Nathan Gluck Unlocking The Mind: Nathan Gluck's Early Surrealist Collages

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce UNLOCKING THE MIND: Nathan Gluck’s Early Surrealist Collages, an exhibition celebrating the centennial anniversary of Surrealism, to be presented in Gallery 3 from September 14 through October 26, 2024. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 21, from 4:00 to 7:00 pm.

UNLOCKING THE MIND: Nathan Gluck’s Early Surrealist Collages brings together a selection of early career artworks by Nathan Gluck (1918-2008) spanning approximately ten years, from the late 1930s through the late 1940s. The works on view reflect the young artists deep appreciation of modern surrealist masters like Max Ernst, Man Ray, and Domenico de Chirico, and include experiments with narrative prose and original poetry. His collages function as markers of his life while growing up in a post-depression household between the First and Second World Wars.

In the 1920s, Surrealism was well established in Europe and in the 1930’s, the American public was able to familiarize itself with the movement as surrealists’ works were being exhibited in New York City museums and galleries like MoMA and Julien Levy Gallery, and articles and texts on the subject were being published and made available in New York bookshops like George Wittenborn & Company, Weyhe Gallery and Bookstore, and Brentano’s — all of which Gluck frequented. During World War II many of the European Surrealist artists would flee to the United States where they would continue to practice. This movement influenced many artists of the time, including Joseph Cornell, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko, among others.

The earliest of Gluck’s collages are photograms, including a collaged photogram that he created in 1938 while attending the Pratt Institute. A second group, completed in 1941, are influenced by works in Paul Klee’s 1929 book, La Femme 100 têtes (The Hundred Headless Woman), which Gluck acquired while attending the Art Students League. A third group, completed during WWII and shortly thereafter, feature landscape settings influenced by Giorgio de Chirico. One collage combines cut-outs from a steel engraving depicting a Victorian woman with her back to the viewer and a mostly desolate landscape painted in gouache. In the margins Gluck added a personal annotation stating that it was created during the radio broadcast announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Another work created in 1942, from which the title of this exhibition is taken, depicts the venous structure of a male head, superimposed with a collaged lock and key, looking at a 19th century agricultural irrigation machine over which letters of the alphabet are pasted in a manner akin to Joseph Cornel’s book cover design for Julian Levy’s 1936 book, SURREALISM.

After serving in Europe and the Pacific Theater during World War II, Gluck returned to New York City where he went on to become a successful commercial artist and, most notably, Andy Warhol’s studio assistant from 1953 through 1965, covering the pre-Pop and early Pop period. Gluck continued to work privately on his fine art throughout his lifetime and upon retirement in 1995, at the age of 77, embarked on an extraordinary body of work—collages still rooted in Surrealism, which became his focus until his death in 2008. In these late works, Gluck was able to synthesize his many disparate interests and passions into a single voice—from art, literature, music, theater and opera to language, history, anthropology, food and

travel. UNLOCKING THE MIND: Nathan Gluck’s Early Surrealist Collages, invites us to reexamine Nathan Gluck’s early collage works and their contexts. Like many young artists at the time, Surrealism would influence their practices and create a foundation for future artworks.