CYNTHIA CORBETT GALLERY

Andy Burgess | Art New York 2019

Andy Burgess's fascination with architecture continues with this new series of large scale paintings that colorfully re-imagines some of the iconic masterpieces of early Twentieth Century modern architecture. Focusing on Bauhaus, De Stijl and other movements associated with the “International Style” Burgess has been selecting subjects for his paintings with thediscernment of the portrait painter. Buildings are chosen for their clean lines, bold geometric design and dynamic forms. Burgess approaches his subjects with a fresh eye, simplifying forms even further and inventing, somewhat irreverently, new colour schemes that expand the modernist lexicon beyond the minimalist white palette and the rigid use of primary colours.


In some senses this project is a labour of love to record my own encyclopedia of early modern buildings and their designers. Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built!

Andy Burgess