Louis Finkelstein (1923-2000) had an insatiable curiosity and an untiring eye. Bonnard, Cezanne, DeKooning, and Kokoschka are a few of the primary artists who inspired him and his work is splendidly grounded in sensory perception. His landscapes are radical “painterly investigations” into the language, structure and meaning of Modernism. They touch the emotions through visual sensation, confirming Finkelstein’s insistence on feeling as the ultimate experience of a work of Art.

“A Renaissance man, Heraclitian, the aesthetic conscience of the painters of his generation.”

-Rosemarie Beck, painter

Louis Finkelstein was not only a distinguished painter but a man of ideas. The thing that anyone who knew him will always remember with awed affection is his intellectual energy. He had the curiosity and wonder of an eternal student and the passion to formulate and to explain of an eternal teacher. He never let up. Ideas poured out of him and they were often difficult. He delighted in the puzzlements of his audience and would pile obscurity onto obscurity until the moment of resolution when all came clear and light poured in, often with fanfares of laughter. The audience might be friends or colleagues or students; the topic painting, phenomenology, astrophysics or Plato. We were all his students and memories of the sight and sound of him working on a critical idea, opening doors, turning cliches on their heads, marshaling connections, will be forever charged with a sense of freedom and life.”

-Andrew Forge, painter and William Leffingwell Professor of Painting, Yale School of Art

“Beyond his brilliant accomplishments in painting, beyond his influence on countless young artists at Yale University, Queens College and the New York Studio School, beyond the provocation of his writing on art, which has stirred the thinking of artists and critics since the 50s, its authenticity and evolving insight rooted in his own experience as a painter throughout the second half of this century, the presence of Louis Finkelstein has been irreplaceable in its importance to the world of art and thought in New York.”

-Mercedes Matter, painter and Dean Emeritus of the New York Studio School