A photograph of Theresa Pollak at the Studio Club of New York, where she participated in her first group exhibition in 1926 (Photo courtesy VCU James Branch Cabell Library, Special Collections & Archives)
The young woman in the big-brimmed hat sits in what must be an uncomfortable and brief pose on the arm of a wicker chair. The name of this determined-looking woman is Theresa Pollak, then studying at the Art Students League, though shown here at the rooftop terrace of the live-work Studio Club, 35-37 E. 62nd St. in New York City. Perhaps, dressed as she is, Pollak is on her way somewhere, because she is in mid-1920s, pre-Depression New York, where there’s always something to do, something to learn.
The image appears in “Theresa Pollak: The Wonder of Life,” up through Friday, Oct. 26, at Reynolds Gallery. The second-floor exhibition is a timeline-arranged biography that celebrates her life and legacy. Pollak began academic art studies at both what became the University of Richmond and, where she taught for more than 40 years, Virginia Commonwealth University.
This magazine for 20 years recognized her contributions and those who inherited her spirit through the cross-arts-discipline with the Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts.
The gallery has a longstanding connection to presenting Pollak’s work, making for a good fit with artist Sarah Kleinman. Kleinman paged through and compiled documents and images housed at the VCU James Branch Cabell Library Special Collections & Archives.
If you aren't aware of Pollak's impact, this is a good way to get introduced.
But she didn’t spring alone from Richmond's firmament. Pollak received encouragement from early 20th century women’s suffragist, artist and administrator Adèle Clark and her partner, artist Nora Houston. Without Clark and Houston and the Richmond Art Club, Pollak later recalled, she and others of her nature would've had "nowhere to turn, no art contact whatsoever. They had both studied in Paris, and their whole approach was sound, alive and exciting. This is where I had my first beginnings as an artist, my first stimulation and encouragement. … I feel that it is to her pioneering enterprise that I owe much of my whole career.”
A handwritten description of Pollak’s effusive enjoyment of experience, undated, unsigned and composed for unknown reasons, may be a key to how she became one of Virginia’s few artists whose lifetimes spanned three centuries. “Life is a wonderful thing,” it begins, ”— just life — just to be alive — to breathe — to move — to feel with the fingertips — to have sensations. It is wonderful because it is a mystery and a miracle.”
The exhibition follows Pollak’s career from her line drawings in life model classes to a self-reboot of her approach after taking instruction from Hans Hofmann in 1958. This endeavor was but one of many she undertook throughout her long life to keep learning, growing, improving.
Now, don’t let me tell you what to do, but, if you go to the Reynolds Gallery this week, you might start upstairs and then see two separate shows below, Ron Johnson’s "Distorted Horizons,” which resonates with Pollak’s later work using wild angles and curves and colorful forms, and Brooklyn-based Esther Ruiz's “Unearthed,” mixed-media and neon sculptures, also lively and bright.
