An art dealer who maintained galleries in Berlin, Cologne and New York during the 1960s and ’70s, Reinhard Onnasch has dealt with some of the best American art from the postwar period as this sprawling showcase of his personal collection makes clear. Organized by curator and scholar Paul Schimmel, the exhibition is chock-full of gems.
Among the standout pieces are Larry Rivers’s large-scale 1956 painting, The Journey, in which expressive brush marks coalesce to depict the artist’s friends and family; Robert Rauschenberg’s 1960 combine painting Pilgrim, pairing an Abstract Expressionist canvas with a found painted chair; and Jim Dine’s 1961 canvas Hair, which comically renders a hirsute chest with paint straight from the tube. Like Ileana Sonnabend’s holdings currently on view at MoMA, Onnasch’s collection reveals a gallerist’s passion for groundbreaking art.—Paul Laster