Not many traditional figure painters receive solo exhibitions in Chicago’s galleries, but the Danish master Niels Strobek (b. 1944) is getting one annually. Every autumn, a half-dozen or so new paintings are flown in from Copenhagen. This year’s crop of large figures, each fifty to sixty inches high, is a bit less edgy than last year’s, like the ominous “Bathsheba” that has been brought back for this show. But still, with their strong flat patterns and bold colors, you wouldn’t quite call them decorative. They demand too much attention, like wall-size versions of the bijin-ga Japanese prints of beautiful women. Strobek calls himself an abstract figure painter, and he does seem to have more in common with hard-edged Modernism than with either the Impressionists or the neo-academic ateliers—except that he can draw so well. Strobek likes to look at young women (actually, just one young woman, his current muse) and this year finds her in various colorful costumes as might be fitting for the low-born heroine of an opera. He also likes to look at the Danish countryside. His carefully studied, luminous landscapes are just as remarkable as his figures. What makes it all so compelling is that Strobek is obviously painting for himself rather than for a market. In the earlier decades of his career he liked his full-bodied, healthy young women to appear in all their natural glory. Now, as he enters his mid-sixties, he’d rather see them in costumed, domestic roles. I guess that’s maturity. (Chris Miller)
Through November 30 at Galleries Maurice Sternberg, 875 N. Michigan Ave, Suite 2520
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