Stephen Pace, Untitled (62-05), 1962
Oil on Canvas, 50 x 36 in.
Stephen Pace, Double Entrance (74-8), 1974
Oil on Canvas, 44 1/2 x 61 1/2 in.
Stephen Pace
Born in Missouri in 1918, Stephen Pace began formal art training at age 17 with WPA painter Robert Lahr. He continued honing his skills while serving as an Army artist in England and France during World War II, painting scenes of combat and local landscapes. Upon his return, he studied with Hans Hofmann, who had a tremendous and immediate impact on his work. During the 1950s Pace became an influential member of the Abstract Expressionist movement. In the mid-1960s, Pace returned to figurative painting in a style characterized by simplified forms, broad brushwork, and imaginative colors. He most often painted his immediate surroundings, finding inspiration in the coastline and fishing village of Stonington, Maine, where he and his wife, Palmina, owned a studio and home. Pace died in 2010.
Stephen Pace, Three Black Horses Running Through Shallows, 2001
Oil on Canvas, 42 x 60 in.
“Pace is a brilliant member of the second generation of New York School painters that burst on the scene, in the early 1950s, fully made, as if from the forehead of the Statue of Liberty”
More information on Stephen and Palmina Pace can be found at:
The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, contains personal and professional printed material and photographs on Stephen Pace.