Global Gestures: Post-War Abstraction from the Lowenthal Collection

This exhibition highlights abstract paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s by artists from Britain, Japan, India, Italy, and Venezuela.

In the 1980s, Pittsburgh art collectors Anne and Alexander Lowenthal and their children donated several works of international abstraction to the University Art Gallery. Many of these works were purchased during the Lowenthal’s travels and from Carnegie Internationals. Together, they show both commonalities and distinctions in postwar global abstraction. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a work by Indian modernist painter V.S. Gaitonde (1921-2001). Gaitonde’s Untitled (1959) has not been on view since its donation to the UAG in 1985. For this occasion, the work has undergone conservation and treatment.

Special thanks to HAA graduate students Emi Finkelstein, Rebecca Giordano, Adriana Miramontes, and Brooke Wyatt for their contributions to this exhibition, and to Rikke Foulke for the conservation of Gaitonde’s Untitled.