Skip to content Skip to footer links

Blinky Palermo: To the People of New York City

September 15, 2018–March 9, 2019, Dia Chelsea

Overview

To the People of New York City is part of Blinky Palermo’s Metal Pictures series (or Metallbilder, in German), which he had started to develop while in New York City from 1973 to 1976. During this time, Palermo began to compose serialized groups of paintings on metal, using color and formal patterns to focus on progression. Consisting of fifteen parts—composed from forty painted aluminum panels arranged in various combinations of black, cadmium red, and cadmium yellow—the demarcated bands of color read as striking, didactic signs that may reference the hues of postwar abstract painting, the German flag, or Palermo’s interest in Native American visual culture. To the People of New York City, however, is distinguished by its prescriptive hanging style and its rhythmically changing formats, which owe much to the syncopation of jazz. New York City afforded Palermo the opportunity to experience live jazz, which may have informed the titular inscription on the back of each panel: “To the people of N.Y.C.” In addition to the paintings, this exhibition includes Palermo’s preparatory studies on which he recorded ideas about the singular arrangement of the painted panels. The final preparatory drawing, which illustrates each of the painted variations in sequential order, provides a codex of the immersive experience of viewing the work.

This exhibition at Dia:Chelsea marks the thirty-year return of Palermo’s magnum opus to New York City. The work was last shown in the city at Dia Center for the Arts, 548 West 22nd Street, in 1987. 

Blinky Palermo: To the People of New York City is made possible by significant support from Susan and Larry Marx. Generous support is provided by Frances Bowes, Nathalie and Charles de Gunzburg, and Marissa Sackler.

Dia Chelsea

Artist

Blinky Palermo

Blinky Palermo was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1943. He died in the Maldives in 1977.

View profile

Books

Photo: Don Stahl

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977

This beautifully illustrated volume spans the breadth of Blinky Palermo's brief but significant career, culminating with paintings he produced during his last years in both Germany and New York City.

View details

Photo: Don Stahl

Blinky Palermo: To the People of New York City

An in-depth examination of German painter Blinky Palermo's most significant cycle of paintings, dedicated "to the people of nyc."

View details

Get Dia News

Receive Dia News and be the first to hear about events and exhibitions happening at our locations and sites.