William C. Agee, consulting curator, High Museum of Art on Sidney Guberman
Excerpted from Sidney Guberman Vert Fonce & Other Recent Work exhibition catalogue, 1988

The situation of abstract painting in America today can be said to parallel the position it held in the 1930s. Much of it overlooked in the current rush to embrace a socially “relevant” art with a specific “humanistic” content, just as the art of Stuart Davis, David Smith and Arshille Gorky was deemed “escapist” by the rhetoric of Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood and John Stuart Curry fifty years ago. Then, as now, the power of abstract art to speak through the language of paint itself - a deeply humanistic language, by definition – is manifestly clear, but not widely acknowledged.

The painting of Sidney Guberman asserts this power. Since he gave up architecture in 1968 to become a full-time painter, his art has been characterized by exuberant color, distinctive composition and the sure stamp of its underlying form and composition. He is not embarrassed to use these terms – forms and composition – and in this sense, he is what today some would call an “old-fashioned” painter. He is surely aware and proud of his lineage in Matisse, Hoffmann and Stella. He seeks an art that is demanding and engaging, but does not mind “if a piece were to be called beautiful,” a description that to many these days is anathema.