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Serge Hollerbach

70 years of New York Cityscapes

Shortly after coming to the United States as a Russian émigré in 1949, the now 96-year-old artist Serge Hollerbach settled in New York City. With sketchbook in hand, he has spent the seven decades since drawing and painting his Upper West Side neighborhood. Tranquil rooftops; receding boulevards; resonant river views. Freeze-frame shots of streets ever in motion: trucks dominating thruways; dogs being walked; homeless people pushing carts; couples sitting across from one another at cafes; cyclists threading traffic; pedestrians hunched against weather. His New York is a place of diversity, shadows, arrested movement, fleeting snatches of loneliness. A place of repetitive, yet poetic, architectural geometries, where even shared participation in the quotidian has an air of solitary yearning. At times, Hollerbach’s New York is a place devoid of people.

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IN THE NEWS

The Vision & Art Project’s summer 2018 exhibition, “The Persistence of Vision,” undertaken in collaboration with the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP Galleries, garnered national and international attention, shining a spotlight on the eight artists included in our show.

The New York Times published a lengthy article by Serena Solomon, featuring a studio visit with Serge Hollerbach and selected artwork from each of the eight artists in the exhibition. "'There is such a thing as a second childhood,'" Solomon quotes Hollerbach as saying about the post-macular degeneration change in his paintings. "'To be playful, you have nothing to lose. Nothing to lose is a kind of new freedom.'"

Quote

"The sighted can be so touchingly naïve about vision. They apparently believe that the brain stays out of it. Or at best, they extend the camera metaphor and envision a tiny self seated inside the skull, passively watching images."