Show of Works by Surrealist Opens

   An exhibition of paintings, “On Being Human,” by the late Irving Norman will open at Santa Monica College Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery on Saturday, October 5. A reception is scheduled for Friday, from 6 to 8 p,m.
   The social surrealist paintings will be on view at the gallery, at the SMC Madison campus, through November 1.
   Norman, who died in 1989 at the age of 83, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who moved to the U.S. in 1923, living first in New York, and later in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
   During Norman’s lifetime, his work was widely exhibited and critically acclaimed. In his later year, major public institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, began to acquire his paintings.
   Following his death, interest in his work waned, but the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco acquired two key works and organized a 1996 exhibit, and last year his paintings were prominently featured in a show at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.
   “His canvases are monumental in scale and teem with swarming figures, clone-like in their repetition yet retaining elements of individuality,” Scott A. Shields, curator of art at Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, writes in the SMC catalogue for the upcoming show. “These figures are constricted by small urban spaces, caught in the crunch of bodies that fill city streets and subways, and decimated by pain and poverty and the horror of war. These themes manifest Norman’s perceptions of modern life and the society in which he lived.”
   Shields will give two lectures on Norman’s work at the gallery: from 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.on Thursday, October 10, and 6 - 7 p.m. Friday, October 11.
   The SMC exhibit was co-curated by Hela Norman, the late painter’s wife, and Martin Sosin.
Support for the exhibit comes from the Stratton-Petit Foundation, Martin Sosin, and the SMC Foundation.
   For information, call (310) 434-3434.