Jim Dine at Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art

For over 40 years, Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art has been a respected West Coast specialist for Jim Dine’s artwork. The gallery’s collection includes multiple periods of the artist’s expansive career, from early examples to recent creations. Now 91 years old, Dine remains an active and inventive artist whose practice spans over six decades.

On view at Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art is a notable collection of works by Jim Dine, encompassing many of the subjects that have defined his celebrated career. The collection includes the artist’s iconic hearts, robes, and interpretations of the Venus de Milo, realized as paintings, sculptures, and hand-painted editioned works. Ranging in scale from intimate tabletop sculptures to large-scale paintings and monumental freestanding works, the collection offers a compelling view of Dine’s expansive practice.

Of particular note are several large-scale heart paintings heavily textured with acrylic paint, cellulose, sand, charcoal, and objects gathered from the artist’s studio. Also on view is The Field of the Cloth and Gold, a monumental, larger-than-life Venus de Milo sculpture which is drenched in bright and uplifting 360-degree colors. A selection of vividly colored tabletop heart sculptures are presented alongside richly textured robe paintings, several 8-foot-tall hand-painted woodcuts depicting the Venus de Milo, and numerous other editioned works.

Viewers may be particularly struck by the intense colors, complex surfaces, and unmistakable evidence of the artist’s hand in each of these examples. Texture-building, application of collaged elements, scraping, layering, and repeated mark-making give the images a powerful physical and emotional presence.

Born in Cincinnati in 1935, Dine emerged as an important figure in the American art world during the late 1950s and early 1960s. His expansive practice encompasses painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography, and poetry. An active artist with intercontinental practice, Dine divides his creative practice between studios in the United States, France, Germany, and Austria.

Throughout his career, Dine has repeatedly returned to a personal vocabulary of familiar images. Hearts, robes, tools, plants, and Venus de Milo have become some of his most recognizable subjects. Rather than using these motifs in the same way each time, Dine continually transforms them through changes in color, scale, material, texture, and technique.

The works presented by Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art demonstrate the breadth of Dine’s artistic output and his lifelong commitment to experimentation, revealing the extraordinary depth and vitality of an artist who has continually reinvented his most iconic subjects.

Jim Dine’s artworks may be viewed at Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, located at 1880 Century Park East, Suite 100, Los Angeles, California 90067.

For artwork inquiries or press information, contact the gallery at jnca@novakart.com or +1 310 277 4997. To learn more about the gallery and its artists, visit novakart.com.