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A
child prodigy of sorts, Margo Gohmann Spoerri had her first
one person exhibition of paintings at the age of 21, in her hometown of
Louisville, KY where her works were eagerly collected.
Among her many awards, she won National First Prize in Oil
Painting in Mademoiselle Magazine’s College Art Competition,
and was also a Skohegan recipient and
a fellowship resident at
the MacDowell
Colony.
Spoerri moved to New York City at an historical time in the art world,
at the height of Abstract Expressionism when the old game of academics
was clashing with the van garde or this new revolution. At this time
Spoerri knew a
cross-section of both
camps including David Smith, Ben Shahn, Isabel Bishop, Richard
Poussette-Dart, Edwin Dickinson, Milton Resnick, Eva Hesse, Paul Geroges,
Robert Indiana, Tom Doyle and Sol Lewitt. These important figures in her
life had a profound effect upon the young painter. They were nearly all
male artists, however. In fact. the world as Margo Spoerri
knew it was unconsciously sexist in every way.
“I was terrified to stand out as a female or a female
artist," Spoerri recalls. “I had a
severe failure of nerve.” Therefore,
in 1967, she began studying to become a
psychoanalyst and established a highly successful practice in New York
City from 1972 to 1995, specializing
in the treatment of creative professionals,
helping people to overcome their creative blocks. Spoerri
continued to paint through marriage, motherhood, divorce, and educating
herself with a new career. In 1983 she had a solo exhibition at
the Headley Whitney Museum in Lexington, KY.
An important point in Spoerris life came when she left the city and got
back in touch with nature, with the move to the Delaware River In 1987.
Here she developed her "Paradiso Paintings.” These works involve
her unique technique of adding and subtracting and layering of paint,
allowing close focused movement into the light of flowers, leaves,
grasses, sky. Appearing as many sheets of glass atop each other, the
Paradiso Paintings expose nature at its finest, most sensuous, most
radiant, most intimate moment. Life, giving and healing through
sheer beauty, a local hospital acquired a Paradiso Painting to hang in
their recovery room as therapy for patients in their moment of greatest
need. "Spoerris Paradiso pieces compare to the finest of American
nature painting, especially that of Martin Johnson Heade," says
Barbara Braatan, New York art historian and critic.
The recent work on view at the Blue Victorian reflects a high point in
development of Spoerri's adaptation
to her disability over the past nine years.
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