presence of light. “There’s something to pure color that is engaging and untranslatable,” says the artist, “but after a time, I found that there was so much of it I began to fight with it as well.” Tertiary colors, in particular, were proving hard to reconcile, to resolve into a sense of energy-in-harmony. Then Nahrgang opted to return to black and white. It worked; with the black came a sense of heightened drama, and drama, Nahrgang realized, was what she was after. “Contrast gave me a sense of visual stability,” says the artist, “and with it, I could find the strength, the bones of work. Black is a summation of all colors combined. I plucked out colors that were already in the black, so all my current color-sensibility comes from that. It’s in these, ‘black’ or ‘dark’ works that I’m actually finding illumination, albeit of a more inner sort. Working from Nature, I first learned how to look outside; now I paint my own nature, looking In.”

“It was an adventure getting to this point” explains the artist, “and now I feel that, no matter where I am working physically, or whatever may be going on in my life, I can use the paint to speak with a sense of power and mystery that is mine alone.”

EDUCATION

Art Students League NYC, Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende, Gto., Mexico (1965-82)
BA University of Washington, Seattle, WA (1966)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS AND DUO EXHIBITIONS

2015 – Solo Exhibition, Chiostro di Sant’Agostino, Pietrasanta, Italy
2014 – Solo Exhibition, Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn, NYC
2013 – Palazzo Delle Muse, Biblioteca Comunale, Viareggio, Italy
2006 – Solo Exhibition, Side Street Gallery, Pittsboro, NC
Solo Exhibition, Sizl Gallery, Carrboro, NC
Duo Exhibition, Domicile Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC
2004 – Duo Exhibition sculptor Nathaniel Kaz, Circoscrizione Viareggio Nuova, Viareggio, Italy
2003 – Duo Exhibition sculptor Nathaniel Kaz, Alamance County Arts Council, Graham, NC and Realis Gallery, Winston-Salem NC
1999 – Solo Exhibition, Caelum Gallery, NYC
1994 – Solo Exhibition, Chiostro di Sant’Agostino, Pietrasanta, Italy

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2014 – Friday Studio Gallery, Brooklyn, NYC
2010 – National Academy, 185th Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
2008 – Audubon Artists Annual Juried Exhibition
2006 – Alamance County Arts Council Group Exhibition, Graham, NC
Asolare Group Exhibition, Gallery of the City of Skopje, Skopje, Macedonia
2004 – Audubon Artists Annual Juried Exhibition, New York, NY
2003 – Asolare Fine Arts Acad. Exhibiton, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC
2002 – AsArt Exhibition “Ready to Go,” Palazzo Panciatichi, Florence, Italy
2002 – AsArt Exhibitions, “Un Segno per La Pace,” Museo di Murlo, Siena, Italy;
Palazzo del Tau, Pistoia, Italy; National Museum of Art, Cluj, Romania
2000 – National Academy of DesignSpecial Invitee, 175th Annual Exhibition, NYC
1997 – “Artisti di Pontestrada,” Scuola di Stagio Stagi, Pietrasanta, Italy
National Sculpture Society Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
1994 – Mamaroneck Artists’ Guild 36th National Open Juried Exhibition, NYC
1993 – National Academy of Design 167th Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
1991 – Pen & Brush Club Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
1990 – Museo di Bozzetti, Permanent Exhibition, Pietrasanta, Italy
Catherine L. Wolfe Art Club Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
1989 – Allied Artists of America Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
Audubon Artist, Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
“Sextet Group”  Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC
Catherine L. Wolfe Art Club Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
1988 – “Il Disegno degli Scultori,” Museo dei Bozzetti, Chiostro di Sant’Agostino, Pietrasanta, Italy
Allied Artists of America Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
1987 – Pen & Brush Club Annual Juried Exhibition, NYC
1982 – Galleria San Miguel, Group Exhibition, San Miguel, San Miguel de Allende, Gto. Mexico
1968- 10th Puget Sound Area Juried Exhibition, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA

AWARDS

2000 – Charlotte Dunwiddie Award, Pen & Bush Club Annual Exhibition, NYC
1994 – Margaret Hirsch Levine Award, Audubon Artists Annual Exhibition, NYC
1991 – Joel Meisner Award, Pen & Brush Club Annual Exhibition, NYC
1990 – Gold Medal of Honor, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, NYC
1989 – Concourse Award, Art Students League of NY, NYC
1982 – Pietro and Alfrieda Montana Award, Allied Artists Annual Exhibition, NYC
1988 – The Fairfield Porter Merit Scholarship for 1988-89, Art Students League, NYC
1987 – Tallix Foundry Award, Pen & Brush Exhibition, NYC
1967 – Academic Scholarship Award, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain CT
Fremantle Collection of Art by Foreigners in Tuscany, Fiesole (Florence), Italy
Museo di Bozzetti Permanent Collection, Chiostro di Sant’Agostino, Pietrasanta, Italy
Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Brooklyn, NY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Who’s Who of American Women, 18th, 21st and 25th Editions

MEMBERSHIP

Art Students League of New York Life Member
New York Artists Circle