In
conjunction with the Ideas City Festival, sponsored by the New Museum.
 |
Angelo Pinto, Hand with
Skyscraper, (30 Rockefeller
Center, NYC), 1946 |
This
exhibition concerns nine
artists from two families, the
Gallagher-Leeches and
the
Pintos, whose histories converge
over the decades, from the New
Deal Era
through today. Both
began in Philadelphia,
summered in New Jersey, and
made the
transition to New York. Besides the geographical parallels,
the families support one another in
the extreme, the artists all work collaboratively, and they
teach
or publish or build.
 |
Michael J. Gallagher, New York from
Brooklyn Heights, 1932 |
Michael J.
Gallagher, a contributor to magazines such as The New Yorker, was director of Philadelphia WPA’s Printmaking Workshop. His wife, Katharine McCollum, was the city’s Puppet Master.
Their daughter, the painter Louise Leech, was the mother of Kitty, a costume and children’s book designer, and Gwyneth,
a painter and video artist. Kitty and Gwyneth, moved to New York, in 1980 and
1999, respectively.
Angelo
Pinto was a painter and printmaker. He taught at the Barnes until 1992. In 1935 he started a photography studio in New York but stayed on at the Barnes
Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, as teacher and photographer. His daughters are Jody, an environmental artist, and Anna, a draughtsman and
calligrapher. A life-long New Yorker, Jody attended the Pennsylvania Academy
where she now teaches.
 |
| Anna Pinto, Beach Glass, 2000 |
Highlights
from the Gallagher-Leeches include extremely rare New Deal-era carborundum
prints of industrial subjects by Michael Gallagher and elegantly refined
children’s book illustrations by Katharine. The costume sketch below.
 |
| Kitty Leech, Three Men, 2008 |
Three Male Dancers from Imprints on a Landscape, The Mining Project,
2008. In the dance, choreographed by the artist’s aunt, Martha Whitman, the men
are the printmakers at her grandfather’s Philadelphia WPA Printmaking Workshop: from left
to right, Hugh Mesibov, Gallagher, and Dox Thrash.
 |
| Gwyneth Leech, Ecuador/New York | |
|
|
Gwyneth’s
installation Ecuador/New York, A Dream of Home, 2010-12, made from 55 used and
painted paper coffee cups is shown her. Her painting, Directions of Flow, 2009, based on a flight over the new Jersey Meadowlands, is at the right.
From the
Pinto family there are Angelo’s photographs, wood engravings, reverse paintings
on glass of Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and a portrait of Jody, as well as
an enormous preparatory drawing for Jody’s nine-ton Fingerspan Bridge of 1987
in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, and Anna’s Alphabet, 1994, a tour-de-force of
delicacy.
 |
| Jody Pinto, Fingerspan Bridge,1987 |
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