Franne Davids' Layered Paintings at Sebastian Gladstone

Sebastian Gladstone in Los Angeles presents the posthumous exhibition of Franne Davids, a self-taught artist who spent nearly four decades in her basement studio in Connecticut. Davids, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the late 1970s, produced 42 canvases and hundreds of works on paper, many built up with countless layers of oil paint. Her paintings feature recurring female figures in enclosed interiors, with no discernible chronology or series. Davids submitted slides to major museums in the 1990s but was rejected by Ann Temkin at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1995), Robert Storr at MoMA (1996), and Lynn Corbett at the Carnegie Museum of Art (1997). She worked until 2018 when her health declined, and died in 2022. The exhibition highlights her radical approach to time and revision, challenging conventional art historical frameworks.