MARQUEE PROJECTS, in association with Pia Gallo LLC, is pleased to present Follow the Line: Durer to Matisse, Master Prints and Drawings, an exploration into the figurative prints and drawings of renowned artists spanning the time period from the 16th to mid 20th centuries. This exhibition follows the trajectory of the multifaceted ways in which artists through the centuries captured the spirit and beauty of the human figure through gestural line in drawing, engraving, etching, lithography, and woodcut.

Our earliest example of the 21 artists represented in the exhibit, Albrecht Durer, the master of the German Renaissance, created groundbreaking, virtuosic engravings, and woodcuts that revolutionized printmaking and ennobled it into an independent art form.

Then, on the heels of the Renaissance, the Italians (including Palma Giovane, Agostino Carracci, and Salvator Rosa) introduced a sensuous, dramatic handling and articulation of the human figure in lively, dramatic drawings and prints, helping launch the progressive Baroque era.

A politically-charged Francisco de Goya y Lucientes sought to express revolutionary truths during the period bridging the 18th and 19th centuries through emotionally stirring figures in contemporary scenarios. With his keen insight into the human condition, and by rejecting old traditions, he becomes the first of the Modern Masters.

Later in the 19th century, the French Romantics Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault turned to impassioned compositions of people and animals in motion, particularly in lithography and etching, later to influence the refined elegance of Théodore Chassériau. 

And in the early 20th century, Henri Matisse responded with a complete upending of previous traditions through the unprecedented and relaxed spontaneity he brought to lithography. Also in the 20th century, the American John Sloan and his protégé Reginald Marsh depicted myriad scenes of New York City life in both intimate uptown settings and bustling downtown locales, integrating the human body and its modern urban milieu.

Artists featured in the exhibit are Cristofano Allori, Milton Avery, Albert Belleroche, Agostino Carracci, Theodore Chassériau, Jules Chéret, Eugène Delacroix, Albrecht Durer, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Henri Matisse, Reginald Marsh, Jan Harmensz Muller, Jacopo Palma il Giovane, Paolo Gerolamo Piola, Salvator Rosa, John Sloan, Albert Sterner, Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder, and works after Giovanni di Benedetto Bandini and Henry Fuseli.

Pia Gallo has been a private art dealer since 1981. Her firm is dedicated to the research, acquisition, sale, and appraisal of fine old master and modern prints and drawings. She has published numerous illustrated catalogues.

Ms. Gallo is a member of The International Fine Print Dealers Association and CINOA, (Confederation Internationale des Negociants en Oeuvres d’Art - International Confederation of Art and Antique Dealers Associations). Pia Gallo has participated in the annual IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair, Master Drawings/New York, and The London Original Print Fair.

She numbers many major museums and private collectors throughout the world as clients, notably, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art, Clark Art Institute, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Harvard Art Museums, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, New York Public Library, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Rijksmuseum, Snite Museum of Art, and Yale University Art Gallery.

For more information or inquiries please contact Mark Van Wagner at info@marqueeprojects.org or Pia Gallo at info@piagallo.com