Comments:
In December, 2011, I opened the art gallery I had been thinking and talking about for years, showing the kind of art I have been collecting most of my adult life. The gallery, located in Washington, is called Charles Krause/ Reporting Fine Art; its focus is what I call "the art of social and political change"---fine art that has influenced, or been significantly influenced by, the great political and social upheavals that we've all witnessed in our lifetimes and that I, in many cases, witnessed on the ground in real time as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, CBS and the old MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.
My objective is not solely or simply to sell paintings or drawings or photographs; it is to establish a new genre of fine art, recognized by museums, curators, collectors, the auction houses and other galleries as having a special, unique value because of the impact it has had on contemporary history and the world we live in.
I opened the gallery with an exhibit of work by Jerzy Janiszewski, an extraordinary Polish artist who in 1980 created the blood red logo for Lech Walesa's shipyard workers' union, Solidarity, the first free labor union in what was then Communist Eastern Europe. Within a decade, Janiszewski's graphic design had become the instantly recognizable symbol of freedom throughout Eastern Europe, galvanizing the anti communist forces that brought an end to Russian control in Poland and the other Warsaw Pact countries in 1990, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and, with it,
an end to the Cold War just a year later.
Recognized as one of the 20th Century's great graphic designs, Janiszewski's Solidarity logo is now in the permanent collections of some of the world's most important art museums, including the Victoria and Albert in London, musee d'arte contemporaine in Paris and MoMA in New York. Yet his work had never been shown in the United States until the exhibit in my new Gallery, which I called "The Graphic and Fine Art of Poland's Jerzy Janiszewski: The Artist Whose Graphic Design Changed History."
That first exhibit was reviewed and selected as a Critics' Pick by Artforum, arguably the most important art magazine in the world; was named one of the 10 best art exhibits of 2012 by The Washington Post; and was written about by Bloomberg/Businessweek, Art in America and ART+Auction.
And guess what?
The very first sale of Janiszewski's work was to two of my oldest and closest friends from the Sultons and Mumford, Mel Fink and Hank Rosman (and Hank's wife, Serene), who came to Washington for the opening (see http://goo.gl/vqR5z). Having Mel, Hank and Serene there at the beginning was a wonderful way to launch the gallery; Janiszewski's mixed media painting is now in Birmingham; and, yes, we're all still friends!
Since that first exhibit, there have been four more---with another scheduled to open in early June, 2013. For more information about the gallery, the art and current and future exhibits, go to www.charleskrausereporting.com
