Two Coats of Paint: Jacqueline Gourevitch: Skying abstraction
By Jason Andrew
June 14, 2025
Jacqueline Gourevitch’s resilience stems from restraint and slow observation. From her first solo exhibition in 1958 to the current striking survey of 21 cloud paintings dating from 1965–2018 at Storage Gallery in Tribeca, the nonagenarian has shown that sustained attention to a single subject can yield infinite and dynamic variations.
Born in Paris in 1933, Gourevitch fled France with her mother during World War II. She emigrated to America by way of the Pyrenees Mountains, Spain, Portugal, a ship to Cuba, and finally a passenger vessel to Ellis Island. She recently described this remarkable event simply as a “great adventure” –chalking up the formative experience as just another challenge faced in life. In 1950, she attended the summer session at Black Mountain College, whose faculty included painter Theodore Stamos, critic Clement Greenberg, and writer Paul Goodman. She has said that she knew Stamos would be there and went because she thought of herself as “wanting to be a painter.”
For over six decades, the main subject for Gourevitch has been clouds. She has come to master the subject through a process of balancing the pursuit of pure abstraction against the pull of representational painting. Like Richard Diebenkorn, Gourevitch is an autobiographical painter—combining experience with tradition. Her paintings are idiosyncratic in a style that encompasses the intellect of John Constable, the romance of J.M.W. Turner, and the inventiveness of Diebenkorn.
Diebenkorn took the first civilian flight from New Mexico to San Francisco in 1951 and was deeply impressed by the scene of the land from the air. Gourevitch, for her part, has been known to demand a window seat on an airplane so she can study and draw the ever-changing fracturing of light against cloud formations. But deciphering a cumulus from a stratus misses the understanding of her painting, which are contemplative.
Gourevitch’s focused involvement with “skying” tracks classically to the epic ceiling designs of Tiepolo and the moody sky-dominated landscapes of Ruisdael, Watteau, and Boudin. Yet these Romantics were always earth-oriented. No matter how powerful the skies in their paintings may be, the horizon binds them tenaciously to the earth, hovering over their environs like a dome. Gourevitch arguably is more interested in non-objective beauty alongside Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin.
Cloud Painting #1 and Cloud Painting #6, which start the series, were made in 1965. Gourevitch appears to have gotten it right from the very beginning. Through the varying brushed and stained marks, it contemplates the discrepancy between what the eye might see and what the mind might remember. The true beauty of the clouds is hinted where they break for a pure baby-blue sky. The all-over surface projects a compelling sense of weightlessness that sets up what comes next in her oeuvre.
Numerically ordering each work, Gourevitch brings boldness and virtuosity to Cloud Painting #60: Homage to Mondrian’s Red Cloud. Apparently painting with the maximum freedom and speed, she manifests confidence and intensity while conveying the emotional value of a languid summer sunset. In the context of the exhibition, the piece shows that Gourevitch can be a disrupter.
Cloud Painting #190 and Cloud Painting #203 shows muscularity in her subtlety. Broad brushstrokes tinged with umber are psychic improvisations, demonstrating Gourevitch’s lyrical control and sensitivity to atmospheric rhythms.
Just as Agnes Martin had her meditative lines as structural references for her linear gestures, Gourevitch has her clouds. And as a subject, they have proven to be resilient, vast, and transcendent.
“Jacqueline Gourevitch: Paintings 1965-2018,” Storage, 52 Walker Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY. Through July 2, 2025.
About the author: Jason Andrew is an independent curator and writer based in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. Follow him on Instagram: @jandrewarts