WebinART: Gunnar Norrman: Enduring Astonishment
Virtual event hosted by Pucker Gallery
On Thursday Pucker Gallery hosted a conversation with Fitch-Febvrel Gallery’s Andrew & Dominique Fitch, Brattleboro Museum Curator Emerita Mara Williams, and Gallery Director Bernie Pucker.
This event was an opportunity to explore the poetic works of Gunnar Norrman with insight from Mara Williams and Andrew and Dominique Fitch. Given the intense universe in which we live, Norrman's art provides us with a rare opportunity to be inspired by the nature that surrounds us and surrounded him. Out of his private and personal world he shares a quiet and calm love of all beautiful.
The exhibition Gunnar Norrman: Enduring Astonishment will be on view at Pucker Gallery from July 15th through September 4th, 2022.
Swedish artist Gunnar Norrman's endeavors in art were complemented well by his pursuits of music and botany. He was a skilled draughtsman, musician, and gardener. His delicate and subtle pencil and conté drawings and lithographs and drypoint etchings are like melodic compositions on the simple beauty of nature's gifts. In 1979, he was awarded the Prince Eugen Medal by the King of Sweden for his outstanding illustrations found in Naturen I Våra Hjärtan, an anthology of poems. Greatly respected in his native Sweden, Norrman’s works were featured in the 1997 exhibition titled Modern Scandinavian Prints at the British Museum, London. He has also exhibited in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, England, France, Japan and Italy. His works are in the collections of the British Museum (London); the National Museum (Stockholm), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), among others. In 2003, a catalogue raisonné, Gunnar Norrman: The Complete Graphic Works, 1941-2001, was published by the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery in New York. Norrman died in 2005.
Mara Williams has been curating exhibits at Brattleboro Museum & Art Center for thirty years. Her area of expertise is modern and contemporary art. Recent solo exhibitions include: Gathering Light: The Art of Stephen Hannock, Wolf Kahn—Landscape of Light; Secrets by Gloria Garfinkel; Andy Warhol—Selections from the Jon Gould Collection. Group shows have included the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Janet Fish, Mary Frank, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Maya Lin, James McGarrell, David Nash, Robert Rauschenberg, Ursula von Ridingsvard, Michael Singer, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Barbara Zucker, as well as a host of regional and emerging talent.
In addition to Brattleboro, her exhibits have been seen by audiences at Tufts University Art Gallery, Florence Griswold Museum, Carving Studio and Sculpture Center, and a number of galleries in New York City.
As a partner in Arts Bridge LLC, Williams leads exhibition teams for institutions developing new large-scale museum projects. She led a team at Norwich University to conceive and build the inaugural exhibits and media productions at the Sullivan Museum & History Center; she was the exhibition developer and project manager for the Vermont Historical Society's interactive exhibit and film, Freedom &Unity: One Ideal, Many Stories; she developed Bravo! A Century of Theatre in Fairfield County; and a number of exhibits for the Vermont Folklife Center.
She holds an A.B. in theatre from Boston College; an MFA in museology from Syracuse University, and has completed doctoral course work and passed comprehensives in comparative arts at New York University. She has served as chair of the Vermont Arts Council and as a board member of the New England Museum Association. She is currently serving her third term on the Senate Curatorial Advisory Committee for the U.S. Capitol.
Dominique Fitch, née Febvrel, was born in Paris during WWII and grew up there. In her early 20’s she was the primary assistant to George Whitman, founder of the celebrated Left Bank bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, where she and Andy first encountered one another. Gifted and artistically inclined from an early age, she enrolled in 1966 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris’ premier art faculty. After several years, she was unable to graduate, as the school closed during the demonstrations of 1968, in which she and Andy both took part. They married in Paris in 1969, immediately after which they transitioned into NYC life. Dominique became the indispensable partner in Fitch-Febvrel Gallery at its birth in 1971, while pursuing her own unique artistic endeavors, paper-cuts in light boxes (one of which was included in an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in 1984). She also had a 14-year career designing and illustrating college science textbooks for various publishers.
Andrew Fitch, born in NYC, bred in its suburbs, Andy graduated Yale in 1959 with a B.A. in French language and literature. Having won an NCAA wrestling championship in his senior year, he devoted much of the next half decade to the sport, winning a gold medal in the Pan American Games (Saõ Paulo 1963) and participating in the Tokyo Olympics (no medal, 1964). Concurrently, he began teaching French at Columbia University (1963-1967, earning M.A. and M. Phil degrees), with a year off for a Fulbright in Paris (1964-1965). Having surrendered his draft card for burning in a Central Park ceremony in 1967 and being forthwith reclassified 1-A, Andy spent a couple of years mostly bumming around Europe and Japan until he returned with newlywed Dominique to NYC. After a couple of years as Ass’t. Foreign Student Advisor at Columbia and some taxi driving, he and Dominique started Fitch-Febvrel Gallery in 1971 out of their apartment, moving to a public gallery on 5 E. 57th St. in 1977. The Gallery joined the now prestigious IFPDA in its second year, with Andy serving on its board for a few years in the 90’s. After 28 years in the city, where they were privileged to introduce artists such as Gunnar Norrman, Erik Desmazières, and Philippe Mohlitz inter al., in 2005 they closed their public space, now dealing privately out of a gallery attached to their home in Croton-on-Hudson, NY.
Bernie Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Newbury Street in Boston in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinArts,” and other public events.
Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves, as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School; President of the Newbury Street League; and a Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others.
Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.