The Brooklyn Rail - Ron Gorchov: Watercolors 1968–1980

Ron Gorchov, Untitled, 1968. Spray paint and graphite on paper, 24 x 19 inches. Courtesy Cheim & Read.

Ron Gorchov’s watercolors at Cheim & Read don’t show the strains or stressed conditions that painting was going through at the time these works were made. As many painters in the seventies either tried to keep the abstract expressionist ethos alive or shifted to color field to try to run parallel with Minimalism, Gorchov staked out a position within one of painting’s first deaths. He embraced something casual, testing ideas in his watercolors that ultimately were channeled into the significant works that Gorchov became known for.