Mark Greenwold

Mark Greenwold is an American painter, born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1942, whose subjects often include figures in psychologically charged domestic interiors, executed with pathologically laborious detail. He began exhibiting in New York in the late 1970s, where he currently lives and works. Though he came of age in an art world known for minimalist and conceptual trends, his work has always centered around the figure and his style has fallen somewhere between surrealism and photo realism.

Biography Mark Greenwold attended the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1962–1966. After which he continued his graduate studies at Indiana University Bloomington, earning his MFA in 1968. Mark Greenwold now lives and works in New York, NY.

Artistic style Mark Greenwold's paintings are best described as humans engaging in discomfiting behavior represented with pathologically laborious detail.

Greenwold's process is painstaking. Some of his paintings have taken him four entire years to complete. His pace has always been slow, steady, and intensive. He uses photography as a starting point, which includes taking source imagery from low-end interior design magazines and photographs of friends and family members. Richard Vine, in a 1993 Art in America review, explains: “Greenwold, who acknowledges an affinity with Woody Allen, subjects a repertory cast of relatives, lovers and friends to various emotional crises, blatant or implicit, while never quite letting go of a self-deprecating humor that is his best—and perhaps only—psychological defense.”

Along these same lines, an exhibition of one single painting was vehemently protested by art critic Lucy Lippard. The exhibition at Phyllis Kind in 1979, Brown's first solo show, included one single painting, Sewing Room, whose subject matter was a husband stabbing his wife with a pair of scissors. Lippard bemoaned Kind's exhibition of a painting that clearly glorified domestic abuse. Greenwold came to his own defense again, penning a letter for the Village Voice, in which he explained that simply depicting an event does not mean he was glorifying it.

1980s and 1990s By the 1980s, Greenwold was still focused primarily on placing the human figure in gaudy interiors. However, his style shifted slightly away from the tight almost photo realistic look of his previous paintings to a looser style. Also, in an effort to speed up his process, he shifted away from acrylic on large canvases and instead began using gouache and watercolor on a much smaller scale.

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions 1979 Mark Greenwold, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York

1986–1987 Mark Greenwold: Family Secrets, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, December 1986–January 1987

1993 Mark Greenwold: Recent Works, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, March–April

1995–1996 Mark Greenwold: The Odious Facts, 1975–1995, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, November 5–December 29, 1995; Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York, Purchase College, April 21–May 19, 1996

1997 Mark Greenwold: A Man’s Worst Enemies, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, March 1–April 15

2002 Mark Greenwold: You Must Change Your Life, DC Moore Gallery, New York, October 10–November 9

2007 Mark Greenwold: A Moment of True Feeling, DC Moore Gallery, New York, October 10–November 10

2010 Mark Greenwold: Secret Storm, 1967–1975, DC Moore Gallery, New York, March 18–April 17

2013 Mark Greenwold: Murdering the World, Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York, May 10–June 28

2016 Mark Greenwold: The Rumble of Panic Underlying Everything, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, February 18–April 2

Group exhibitions 1968 Drawings USA: 1968, Saint Paul Art Center, Minnesota

1969 Annual Drawing and Small Sculpture Show, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, March 1–31 Selections from Drawings USA, Charles H. MacNider Museum, Mason City, Iowa, July 27–September 3

1971 San Francisco Art Institute Centennial Exhibition, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, January 15–February 28 Drawings USA: 1971, Minnesota Museum of Art, Saint Paul, April 15–June 27

1973 California Representation: Twelve Painters and the Human Figure, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, January 6–February 28

1975 Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region, Art Gallery, State University of New York, Albany, June 27–August 8 Unordinary Realities, Xerox Square Exhibition Center, Rochester, New York, September 12–November 2

1981 Crimes of Compassion, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, April 16–May 31

1988 Art and the Law, Minnesota Museum of Art, Saint Paul, June 5–July 31

1991–1992 Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, November 24, 1991 – January 5, 1992

1992 My Father’s House Has Many Mansions, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, January–February Goodbye to Apple Pie: Contemporary Artists View the Family in Crisis, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, September 19–November 29

1993 Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, March 1–28

1994 A Garden of Earthly Delights, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, April–March

1994–1995 It’s How You Play the Game, Exit Art, New York, November 5, 1994 – February 11, 1995

1995 American Art Today: Night Paintings, Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, January 13–February 18 Murder, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, California, February 3–April 1; Thread Waxing Space, New York, May 2–June 10; Centre Gallery, Wolfson Campus, Miami-Dade Community College, September 7–October 17

1998 Original Scale, Apex Art, New York, January 8–February 7 The Risk of Existence, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, November 7–December 30

2000 S.P.s, Poor Traits, Idols, and Icons, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, April 22–May 13 Private Worlds, Art in General, New York, May 29–July 8 Plots and Intentions, Berrie Center for the Performing and Visual Arts, Ramapo College, Mahwah, New Jersey, November 1–December 6

2000–2001 Collecting Ideas: Modern and Contemporary Works from the Polly and Mark Addison Collection, Denver Art Museum, November 18, 2000 – March 11, 2001

2001 Self-Made Men, DC Moore Gallery, New York, April 4–May 5

2002 The 177th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, National Academy Museum, New York, May 1–June 9

2003 Ballpoint Inklings, K.S. Art, New York, April 10–May 24

2004 Endless Love, DC Moore Gallery, New York, January 7–February 7 It’s a Wonderful Life: Psychodrama in Contemporary Painting, Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, March 19–May 14 Colored Pencil, K.S. Art, New York, April 1–May 8 About Painting, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, June 26–September 26

2004–2005 Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque, SITE Santa Fe, July 18, 2004 – January 9, 2005

2005 Solitude and Focus: Recent Works by MacDowell Colony Fellows in the Visual Arts, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut, January 23–June 22

2006 The Space Between Us, Art Gallery, State University of New York, Albany, January 24–April 9 Subject, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut, May 14–August 14 The Figure in American Painting and Drawing, 1985–2005, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, Maine, August 27–October 31

2006–2007 Creative Imaginings: The Howard A. and Judith Tullman Collection, Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama, October 6, 2006 – January 7, 2007

2007 The 182nd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, National Academy Museum, New York, May 16–June 24

2007–2008 The Diane and Sandy Besser Collection, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, October 27, 2007 – January 13, 2008

2008 Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, March 6–April 6 Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, May 3–July 20

2010 Wall-to-Wall, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, June 5–August 14 Domestic Disturbances, David Klein Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan, September 10–October 16

2012–2013 Untitled (Giotto’s O), Sperone Westwater Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland, November 30, 2012 – February 15, 2013

2014 If You’re Accidentally Not Included, Don’t Worry About It, Galerie Zürcher, New York, April 5–May 3

2015 Embracing Modernism: Ten Years of Drawings Acquisitions, Morgan Library and Museum, New York, February 13–May 24 Intimacy in Discourse, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, October 8–December 28

Collections Cleveland Museum of Art Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Morgan Library and Museum, New York National Academy Museum, New York Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Whitney Museum of American Art, New York