Reviews

The Roger Smith Hotel is suitable for Nuri Taub’s art, for she paints people congregating, usually at parties. In her solo show in February, at the Roger Smith Hotel, 47 and Lexington, Taub likes to portray people in action. She likes the night club and entertainment which describes a very lively woman doing the can-can, or musicians playing, or a couple in conversations at a table.

Taub creates levels of meaning by employing levels of people. In front of all may be a black and white checked floor or one with floral motifs. Then comes the protagonist, the man playing a guitar. People mull about just beyond and the wall is prominent behind them with large posters or paintings. Nuri Taub prefers large images in bold color, employing frontal poses and a naļve style. By using movement and color in larger imagery, she achieves a very lifelike effect.

- ArtSpeak, New York, April 1995

Despite being born in Barcelona, Nuri Taub is now the American tourist who vacations nearby rather than travels, since she prefers giving a modern twist to a Matisse subject. In the canvas, “Nicole’s House,” Nuri imagines a beach scene within a living room, in a brilliant juxtaposition of images. The walls are indicated by images of bright colored modern paintings with figures, among them a Paul Klee head. Then a light shade with a bright design is suspended from a nonexistent ceiling. A grid of dots and wriggly lines represents sand for sun bathers and, on another side of the room, for two cats.

This arrangement of images, often motifs of cats, human figures, and grids, combines some of these features in other, more simplified canvases of a larger scale. Her paintings, with the ambience of present day Mediterranean culture, appear fittingly as a solo exhibit in Ana Dubrowna Gallery of Palma in Mallorca, Spain, a space devoted to collectors of rare antiques. Some pieces, like “It’s Cocteau Time,” repeat the large flower motif and contrasts of grids and other textures and colors. Her new direction is implied in “Shoe Girl,” with a neo Cubist treatment that does not completely abandon her Matisse manner, while the angular composition is quite arresting and powerful. All the paintings celebrate the culture and life style Nuri loves.

- Joseph Merkel, ArtSpeak, New York, September, 1993

In her acrylic shown in March in the lobby of the Javits Federal Building in Federal Plaza, Nuri Taub is notable for painting people usually several, who represent a human eyeful of a crowd, not too few and not too many, so as to render the right proportion of individuality. “Tea in the Plaza” has four persons seated at an outdoor table (and a nude waitress!). They are not relating to each other but are lost in thought while listening to the music of the violinist.

“Fashion Show” is interactive and dynamic by comparison. First, it is a vertical image, with three models standing in the mid ground. Nuri Taub creates a special visual tension by making the foreground figures smaller and those behind of the same scale, while the faces farthest back (apparently on posters) are the largest of all. This latter painting is even more brightly colored, with richly designed chairs and a brightly colored rug. These paintings reveal Nuri Taub’s psychological insight and her vivid response to life.

- ArtSpeak, New York, April 1993

New York resident Nuri Taub has paintings at Lladro Art Gallery, 43 West 57 Street, which specializes in Latin American art and includes her in a group show this summer. One large work is an all over grid abstraction that is handled in a roughly geometric manner. Curves mix with straight lines in a thick woods of greens and browns, not unlike the nature of the jungle of Venezuela, where she lived six years ago when she made this painting. This major work possesses surprising dynamism and power.

“Fashion Model” is her recent painting that is even more up to date in style. Taub retains an angular manner, as she successfully introduces the figure in abstraction in her own way. The very flat image is striking in its contrast of red and white and displays a bold mastery of Nuri Taub’s own idiom in an international art arena.

- Joseph Merkel, ArtSpeak, New York

Bold Spanish Artist Show Their Work in New York. At topnotch New York City art galleries, recent exhibits featuring Spanish painters and architects highlight the diversity and complexity in contemporary Spanish artistic styles.

Her paintings form part of private collections in Spain, France and Israel, and have been exhibited in the USA, including in New York at the Monserrat Gallery, Fashion Institute of Technology, and at the Art Student’s League. This past fall twenty three of Nuri Taub’s modernist paintings were exhibited at The Handcraft Gallery.

After having had a traditional training of art history, studying the old masters, and analyzing the “ciaro/obscuro” of Rembrandt and voluptuousness of Rubens, Ms. Taub broke the rules she had learned.

No more background, middle ground and foreground, no more shadows. Her paintings exude humor and freedom, as they seem to be a joyous and harmonious combination of color, shape, and composition.

The discipline of the basics-color, form, line, rhythm-are all uniquely reflected in her work, expressing happiness and harmony.

- The Business Link, Spain