Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announce "Martha Edelheit: Naked City, Paintings from 1965–80," its second solo exhibition with the 91-year-old artist.

Opening on January 25, 2023, the show will include historic monumental paintings of nude women and men situated on luscious drapery or montaged into familiar locations around New York City; surrealist multi-panel self-portraits; close-ups of torsos with imagined tattoos; and intimate pastels of the body. Edelheit’s practice is transgressive, whimsical, and sensuous all at once. The artist’s output from the mid-1960s through early ‘80s reflects her abiding love of art history and her reimagining of the discipline that was largely created by men, for men. 

Edelheit reconceived the traditional point of view and male gaze in Western and Non-Western art as well as pornography by portraying male nudes and non-idealized female bodies. The artist ruminated on her travels across Europe, realizing that Renaissance masterpieces were about men and produced for a male audience. She began, in her own work, to position nude or partially dressed women in confrontational stances. 

In 1974, Edelheit’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Evanston Art Center in Illinois. On view were large-scale canvases that will be presented at Eric Firestone Gallery such as View of Empire State Building from Sheep Meadow (1970–72) and Seals, Central Park Zoo (1970–71). The Evanston Art Center show caused an uproar, with viewers calling for Edelheit’s paintings—especially those depicting male nudity—to be taken down. In response, letters of defense addressed to the Evanston Art Center were penned by esteemed scholars and artists such as Marcia Tucker; Linda Nochlin; Allan Kaprow; Lawrence Campbell; and Irving Sandler. This was not the first nor last time that Edelheit’s work (and even the artist herself) would be deemed obscene, despite the fact that she came of age as a woman and an artist against the backdrop of the sexual revolution.

In addition to such paintings, on view at Eric Firestone Gallery will be a group of related pastels in which Edelheit abstracts and defamiliarizes the body, with extreme close-ups of the torso: stomachs, breasts, and thighs. Her palette of reds, oranges, and pinks is warm and luminous; these pastels hum with erotic energy.  

Edelheit’s output at large implicitly challenges societal expectations of women. By using quotidian materials and responding to Non-Western erotica, she also challenged formalist paradigms and traditional nude figuration. She pushed forms and issues to the surface (literally and figuratively) that our culture preferred to ignore. Edelheit was a pioneer of the era, and the conversation that her practice raises about taboo sexual imagery and the censorship of women artists remains topical today.  

Martha Edelheit: Naked City, Paintings from 1965–80 will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue as well as a public program with the artist herself. 

In conjunction with the exhibition, a panel discussion featuring Martha Edelheit in conversation with curator Alison M. Gingeras and scholar Rachel Middleman (among others) will take place on Thursday, February 16, 6:30 pm. More information forthcoming.