ERNEST BRIGGS - ARTIST OF THE 50's at the Anita Shapolsky Art Foundation: July 16th through September, 2005. Ernest Briggs studied at the radical West-Coast oriented California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco where Douglas MacAgy had assembled a faculty that included Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and Clyfford Still. Still was the artist that impressed Briggs the most, understanding his raw and primeval approach to the surface. Briggs moved to New York in the mid-1950's, had a one-man show at the Stable Gallery almost Immediately, and was accepted as a member of the New York avantgarde. He taught at the University of Florida, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and at the Graduate School of Art at Yale University. Until his death in 1984, Briggs continuously explored new ways of combining and changing compositional arrangements and painterly strategies. Briggs' paintings from the 1950's are some of his most original. The rugged aesthetic that he picked up from California developed into fiery explosions of paint that seem to have erupted on to the canvas as if by a force all of their own. He was interested in investigating the lyrical use of paint - using pure, emotional color to reinforce the two-dimensional space on a large scale. He was one of the first artists to do stain paintings. In the Fifties Briggs wrote, "The discipline to free one's image from the conventional aspects without surrendering the affirmative drama of human insight to the sterility of decoration or simple design problems has been, and I believe will be, my continuing direction." From the catalogue Ernest Briggs / Artist of the 50's, published by Anita Shapolsky Gallery.   Ernest Briggs Untitled, 1973 Oil in canvas, 67 3/4" x 67 3/4" Ernest Briggs Untitled, 7-1961 Oil on canvas, 48" x 59" Ernest Briggs Untitled, 1956 Oil on canvas, 110" x 94" Ernest Briggs Untitled, 9-2-1962 Oil on canvas, 106" x 86" Ernest Briggs Untitled, 4-20-1959 Oil on canvas. 113" x 70" Ernest Briggs Untitled, April 1959 Oil on canvas, 113" x 70" Ernest Briggs Untitled, 1963 Oil on canvas, 93 3/4" x 103 1/2" Ernest Briggs Untitled, 1963 Oil on canvas, 93 3/4" x 105 Ernest Briggs Untitled, Dec1952 Oil on canvas, 69" x 69" Ernest Briggs Untitled, 1960's Oil on canvas, 24" x 24"