2024
A forerunner of the post-painterly abstraction movement, contemporary artist Gary Komarin approaches each composition with a pure openness to inspiration. With every brushstroke, he builds a visual interpretation of his mindset in that moment, never knowing what he's going to paint next. Komarin asserts that, for him, "the best paintings are the paintings that paint themselves."
Komarin invites risk into his abstract work, and employs daring in every element of his pieces. From his adventurous deployment of spackle and house paint as mediums to his playful use of color and imperfect lines, he pulls forms from a backdrop of consciousness, rather than merely delivering images to a surface. He enjoys instilling a child's sense of wonder into his abstractions and still-lifes, invoking a toddler's experience of "seeing things without knowing what they are."
Born in New York City, Komarin is the son of a Czech architect and Austrian author. He attended art school at Boston University, where painter Phillip Guston became a mentor. Much of Komarin's work nods to Guston, without mimicking or replicating the latter’s signature cartoonish style.
Komarin has exhibited in the United States, Asia, the United Kingdom and throughout continental Europe. In 1996, his work was included in an exhibition at 41 Green Street in New York. He has received numerous awards, including the New York Foundation for the Arts grant in painting, the Joan Mitchell Prize in Painting and the Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship. Komarin lives in rural Connecticut, where he continues to create new work.
Find original Gary Komarin paintings, drawings and mixed media works on 1stDibs.
A Suite of Blue Sea, Majorca
By Gary Komarin
Located in London, GB
Gary Komarin A Suite of Blue Sea, Majorca, 2024 Signed by the artist Mixed media on canvas 152 x 122 cm 60 x 48 inches Eschewing traditional materials in favor of tarps and drop clo...
Mixed Media
A suite of Blue Sea, Salina
By Gary Komarin
Located in London, GB
Gary Komarin A suite of Blue Sea, Salina, 2023 Mixed media on canvas 152.4 x 121.9 cm 60 x 48 inches Eschewing traditional materials in favor of tarps and drop cloths, spackle and h...
Mixed Media
She Don't Get the Blues in the Blue Room
By Gary Komarin
Located in London, GB
Gary Komarin She Don't Get the Blues in the Blue Room, 2021 Mixed media on canvas 121.9 x 152.4 cm 48 x 60 inches Eschewing traditional materials in favor of tarps and drop cloths, ...
Mixed Media
Blue River Running, Antibes
By Gary Komarin
Located in London, GB
Gary Komarin Blue River Running, Antibes, 2022 Mixed media on canvas 152 x 122 cm 60 x 48 inches Eschewing traditional materials in favor of tarps and drop cloths, spackle and hous...
Mixed Media
The Search for Pure Meaning
By Gary Komarin
Located in London, GB
Gary Komarin The Search for Pure Meaning,, 2021 Hand signed and dated on overlap Mixed media on canvas. 138.0 x 127.0 cm Eschewing traditional materials in favor of tarps and drop c...
Mixed Media
Small Canvas
By Gary Komarin
Located in London, GB
Gary Komarin Small Canvas, 2024 Oil on canvas 35.6 x 27.9 cm 14 x 11 inches Eschewing traditional materials in favor of tarps and drop cloths, spackle and house paint, Gary Komarin ...
Canvas, Oil
A Wilder Blue
By Gary Komarin
Located in Fairfield, CT
Born in New York City, the son of a Czech architect and Viennese writer, Gary Komarin is a risk taker in contemporary painterly abstraction. Komarin’s stalwart images have an epic quality that grip the viewer with the idea that he or she is looking at a contemporary description of something timeless. For painter Gary Komarin, abstraction has never been a formal dead end. Rather, it has allowed him to challenge the limitations of the style - to make painting ‘include more’ precisely because a recognizable image excludes too much. Komarin has been called a “painter’s painter”. His status in this regard is based on the authenticity of his work, its deep connection to the tradition of Modern painting as well as its sustained individuality as an utterly personal voice. Like many of the best artists of his generation he is indebted to the New York School, especially his mentor Philip Guston with whom he studied at Boston University where he was awarded a Graduate Teaching Fellowship. Komarin has been particularly successful at filtering these influences through his own potent iconography. “From these seemingly unlovely methods Komarin gets paintings that vibrate with historical memory, echoing such things as Matisse’s driest most empty pictures. Robert Motherwell’s spare abstractions of the 1970’s, or the early New Mexico and Berkeley paintings...
Enamel
The blue sea, Painting, Acrylic on Canvas
By Hennie Van de Lande
Located in Yardley, PA
I see an abstract painting but I can see a seascape too with huge waves, with .but it's not what you look at that matters, it.s what YOU see. :: Painting :: Abstract Expressionis...
Acrylic
157 Grata Azzurra, Mixed Media on Canvas
By Anne B Schwartz
Located in Yardley, PA
This new collection of paintings stems from my fascination with the ruins of Italy. I have utilized the multi textured appearance of the ruins in my paintings. In addition, I trie...
Mixed Media
“Blue”
By Cathy Bennigson
Located in Wellesley, MA
Elegant Abstract Expressionist painting with soft geometric elements in black, white, yellow ochre, and blue: Cathy Bennigson "Blue" 2025 Oil on Canvas 36 x 36 Inches This paintin...
Canvas, Oil
Cote Bleu
By Holly Addi
Located in Boston, MA
Holly Addi, living and working in Salt Lake City, UT, USA is an abstract painter using acrylic and charcoal on canvas. Her gesture and surface quality is reminiscent of the Abstract ...
Charcoal, Acrylic
Mediterranee
By Charlotte Culot
Located in Fairfield, CT
Mixed media on paper, mounted
Paper, Mixed Media
