November 28th, 2025 to January 15th, 2026, Frankfurt Germany
Galerie Barbara von Stechow
I had quit my jobs at both NBC News and CBS Records to try my luck in NYC. The Edison Hotel afforded a view of Times Square as a light snow fell on long shadowed men, hats pulled down and smoking cigarettes, women in high heels stepped out of Checker cabs. It was like being in a film noir movie. But bathed in the glorious neon lights of Broadway.
One heard so many great stories about the real artists Jackson Pollock and DeKooning duking it out at the Cedar Tavern. Line! Color! Action! they would shout while wildly swinging and mostly missing.
You could paint at night and work by day hired by stylish women and men in white shirts and ties in mid century modern skyscrapers. They would give you the chance to paint album covers, magazines and posters, art for The New York Times, before running down to 100 Center street to work the Crime Beat for the nightly news.
Times Square was shuddering with jackhammers, straining with cranes. Pinball arcades, rescue missions and peep shows were all coming down. New York was being reborn. Streets new again with rushing yellow cabs, canterwheeling bike messengers, downshifting carting trucks, pedestrians in crosswalk scrums, all sculpted in the white laser light unique to NYC.
NYC in 1990’s with all its grit and chaos was a city brimming with optimism. You had the feeling you were part of a group in on a great secret. It was, indeed, The City of Ambition.
To have an exhibit in Frankfurt, the land of my heroes, is exhilarating. Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke artists like Kirchner, Pechstein, Schmidt- Rotluff all lived and worked here. German artists are the best, so walking into a German mansion and seeing your paintings displayed next to works by Georg Baselitz, Käthe Kollwitz and Emil Nolde is both uplifting and incredible. As an artist, you feel part of history. And moments like this make it seem like all is good in the art world.
