Ricco/Maresca Gallery presents Henry Darger: Landscapes. This exhibition brings together highly celebrated landscapes by the self-taught artist Henry Darger (1892-1973). Darger's sumptuous and detailed landscapes are extensively varied - from bucolic and peaceful to dark and foreboding. When Henry Darger’s work is viewed from this singular vantage, new aesthetic, conceptual, and technical discoveries surface from the vast depths of the artist's complex and mysterious oeuvre. A devout Roman Catholic, Henry Darger worked as a janitor in Catholic hospitals by day and gave expression to his private, imaginary world by night from his small rented room on Chicago’s north side. Over a 54 year period, he created his magnum opus, a more than 15,000-page illustrated saga, The Story of the Vivian Girls in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal or the Glandelinian War Storm or the Glandico-Abbienian Wars as Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion,(commonly referred to as In the Realms of the Unreal). The 13 volume manuscript is reenacted in nearly 300 watercolors and collages depicting the "adventures" of the seven innocent Vivian Girls as they lead the rebellion against the evil, child-enslaving, adult Glandelinians. Henry Darger: Landscapes will be on view until February 2, 2013 at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor NYC.
