The exhibition showcases a representative selection of prints, photographs, and drawings from the collection of Jerald R. Green, coordinator of Spanish and Latin American Art at Queens College, and Queens College Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Languages and Literatures. Professor Green has been acquiring Spanish and Latin American art for almost forty years and has routinely drawn upon his collection to enhance and inform the Spanish-language classroom setting.

Embedded within the collection are several important sub-collections: (1) a very large number of Social Realism prints which emerged from Mexico’s Taller de Grafica Popular (Popular Graphics Workshop); (2) a significant number of prints from Spain’s Estampa Popular, a print collective which challenged the civil rights abuses of Francoist Spain; (3) visual arts of the Spanish Civil War; (4) a very large number of nineteenth-century albumen photographs of Spain made by Spanish and foreign photographers; and (5) prints of Latin-American magic realism.

Professor Green’s collection is the product of extensive travel throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Many prints and photographs were acquired as a result of Queens College Art Center exhibitions. Others were purchased directly from the artist or from a gallery representing a particular artist. Still others were acquired at auctions and at image fairs. The significance of the prints and photographs derives from their aesthetic qualities, their historical importance, their technical mastery, and their cultural values.

Provoked to visual explosions by poems and stories, Zinnes’s current paintings contain the spirit of the storyteller in the guise of the abstract adventurer. Not illustrations or literal translations, they are instead transformations from poetry to mysterious landscapes of a dream world inhabited by figure, animal and birdlike images. These paintings suggest that the boundaries between underworld and waking life are traversable, that terror coexists with joy, and that loss yields to renewal. In them, the very sky descends to occupy the ground as fog, and then rises back to its rightful place; tunnels simultaneously lead downward to a dark center, and offer an opening and escape to the bright air above. Created with a palette knife, the texture ranges from impasto to translucent glaze, from areas scratched out to lines fluidly drawn in.

Before making these abstract paintings, Zinnes spent 15 years painting directly from observation. In these paintings, the motif was a vehicle for discovering painterly forms, movements and colors, which themselves were metaphors for the combined experience of perception, memory, mood and thought. These canvases, with their energetic brushstrokes of sensuous color, their layered paint weaving in and out of interlocking, even conflicting forms, reveal a watery, mysterious, musical, and dreamlike world. In many ways, these landscapes relate directly to the later abstract work. As Zinnes says, “Landscape and poetry are in my bones and blood. When I painted from landscapes, the poetry seeped though, and now when I paint from poems, the landscape remains my anchor.”

For the first time, Zinnes’s representational and abstract work will be exhibited together here. The show begins with her student years at The New York Studio School, and in the MFA program at Queens College, and concludes with her current abstract work.

Zinnes has had four solo exhibitions in New York City, as well as one-person shows at Dartmouth and Swarthmore Colleges, and is represented in many public and private collections. She has won awards from the National Academy of Design, received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Arts, Cummington Community for the Arts, and a full scholarship for study at The Skowhegan School. Currently she teaches at Pratt Institute and New York City Technical College, CUNY. She has given guest lectures and critiques throughout the country, including at Dartmouth College, The New York Studio School, and The National Academy of Design. Alice Zinnes was born in Norman, Oklahoma, received her BA from Swarthmore College, and MFA from Queens College, CUNY.

The artists of NÜTRO were all born and trained in the former Soviet Union. The current exhibition presents the work of Yuri Chary, Mikhail Gubin, Dmitry Krasny, Aleksandr Razin, Emil Silberman, and Netta Yudkevich. Their shared beliefs about art, particularly as they relate to their background, led them to forming a group and naming it NÜTRO. The term NÜTRO points to the inner-directed nature of their art. The artists of NÜTRO are known and appreciated by the Russian intellectual community and artistic circles in the United States and Europe. Their work has entered the collections of museums and private collections in Russia, the United States, and Europe. The works in this exhibition include painting, sculpture, and mixed media, in figurative and abstract styles. NÜTRO's artists left the Soviet Union because of the lack of artistic freedom and the onerous and limiting requirements of Socialist Realism. They discovered that the American art market imposed tyrannies of its own. Their reaction to conditions in the United States is reflected in their group statement: "When NÜTRO's artists immigrated to the United States, they quickly became frustrated by a newly encountered reality. The art world here was preoccupied with sophisticated theories, which permitted large gaps to exist between a concept and actual work of art. This in turn created a state of confusion in the eyes of the public and allowed art dealers to promote art of questionable merit." NÜTRO artists' aim is not to be an avant-garde art movement, but to mine their inner thoughts and feelings and give them visual form. Some of the work on exhibit reveals the darker aspects of inner life, while others depict lighter aspects.

Yuri Chary is an internationally recognized painter, illustrator, printmaker, and lecturer. Chary is enchanted by jazz music and believes that it influences his artistic rhythm and movement. In his work, he attempts to look into the secrets of nature and illuminate its mysteries through metaphorical compositions. Born in Lvov, Ukraine, Chary graduated from the Lvov Polygraphic Institute where he acquired strong training in the graphic arts. He now lives and works in New York City. Chary has participated in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including the Pompidou Center in Paris, the National Museum in Stockholm, the State Museum in Heidelberg, Germany, and in Kanagawa, Japan.

Mikhail Gubin is a winner of major juried competitions. His paintings are widely exhibited and can be found in numerous private collections in Russia, Germany, Japan, and the United States. Born in Kharkov, Ukraine, Gubin rebelled against Soviet Social Realism and, following his own vision, created art in various non-conformist styles. Unable to exhibit these works publicly, he went underground, suffering intimidation, persecution, and loneliness. Gubin immigrated to the United States in 1989 and now lives in New York City.

Dmitry Krasny is the youngest member of the group and the only one to receive his visual arts education in the United States. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Krasny immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. Torn between the "old country" and his new home, wanting to be a true American, but never forgetting his heritage, his artwork reflects this constant duality in his life. Krasny received his BFA from the Cooper Union, MFA from Yale University School of Art, and he also spent a year doing his postgraduate study at The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Currently, Krasny teaches graphic design and typography at Parsons School of Design, New York.

Aleksandr Razin was discovered by art dealers from England and Germany who went to Russia and the former Soviet Union republics looking for new talents at the beginning of Perestroika. Razin was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he graduated from the College of Theater and Art. He immigrated to the United States in 1996, already an internationally recognized artist. He is represented in the collections of the State Museums in Tashkent, Kokand, and Kaliningrad, and in private collections in Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, Japan, and the United States.

Emil Silberman has studied art, and sculpture in particular, since he was three years old, although he chose medicine for his formal education. His art reflects his experience as a physician and humanitarian, exploring the human drama and psychological states of the mind. He has developed a technique of working directly in plaster, which he uses to impart movement and expressiveness to his subjects. Born in Riga, Latvia, Silberman immigrated to the West as a young boy, first to Israel and later to the United States. He also spent several years in Latin America. Dr. Silberman has exhibited in galleries in New York and New Jersey.

Netta Yudkevich has spent the last few years in search of new ways that would allow her to incorporate elements of classic realism and academicism into modern painting. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Yudkevich's obsession with art began at a very young age. She immigrated to Israel in the early 1970's and continued her art education there. She continues to live in Israel. Her art is represented in private collections in the United States, Russia, Israel, Canada, France, and Japan.

Katherine Parker and Leah Jacobson share an improvisational, hands-on approach to confronting and manipulating material. By allowing for accidents and appropriating the unknown, they subject their work to an evolutionary process, coaxing and editing, building and eliminating until the essential, true form emerges. Each piece represents a journey wherein both psychological relationships as well as formal organizational decisions are resolved.

The artists diverge in their choice of materials. Leah Jacobson is interested in bending steel into shapes that balance the opposing ideas of mass and fragility. A tenuous, elongated bond often joins two or more forms. The resulting sculptures threaten the viewer's sense of stability. They are reminiscent of both biological and geological formations as well as of human interpersonal relationships replete with their tensions and fallibilities.

Katherine Parker uses the traditional language of oil painting to explore the passage of time and its eroding, fragmenting effect on memory. She uses many layers of subtle color, incorporating the marks, scrapes, smears and irregularities of the surface into the slowly emerging composition. Remnants of each layer are kept and reworked, adding richness and mystery to the final painting.

In their exhibition "States of Union," these two artists and longtime friends explore the relationship of their work and their repeated themes of human connectedness versus isolation. The act of art making is in effect the hope of exposing and making whole that which is unknown or half forgotten. By bringing to light these forms, the artists are creating union and connection between themselves and their audience.