Nadia Gould
Nadia Gould (1929-2007) was an under recognized 20th century artist who worked primarily in New York City.
She left behind a body of work that reveals a joyful obsession with geometric abstraction and a trend-defying leap into representation. Revealing a singular lyricism, the artist channeled her own inspirations, unconcerned with a single style or trend.
Nadia Gould, who fled Nazi occupied France in 1943 as a teenager, was a working artist for six decades. Throughout, Gould's work recorded a visual vocabulary uniquely her own. From charcoals that assert the heroic landscape of the female form, to pen and inks that fold and bloom, drawing was a constant in Gould's practice, and her practice was constant.
Outside of art history and outside of the storage units, where her work went unseen, there is Nadia Gould herself. In her work, and in her journals, there are hints of an undeterred rapture. Gould wrote that her art "tells my powers." The drawings are brimming with her authentic spirit and leave the viewer wanting to see and know more.
While a student at NYU, Gould made her first visit to the Museum of Modern Art. Soon afterward, she started painting in her family's apartment, a few blocks east of the museum. This is where she discovers the "miracle of art."
Gould's approach to art making was humble, but her ambitions were high. Meaningful work that fostered "contemplation” was her singular pursuit. She rebuffed the ego: "Nothing in art can come from the will. The artist has to watch carefully for their lifelines and work with them, but not from the outside or his head. It is difficult, it is magic that has to be picked up and manipulated, it is like fishing, you have to keep staying with it until it takes."
Along with her journals, notes and sketches for future works, dress patterns, dinner recipes, palmistry diagrams, and theories on color and child rearing, Gould bequeathed us a long trail of art-world correspondence. The considerate form-letter rejections from galleries and museums are evidence of the undertow churning beneath the artist's determined practice by which she endured.
The “miracle of art” remained her salvation from the frustrations of the wider world. Gould noted that when she worked on her paintings whether on an easel, or on the floor, it was "her world" and she entered easily – as does the viewer.
Spending time with Gould’s work, we can imagine an infinite curiosity at work and at play, the puzzle pieces falling into place. Infused with rigor and their own formal inner workings, each of Gould’s works serves up a complete and wholly satisfying universe. We come to know that at the end of the labyrinth is a body of work that is both mesmerizing and rewarding.
