GINO HOLLANDER
Gino Hollander began painting in 1960 at the time that a new medium – acrylic paint – was
emerging and he was among the first to explore its possibilities. Viewing his work now, one
becomes aware of the virtuosity of both the painter and his medium. There are canvasses with the
subtle oriental feeling of dry brush done in India ink, there are thick built up swirls of garish color or
soft transparent hues, paint shoveled on with a palette knife, drips and blobs and fine line drawings,
as well a mixture of oil medium with the acrylic, sometimes all of these things on one five foot
canvas. The end result is pure emotion. You hate it or you love it but it is difficult to remain neutral.
Hollander is an undisciplined painter. He withholds nothing of himself. He refuses to rein in his
emotions or his appetites. If a canvas is vulgar it is because he was feeling vulgar when he painted it.
He shows it anyway. He feels that any painting he has done is a part of him. He doesn’t show just
his party face. He strips himself naked for all to see. ‘To know me is to know all of me”.
Hollander paints for himself. He has no wish to engage in a dialogue with the viewer. It is for him to
paint for the viewer to view, the two separate faces of any work of art; both allow a work to be. He
refuses to title his paintings. He tells no stories. His people are purposely poised on the far edge of
nothingness, faces left blank or at best enigmatic. His figures are abstracted and his abstracts
disturbingly figurative. He’ll paint through the day and on into the night, each canvas a different
mood. From stark black and white to a splash of brilliant colors and on to subtle moody sepia, then
back to a black and white, gentle this time. He is a complex man and his canvasses reinforce this
complexity in the very simplicity of their form and content.
The painter paints. He refuses to discuss his work or for that matter, art in general. To him “there’s
nothing verbal about a canvas. A painting is simply one way to express a feeling and feelings can
only be made less if they are talked to death”. Hollander is a difficult man to interview. Like his
paintings, he is tricky, hard to pin down. He’ll talk with you for hours and it is only very late in the
night that you are aware that he is interviewing you, finding out who you are and how you feel. He’ll
discuss any valid subject in the world. Except his paintings. The canvas has no meaning for him
once it is finished. It is the push and pull, the emotional context of painting that captures him. From
then on it is the province of the viewer alone. There is a dialogue of course, but a wordless one. A
statement, a response; a question, an answer. If these exist they are mute. This is a dialogue of the
heart or, perhaps, the soul.
Hollander’s reaction to the garishness and violence of life today takes a unique form: his mood is
often of softness and gentleness. He is an eternal romantic. Women exist in the world of his
paintings. He sees the hopes and promise in the face of an adolescent standing on the threshold of
maturity. There is neither disillusion nor despair. Nor is their gaiety. There is only wanting and hope
and perhaps more than a little questioning. He paints vast faceless groups the wandering figures
intertwined in constant movement. Yet each figure is alone, separate, uninvolved, as in essence each
of us must be. Even in his most violent seascapes one knows the slender fishing boat will make it
safely back to port. Behind the sun-washed white wall of his country villages one senses a full
teeming life, a place for one and all.
CHRONOLOGY
BORN 1924 U.S.A.
1942-1945 U.S.ARMY SKI TROOPS, 10TH MOUNTAIN DIVISION
1950-1960 DIRECTOR AND DOCUMENTARY FILMAKER
“I was immersed in filmmaking and yet had a vague feeling of wanting some more direct means of self expression, one
that would not have the men, money and materials that films involved. NYC was alive with the excitement of
abstract expressionism and one of our film hangouts was the Cedar Bar. I caught the disease and immersed myself in
both paint and painter’s image having decided that if I were to start a new career at this late date and with a family of
four children and one on the way…. I had better just paint and learn by doing which is what I have been doing for
forty years. What I want out of and for my paintings is emotional expression both for me and the Viewer, each in our
own way.
1960-1962 My studio and the first Hollander Gallery, Bleeker St, Greenwich Village, NYC
1962 Move to south of Spain with my family, 2 cats and a dog and $600.
1963-1990 Numerous one-man shows throughout Europe…England, France, Belgium, Switzerland,
Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. During those 28 years living and painting in
Spain my paintings were exhibited in the following Hollander Galleries:
1962-1990 Marbella, Spain
1962-1969 Bleeker St., N.Y.C.
1965-l973 Madison Ave., NYC
1970-1980 West Broadway, Soho
1970-1980 Toronto, Canada
1968-1978 Mount St., London
1973-1982 Circle Fine Arts became my exclusive agent for U.S.A. and yearly there were one-man
shows in a number of their galleries. At our home in Spain, Cortijo de las Yeguas, in l982 Barbara
and I established the Museo Hollander to exhibit our major collection of Spanish antiquities. The
museum gained world–wide recognition for the quality and presentation of the collection and was
viewed by more than 50,000 visitors.
1990 Donated Museo Hollander to the Spanish Government.
Returned to America.
1991-2009 Lived and worked in Aspen Colorado
2009+ Studio in Ojai, CA
I have always been a prolific painter and as many of you know I feel strongly that paintings equally
are the combined work of the artist and the viewer. There are more than 11,000 of my original
paintings out there somewhere in ownership, of that about 2,500 have been outright gifts of the
artist to various charities and numerous hospitals and institutions throughout the world for
permanent exhibition as well as fund raising. If you have a special charity let us please discuss it.
Thanks for your interest in my work.
Gino Hollander
PARTIAL LIST of PRIVATE and ESTATE COLLECTIONS
Jacqueline Kennedy
Arturo Rubenstein
James Michener
Steve McQueen
Eugene Schweitzer
Ralph Lauren
HRH Noura bint Bandar bin Sultan
Henry Kissinger
Calvin Klein
Lena Horne
John Crosby
Morley Safer
The Innocenti Family
Norman Rockwell
Walter Lowendahl
Oscar de la Renta
Mona Khashoggi
HRH Queen Sophia of Spain
Allan Ladd
Leontyne Price
Herbert Kretzmer
Leo Narducci
Ricky Nelson
Howard Head
Taki Fukushima
Van Cliborn
Vincent Sardi
Faye Emerson
Burt Lancaster
John Mitchell
Marilyn Home
Alan King
Melvin Douglas
Betty Phister
Isaac Stern
HRH Princess Maria Louisa de Prussia
Count Schoenburg
Condessa de Salamanca
Geoffrey Beene
John Houston
Lowell Judson
Brian Epstein
Vizcondesa de Llano
Olivetti Family
Luciano Pavarotti
Norman Mailer
Arjun Gupta
Jerry Lewis
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Tony Curtis
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
National Jewish Health
Museo Bellas Artes
Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University
Aspen Art Museum
New York University Art Collection, now
Grey Art Gallery
Sloane Kettering Hospital
Shell Oil Company
Hotel St. Regis, NYC
New York Presbyterian Hospital
Mt. Sinai Hospital
Cedars of Lebanon
City of Hope
Aspen Valley Hospital
Pennsylvania Hospital
Churchill College, Cambridge University
Vincent Price Art Museum
Dow Chemical, Swizerland
Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina
Civic Center Music Hall, Oklahoma City
CCNY, New York
Malaga International Airport, Spain
Vogue Magazine, Spain
JFK International Airport, New York
New York Magazine
Iberia Airlines
United Airlines
Esquire Magazine
Museo de Cuenca, Spain
CBS, New York
Carnegie Hall, New York
Columbia Museum, South Carolina
Bristol Museum, Bristol
De Pauw Univ., Greencastle Indiana
Andrew Dickenson White Museum, Ithaca NY
Sloan Kettering Hospital, New York
McCann Erickson, New York
Russell Sage Foundation, New York
