Stephen Pace

Farnsworth Forward: The Collection
Curated by Suzette McAvoy
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine
Through December 31, 2022

Featuring work by Stephen Pace, Lynne Mapp Drexler, George Bellows, Lois Dodd, Winslow Homer, Daniel Minter, and Marguerite Zorach.

View Works by Stephen Pace
Lynne Mapp Drexler: Solo Exhibition Forthcoming at Berry Campbell, New York

The Fairfield University Art Museum has received a major gift of more than 130 paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, and sketchbooks from the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation.

The Fairfield University Art Museum is pleased to announce that the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation has gifted more than 132 works by Stephen Pace (American, 1918-2010) to the museum, with outstanding examples from across the artist’s oeuvre.

Stephen Pace was born in Missouri in 1918 to a farming family. He began his formal art training at the age of 17, studying drawing and watercolor with WPA artist and illustrator Robert Lahr. He continued to hone his skills while serving abroad during World War II, painting views of European landscapes. Pace’s early works are represented in this gift by a very early and accomplished watercolor of a farm scene from his childhood in Missouri. After WWII, Pace studied art on the GI Bill at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel Allende, Mexico before he made his way to New York City. This period is represented by a lovely oil painting of the Mexican desert landscape looking towards San Miguel Allende.

In 1947, Pace moved to New York City where he continued his art studies on the GI Bill at the Art Students League and developed important friendships with members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionist. Still lifes, nudes, and early abstractions are among the works included in the gift from this period. Pace used the last of his GI bill funds to study with the renowned abstract expressionist artist and teacher Hans Hofmann, in New York and then in Provincetown, Mass. Hofmann had an immediately visible influence on Pace’s work in the 1950s, particularly in Pace’s use of color planes to describe volume.

During the 1950s, Stephen was singled out by Hofmann as one of the finest painters to emerge from the second generation of abstract expressionists. During his long career, Pace made important contributions to the tradition of Abstract Expressionism. This period of abstract expressionism is represented by several important paintings, as well as numerous watercolors, prints, and drawings.

In 1960, Pace returned to painting more figural subjects in a style characterized by simplified forms and imaginative colors, and this remained the focus of his artistic practice for the remainder of his career. Returning to his rural roots, Pace’s work begins to depict subjects ranging from gardening and nudes, to horses and lobstermen. The gift to Fairfield includes all of these subjects, and is particularly strong in paintings of horses — one of Pace’s favorite subjects.

The donated works collectively are very important because they demonstrate Pace’s process in moving from studies to finished works. Pace's artwork will be well-used in teaching across disciplines, especially in Studio Art and Art History classes.

Three of the gifted works by Pace are among those in the current Fairfield University Art Museum (FUAM) exhibition in Bellarmine Hall Galleries, The Birds of the Northeast: Gulls to Great Auks: an ink drawing of a Great Blue Heron, and a watercolor and a lithograph of Herring Gulls. A full exhibition of Pace’s work is in the planning stages.

In The Abstract
Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine
January 15 - April 24, 2021
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"#meansformakers Please join us for raising COVID19 relief funds for @cerfplus by sharing a favorite artist or artisan that inspires you. @arteriorshome will donate funds for each of our posts to @cerfplus who will in turn support the skilled artists of the artisans society. Just post your favorite maker’s work and tag @arteriors home and #meansformakers I am sharing several projects showcasing custom pieces done by some of the incredible artisans we continually work with. The work of each of these artisans truly makes each of our projects shine."

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47th Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse
May 2nd - May 30th
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Berry Campbell collaborated with Robert Passal Interior Design and Daniel Kahan of Smith and Moore Architects as well as Sarah Bartholomew Design in the Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse, supplying works by Eric Dever, Perle Fine, and Stephen Pace.

Each year, celebrated interior designers transform a magnificent estate into an elegant exhibition of fine furnishings, art and technology. This all began in 1973 when several dedicated supporters of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club launched the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Manhattan to raise critical funds for much needed after school and enrichment programs for New York City children. For more than four decades, the show house has been a must-see event for thousands of design enthusiasts, renowned for sparking interior design trends throughout the world. In 2017, the show house expanded with a second location in Palm Beach, in partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County.

Designer QnA: Elizabeth Swartz On Bunny Williams Bingo, Her Belgian Urn, And That Moment The Art Goes On The Walls

Stephen Pace, Untitled (52-53), 1952, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

Elizabeth Swartz was named partner of Bunny Williams Associates in 2017 after a 14-year tenure, which began with a coveted internship. Elizabeth notes, “These days, it’s rare to rise from intern to partner while under one roof. In my case, I found my calling through the apprenticeship tradition much the way Bunny did when she began her long association with the revered Parish-Hadley Associates.” Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, Elizabeth attended the University of Richmond and then the New York School of Interior Design. After graduation, her internship at Bunny Williams Associates led to a job as Junior Designer and she rose later to Senior Designer. “Bunny is an ideal mentor and collaborator and we take our partnership seriously. She sets the stage with her vast experience, practicality, intelligence, and sense of humor. Generous in spirit, she invests in her staff when they show initiative, drive, and talent so I worked hard to meet these expectations. I’m thrilled to have the privilege of leading by Bunny’s example,” continues Swartz. Known for her skill in building stories for beautiful rooms from one point of inspiration, Elizabeth carves out time for personal growth, which informs her designs. When not at the office, reading, visiting museums, or spending time with numerous nieces and nephews, she’s exploring the world and capturing her adventures through her other great passion: photography. A recent trip to Berlin and Vienna are highlights, while future sojourns in Greece, Africa, and Iceland await.

Gallery Talk with Martica Sawin
Saturday, April 6, 2019
2 PM

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Martica Sawin

MARTICA SAWIN is an art historian and critic who has spent a half century covering contemporary art in print and in the classroom. She is author of the seminal publication, Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School, and has written more than 100 essays on contemporary artists for exhibition catalogues and art magazines as well as authoring and co-authoring a number of monographs. Sawin served as Art History Department Chair at Parsons School of Design (1967-1995), is founder of Parsons in Paris, was a contributing editor in ARTS magazine, and was the New York Correspondent for Art International in the 1950s and 1960s. Sawin authored Stephen Pace, the critical and biographical text that summarizes the artist's life and art from Pace's early forceful abstract expressionist canvases to the luminous representational paintings of recent decades.