Bruce Kurland: Insight into Still Life

Excerpt from the statement by guest curator William H. Gerdts, City University of New Yok, beginning with his introduction to Bruce Kurland's art around 1970-71: "I recall that I thought then that I was viewing the finest still-life painting by a contemporary artist that I'd ever had had the pleasure and privilege to see, and twelve years later I have no reason to change that recollection or even to amend it by  more recent experiences....The incredible delicacy, exquisiteness and yet strength and assurance of Bruce's work won me immediately, and however dubious the ultimate value of that success, it's certainly been steadfast." 

Excerpt from catalog essayist, Eliza Rathbone, Assistant Curator of 20th Century Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC: "Bruce Kurland enriches the tradition of still life with a unique vision. As a still-life painter, Kurland is not interested in the conventionally accepted perfection of his subject. (No one would know that Cezanne's apples had practically rotted before he had finished painting them.) Kurland's fruits are not perfectly ripe and full. The leaves on his flowers are as likely as not to be worm-eaten. He finds beauty in imperfection and, in making this aesthetic choice, he comes by his own route to one of the central subjects of the tradition, the mortality of all living things. Some of the paintings in this show, indeed, seem to extend the limits of the tradition to present Kurland's haunting vision of the spiritual essences of his subjects....Kurland's paintings are among them most eloquent meditations on life and mortality of our time. This exhibition of over seventy paintings, drawings, and watercolors, the first retrospective of the artist's work, is ample proof."