“When I bought my first Kurt Seligmann painting, I thought that I had bought a great Surrealist painting,” says Rowland Weinstein, the owner of Weinstein Gallery. And it’s true. He had bought an important piece from the renowned artist. But it was the overwhelmingly positive reaction from some of Weinstein’s staff that floored him. “When the painting came in, they didn’t really know who Kurt Seligmann was. All they could do was just look at the painting for what it was.” And what it was must have been something else, because the group was unanimously moved — one person even claimed that it was the best piece of art they had ever seen.
Kurt SeligmannL'alchimie de la peintureWeinstein, whose gallery of big-deal Surrealists contains work by Joan Miró and Max Ernst, is no stranger to incredible talent. Still, with a reception like that, it’s not hard to see why Seligmann would hold a special place with the owner, who this month presents Kurt Seligmann: First Message From the Spirit World of the Object, the first American retrospective of the artist’s work in nearly 60 years.