Victor Pesce: Blue Angel, 1994, oil on linen, 24 by 18 inches. Courtesy Elizabeth Harris.
This concise and compelling survey covers three decades of work by Victor Pesce, a New York painter who died in 2010. Early on, his totally abstract works revealed the influence of Milton Resnick, his teacher, but after his first solo show at Fashion Moda in the Bronx in 1982, Pesce settled into his signature style. He favored a modest scale and a limited range of subjects and motifs, using dense layering and unexpected color combinations to transform his humble subjects into intense and haunting compositions.