Forum Gallery Presents
William Beckman | Gregory Gillespie
at The Art Show 
November 2-5, 2023 
Booth A14

Close friends in life, fierce competitors in art and mutual admirers for decades, Gregory Gillespie (1936–2000) and William Beckman (b. 1942) were first shown together in 1981 in the landmark exhibition, Contemporary American Realism Since 1960, curated by Frank Goodyear at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Oakland Museum, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal, and Kunsthalle Nuremberg, Germany. A two-person exhibition, The Art of William Beckman and Gregory Gillespie, curated by Carl Belz, soon followed at the Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA; and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; 1984.

The artists shared the power to illuminate life through revelatory focus on its organized detail above and beneath the surface of the individual subject. For The Art Show, Beckman’s Diana III, 1976, and Gillespie’s Studio Wall, 1976—in the same major Washington, DC collection for four decades—are exhibited publicly for the first time together. The startling, supernatural vision of these artists has endured throughout their careers, and in Gillespie’s case, after his death.

“(Gregory Gillespie) is one of the few painters who ultimately ended up as an artist, in the true sense of an artist as a creator of concepts and an originator of thought.” — William Beckman

“(William Beckman) could paint the blond hair on his head or beard, and he could paint a whole room or a landscape reflected in the eyes. His focus and concentration are incredible. So you push your own limits, and you feel content with what you’re doing; and then somebody else pushes it even further.”
— Gregory Gillespie