Exhibition Opening Reception:
Date: Sunday, February 14, 2010
Time: 2:00 p.m.

Place: The Gaelen Gallery West
Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus
901 Route 10, Whippany, N.J.

Early in February, members of the MetroWest community will have a unique opportunity — the opportunity to attend one of the most significant art exhibitions to appear in the New York area in many years, an exhibition of art that is not only of great artistic importance but of enormous historical interest, as well.

Beginning on February 8, the Gaelen Gallery West, located on the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, will present the exhibition “Normandy Beach.” Sponsored by The Holocaust Council of MetroWest, a division of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, “Normandy Beach” will present a selection of art created by Ugo Giannini (1919 – 1993), a group of works that will include drawings made by Giannini shortly after his participation in the landing on the Normandy coast during D-Day.

Giannini’s drawings provide a unique and indispensable glimpse of what the soldiers experienced on Omaha Beach, on the fateful date of June 6, 1944. They are the only drawings done on D-Day that are known to still be in existence.

Adding to the evocative power of this unique set of drawings is the implicit evocative power of the artist who made them. Ugo Giannini returned from the war to pursue an artistic career by which he demonstrated himself to be one of the most imaginative and powerful abstract painters of the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, it is his realistic, and deeply human, works, created on the day that was the turning point of World War II, that are his most enduring and most moving contributions to the history of art.

An opening reception for “Normandy Beach” will take place on Sunday, February 14, at 2 p.m. The keynote speaker will be Maxine Yellin Giannini, the artist’s widow. She is the editor of the forthcoming book H-Hour, which presents letters, the drawings, and the late war paintings of Ugo Giannini. She will provide insight into her husband’s work and a brief history of the Normandy Invasion. There is no charge for this event and all are welcome. Light refreshments will be served.

In addition to drawings made on D-Day, the exhibition will include several of Giannini’s post-war paintings as well as a variety of World War II artifacts.

Ugo Giannini was born in Newark and studied at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts. World War II interrupted his art studies. On D-Day, when Giannini landed on Omaha Beach there were approximately 37 men in his platoon: they were decimated in the first 10 minutes. Only six of the men reached the beach. Told that he was needed on the bluff above, he climbed up, jumped into a crater made by naval bombardment, and spent that day and part of the next as an eyewitness to the invasion. Giannini’s drawings capture the terror, courage, and bravery of his fellow soldiers.

Giannini served until the end of the war and, when he returned from Europe, continued his studies at the Art Students League in New York. In1949, at age 30, he decided to return to Europe to study in Paris with Fernand Léger. He returned to America in 1950, married Maxine Yellin in 1955, and obtained a teaching position at Caldwell College. He did not talk about the war until shortly before his death, and it was only after his death that Maxine discovered the drawings made on D-Day and letters he wrote about the experience.

Struck by the beautiful prose of his letters and the historic importance of the drawings, Maxine began to organize exhibitions of the drawings. “Normandy Beach” is one exhibition in that series, and one of the rare opportunities to see these works of such power and such incalculable importance.

The exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the Darivoff Family Foundation. The Gaelen Gallery West is located at 901 Route 10, Whippany and is open Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays, from 9 a.m. to noon.

“Normandy Beach” will remain on display until March 5, 2010.

For more information, please call (973) 929-3194 or visit www.ujcnj.org/normandy.