Karma Opens Chelsea Space with Manoucher Yektai Landscape Survey

Karma Gallery inaugurates its new Chelsea location at 549 West 26th Street with 'Manoucher Yektai: Landscapes,' the first exhibition focused exclusively on the Iranian-American artist's landscape paintings. Running from September 12 to November 9, 2024, the show spans works from 1957 to 1992. Yektai (1921–2019) was a first-generation New York School painter and poet. Born in Tehran, he studied at the Fine Art Academy and later at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before settling in New York. Influenced by Jackson Pollock, he abandoned brushes for spatulas, wood, and palette knives, developing a signature style of sculptural impasto and lush colors. The exhibition includes early representational works of Catskills, Vermont, and Long Island scenes, as well as later abstracted landscapes. Art historian Suzanne Hudson contributes to the catalogue, arguing Yektai sought to 'produce rather than illustrate landscape.' The show highlights his synthesis of Abstract Expressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Persian miniature painting, complicating the traditional New School canon. Works like 'Vermont Landscape #4' (1957) and 'Landscape of Italy' (1959) demonstrate his evolving approach. Later pieces, such as 'Untitled' (1971) and 'Untitled' (1985), are more pared-back and meditative, using palette knives to create textural ridges. The exhibition also features works from his Positano and 95th Street series.