Comments of Gallery Directors
Accompanying Exhibitions of Anna E. Meltzer Paintings

 

1945 EXHIBITION AT THE NEWHOUSE GALLERY, NYC

After five years the new work of Anna E. Meltzer appears in her third "one-man" exhibition. Her interests are wide and varied concerning subject matter. In particular she is greatly interested in musical motifs, for she is also a musician. In her most recent work color has been this painter's most absorbing problem as she strives to give the fullness of form to her subjects. Her luminous technique leads us to the rich, deep harmonies and joyous perceptions that constitutes her unique new canvases.

Rivington Arthur

1948 EXHIBITION AT THE MARIE STERNER GALLERY

Anna E. Meltzer is one of the rare artists of today, technically equipped to express her observations and emotions in terms of art, without resorting to the affectations and idiosyncrasies, which too often give the false impression of originality.
Her work will therefore be appreciated by the more exacting connoisseur, who will recognize the profound and sensitive characterizations of humanity - whether spiritual, realistic, or humorous - which she portrays with the sympathetic interpretation of what she feels as well as what she sees.


MARIE STERNER



1958 EXHIBITION AT THE CHASE GALLERY, NYC


Some artists can paint but cannot teach. Anna Meltzer does both with outstanding success. Her School on 57th Street is her love and her efforts are rewarded through countless persons who have been taught the joy of painting.
Anna Meltzer has had many one-man exhibitions throughout the United States, and her paintings are in many important Museums and private collections such as The Palace of Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California, The Joselyn Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, the Pittsfield Museum of Art Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Florida Southern College, Lakeland Florida, and the collection of Danny Kaye, Leonard Clayton, Shepard Henkin, Joseph Veeland, Dr. Eiber and numerous others.
Her paintings are rich in color. The compositions are created with care and thought. Her work shows her regard for the medium and her knowledge of drawing, she combines respect for the old with the spirit to explore the new.


1964 EXHIBITION AT THE PETER COOPER GALLERY, NYC

The paintings of Anna Meltzer are "an intended expression of an abstract concept." They are finely cut to become coexisting from an artistic viewpoint.
The mass is divided into translucent architectonic improbability or a combination of solid voluminous shapes framed in diamond next to its partner that continues to integrate colour form in an enormous play of an abstract beauty of transparency.
Contemporary works of art need not be horizontal nor vertical. Should they be restful or in motion? Form in free space or organic forms? No, Anna's paintings recede to a spiritual concept of pure mind, the walls giving way to themselves by dividing abstractly and breathing luminous colour for its own poetic harmony.
Yes, Anna paints poetry in a harmonious organized metamorphosis aesthetically united with the great masters of this century. Like a labyrinth of a mythical Greek temple built by the sound of music played by Amphion, so do these works resemble. Each painting has a self sufficiency only lyrically attached to its neighbor.
This is not the place to objectify each work separately, but as a sculptor I must say that in these days where art blossoms around the world in spite of negative threats, these paintings call for attention and symbolically call for eternal beauty, harmony and peace.

RENE SHAPSHAK
21st Sept. 1964



1968 EXHIBITION AT THE PACEM IN TERRIS GALLERY, NYC

New things almost always attract, even if the interest is but transitory; but when the thing promises to perpetuate its beauty and its interest, it possesses something to enlist a permanent belief in itself.
Anna E. Meltzer holds a belief in the absolute, she also consents that there can be no positive thought without its substantiated counter-thought. It is as hard to answer, "What is Music" as to tell what is poetry. When the composer has conceived it in his mind, the music itself is not there; when he has called together his orchestra from north and south it is there; - but gone again when they disperse. It is ever being born anew, but only to go away.
We believe both music and poetry are spiritual exercises, which touch perpetual strings in our being, and that, though we feel and appreciate them, they are too ethereal for outward sense, and must forever be buried in the depths of emotion and sensation, only to be fully understood when this mind bursts its material bounds, and reaches up into a world where poetry and music live in visible presence.
With this belief, have we not the evidence, that a Meltzer painting is a true reflection of the better life constantly within us?

Bernard Murphy