Native American Antique and Contemporary Art
JOHN MOLLOY Gallery
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  • Native American Antiques
    • We’wha & the Two Spirit Tradition, Then and Now
    • Beaded Beauty, Early 19th C Haudenosaunee Beaded Bags
    • 19th Century Plains Indian Pipe Bags
    • FIGURES & DOLLS
    • LAKOTA LEDGER DRAWINGS from the Amidon Ledger Book
    • Plains Beauty: ​ 19th Century American Indian ​Garments and Accessories
    • NATIVE AMERICAN DOLLS
    • NATIVE AMERICAN ANTIQUE TOY CRADLES
    • Moccasins, Walking in Splendor
    • Vintage Native American Jewelry and Gallery Highlights - Holiday Show 2016
    • Plains Beadwork and Quirts, New Selections, Summer 2016
    • Knifecases and Tomahawks
    • GEOMETRIES: Parfleche
    • Plains Indian Art
    • Plains Indian Art (2)
    • Plains and Plateau Beadwork
    • Beaded Bags from Columbia River Plateau
    • Three Northern Beaded Bags
    • Across the Rockies, Native American Antique Beadwork
    • AMERICAN RENAISSANCE, 19th Century Plains Indian Art
    • The Painted Parfleche
    • Katsinam 2013
  • Past Shows
    • BUBBLE THEORY
    • INTERSECTIONS
    • PARALLEL PLAY
    • AT HOME: Kate Teale and David Henderson
    • James Havard >
      • James Havard, PRIMAL
      • James Havard, Paint People
      • James Havard, TALKING IN COLORS
      • James Havard, Unquenchable Fire
    • Caroline Blum and Melinda Hackett_New Paintings
    • Matt Magee TYPOLOGIES
    • Tom Huakaas STOP D.A.P.L.
    • INTERNAL LANDSCAPES Vito Desalvo and David Reisman
    • Excavations & Certainties
    • SUEJIN JO, MIGRATION_PASSAGES
    • Walter Robinson
    • GEOMETRIES >
      • GEOMETRIES: Parfleche
      • Geometric Abstraction
    • Matt Magee - PAINTINGS and TEXTCAVATIONS
    • INSOMNIA: Larissa Nowicki
    • Melinda Hackett, SEA GARDEN
  • Essays
    • Names and Roles of Two Spirit People: An Historical Perspective
    • TOY CRADLES FROM THE PLAINS & PLATEAU - essay
    • AMERICAN RENAISSANCE, 19th Century Plains Indian Art - essay
    • Larissa Nowicki INSOMNIA
    • "Birds for Crazy Horse" Tony Fitzpatrick
    • Unquenchable Fire: James Havard’s Recent Paintings
    • Plains Art Before 1860
    • Warrior Art and Artifacts
    • SOME THOUGHTS ON COLLECTING INDIGENOUS ART
    • Art on Horseback
  • About
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PRESS and MEDIA
​


Watch the artcritical talk
​17 Years of The Review Panel

Conversations on INTERSECTIONS 
and three other current exhibitions in New York

David Brody, Lilly Wei and Alexi Worth
discuss 
Intersections: Ron Baron and Sarah Walker
Featuring artcritical contributors in conversation
with David Cohen
and an introduction from Phong H. Bui





HYPERALLERGIC
Perfection of Form, Color and Light ​
by Thomas Micchelli, October 14, 2017​
Picture
Installation view of “Excavations & Certainties: Theresa Hackett and ​Shari Mendelson” at John Molloy Gallery (photo by Thomas Micchelli for Hyperallergic)

  INTERIOR DESIGN magazine:
Q&A: Arizona Transplant Matt Magee
​on a New Show at the Phoenix Art Museum​

May 29, 2018, By Colleen Curry
Picture
Photo: INTERIOR DEISGN magazine

Art Dealer Diaries, episode 17
New York City Gallery Owner, John Molloy
​interviewed by host, Dr. Mark Sublette




​Mary Jones
Proxima b
new paintings

featured in 
artcritical, the online magazine
for art and ideas

by Brenda Zlamany, November 15th, 2016

X-Ray Vision: Mary Jones discusses her work
​with Brenda Zlamany


Mary Jones, Hover
Mary Jones, "Hover" oil on canvas, 54" x 46", 2016

James Havard 
TALKING IN COLORS

​Featured in  ART AND ANTIQUES, 
​the September 2016 issue


 John Dorfman writes in the September 2016 issue of ART AND ANTIQUES,
 "James Havard's lifelong infatuation with paint has yielded a diverse, absolutely individualistic body of work.

...In light of Havard's passion for Native American art and artifacts, it makes sense that his dealer is now John Molloy, an expert in classic Indian ethnographic material who also shows contemporary art.

... [The series] is pure Havard, channeling all the streams from his past and activated by his lifelong  love of the substance of paint."
(read full article here ->)


​
James Havard Paintings
James Havard, untitled, TALKING IN COLORS series, oil on paper in artist's frame, 2016

ReVisions of the American West
​at John Molloy Gallery

AOT,  THE ARCHiTECTURE OF TOMORROW, Art & Culture
​by Douglas Turner,  June 13, 2016

John Wayne was not a Cowboy. His name was not John, it was Marion and as far as personas go his nickname “Duke” came from childhood, in Southern California where he was never seen without his Airedale Terrier, named Duke. He was a football player, son of a Pharmacist yet when you think of John Wayne you imagine a dusty, rugged frontiersman the kind that wrangled the Wild West. Since the 1940s, going on as late as the 60s, it was his films that informed what it must have been like.
​continue reading->
Lou Beach,
Lou Beach," Westward Ho, Oh Wilderness" collage, 25" x 22.5", 2016
Picture
Walter Robinson, "Wrangler Cowboy Cut" acrylic on cardboard, 22" x 11"

Read about GEOMETRIES  in
​COLLECTORS WEEKLY

​Before Mondrian, Native American Women Painted Abstract Art on Saddlebags

By Lisa Hix — April 13th, 2016
Europeans and European Americans didn’t fully embrace abstract art until the early 20th century, when artists like Piet Mondrian and Ilya Bolotowsky used color, lines, and geometric forms as their means of expression. However, shapes in bold hues have long been a part of the visual language for Native Americans, centuries before their invaders got obsessed with color blocks.

Similarly, before Louis Vuitton steamer trunks became all the rage, Plains and Plateau tribes—who became increasingly nomadic as settlers encroached on their native lands—had mastered the art of beautiful luggage, or rawhide saddlebags known as “parfleche.” In the early 19th century, geometric designs were just etched into the parfleche, but starting in the mid-1800s, they were painted in vivid primary and secondary colors.
​

Recently, John Molloy, owner of his namesake gallery in Manhattan, hosted an exhibition called “Geometries,” that showed 19th-century Native American parfleche next to 20th-century Abstractionist paintings, which sparked our interest in the beautiful saddlebags. Even though the two traditions originated independently, Molloy cites scientific studies that show the colors and shapes of each evoke comparable emotional responses in viewers’ brains. 
continue reading ->

Crow Parfleche
Crow Parfleche, late 19th century, 12” x 25.5’
View the show online here ->

OBSERVER CULTURE  - 14 Things to Do in New York’s Art World Before November 6
By Paul Laster • November 2, 2015
Opening: ” Paintings & Textcavatations: New work by Matt Magee ”
​at John Molloy Gallery

Matt Magee, CheckSevenDivision, 2015
Matt Magee, CheckSevenDivision, 2015
After more than 20 years in New York, Matt Magee moved his life and studio to Phoenix, where he began mapping both his immediate and digital environments through painting and the assemblage of found objects. In his first solo show with John Molloy, Mr. Magee makes a triumphant return. In this collection of minimal, nonrepresentational paintings, pebbles replace letters in texts, recycled aluminum cans are cut up and arranged to represent circuit boards and airport floor plans inspire abstract paintings.


NY ART BEAT - "19th Century Plain Indian Art" 
Exhibition at

John Molloy Gallery

John Molloy Gallery - Press Statement for Metro Curates, NYC, January 2015
Long known as dealers in classic indigenous art, we have expanded into the realm of fine art, seeking the common thread between the genres.  Our curatorial intent is to show art and artifacts that share the motif or mysticism inherent in museum quality antique native American Art.   Plains Indian beaded regalia is shown alongside the contemporary animal totems of Mark Kindschi.  Historic Native American  masks enrich the recent snakeskin and honeycomb masks created by Mariano Chavez.  We compare contemporary master James Havard's strong figural paintings to ancient Inuit walrus ivory figurines,  and Larissa Nowicki's sublime paper weavings to the classic beauty of 19th century Navajo textiles.  Hopi Kachina dolls are complimented by  the intricate bird drawings of Tony Fitzpatrick.  These cross cultural commonalities can be unexpected and obscure, but each work of art is enriched and reinforced by its company.



The Observer, GalleristNY / 9 Things to Do in New York's Art World Before November 19 / 
Novenber 13, 2012
TUESDAY | Opening: Emily Weiskopf, "The Curve of Binding Energy"
Named for John McPhee's book on the nuclear age, this show promises to introduce the up-and-comer Weiskopf, of the American Laboratory collective, to a whole new audience on the Upper East Side. Might this lead to some kind of a meltdown on the part of the audience? Possibly! Should you be there? Definitely! 
—D.D. John Molloy Gallery, 49 East 78th Street, 6-9 pm / image


THE NEW YORKER / Goings On About Town, Above and Beyond / January 17, 2011
AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES
The auction houses are just beginning to emerge from their holiday break, with Christie’s in the lead. The house will hold the first in a series of auctions of Americana, a selection of Native American art, on Jan. 18. The sale, which is curated by John Molloy, a New York dealer specializing in the trade, includes a deer-hide shirt made by members of the Illinois tribe in the mid-eighteenth century, as well as a gorgeous pair of moccasins from the late eighteenth century, decorated with geometric orange and red braiding and bright-red horsehair tassels. (20 Rockefeller Plaza, at 49th St. 212-636-2000.) 
View the sale on-line: www.christies.com

John quoted in the WSJ:
  
A Mask That Inspired Masters / ICONS / January 8, 2011
John Molloy, a rival dealer who also advises Christie's on Native American art, says the Donati mask is a superb specimen. "The influence of this mask and others collected by Twitchell on the group of Surrealists living in New York in the 1940s is immeasurable but undeniable. It's a great piece and deserves to be the record-holder

artnet.com
Charlie Finch on "When a Good Painter Goes Bad"

The best abstract paintings I saw were the early-20th-century Crow Indian saddle bags, decorated in colorful, 
painterly grids, at John Molloy's space on 78th street, next to L&M. But then I bought one, for $600, after bargaining 
John down, so I am biased.


​

JOHN MOLLOY GALLERY                
49 East 78th St., Suite 2B   New York, NY 10075  

Regular Gallery hours:
Wednesday - Saturday, noon - 5pm
jmolloygallery@gmail.com    
tel: 917.854.6543

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