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ADAA Art Show 2021: Hirschl & Adler Modern

Honoré Sharrer's Female Potency

Honoré Sharrer (1920-2009)

November 4 – 7, 2021

HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009), Nursery Rhyme, 1971. Oil on canvas, 49 x 89 in.

HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009)
Nursery Rhyme, 1971
Oil on canvas, 49 x 89 in.
Signed (on column capital, at upper left): Sharrer

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HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009), Roman Landscape, 1990. Oil on canvas, 20 x 17 in.

HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009)
Roman Landscape, 1990
Oil on canvas, 20 x 17 in.
Signed (at lower right): Sharrer

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a surrealist still life painting by Honore Sharrer of a white pail and kitchen implements

Honoré Sharrer (1920–2009)

Still Life with White Pail, about 1978

Oil in linen, 58 x 50 in.

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HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009)

HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009)
The Play, 1997
Oil on canvas, 18 x 19 in.
Signed (at upper right): Sharrer

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HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009), Spring and the Estes Brothers, 1986. Oil on canvas, 14 x 14 in.

HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009)
Spring and the Estes Brothers, 1986
Oil on canvas, 14 x 14 in.
Signed (at lower right): Sharrer

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HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009)

HONORÉ SHARRER (1920–2009)
Young Man Standing on the Fountain, 1988
Oil on canvas, 20 x 17 in.
Signed (at lower right): Sharrer

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Press Release

For 2021 edition of the ADAA The Art Show, Hirschl & Adler Modern is proud to present an exhibition of paintings by the socially-minded, Surrealist-tinged twentieth-century artist Honoré Sharrer (1920-2009). These highly refined paintings explore her use of the female figure to call out the hypocrisy of America’s patriarchal society.

In today’s politically tense, socially activated climate, fueled by revelations of corruption, sexual misbehavior, class inequality, simmering racism, and Church reckonings, Honoré Sharrer is having a moment. New York Times critic Jillian Steinhauer recently called Sharrer’s work “profoundly humanist and democratic” (June 6, 2019).

Dismissed at various times in her career as a “leftist,” a “housewife,” a “realist,” Sharrer is enjoying a reconsideration by artists, collectors, and curators alike. In just the past few years, the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Seattle Art Museum, Washington; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and others have delved into their collections and added examples of her work to their main galleries or themed exhibitions. Most notably, the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, staged Subversion and Surrealism in the Art of Honoré Sharrer in 2017, the first comprehensive retrospective of her work (it traveled to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts).

Our selection of oil paintings primarily from the 1980s and 90s, highlights the artist’s ongoing concern with the same gendered social injustice we are experiencing today. It is Sharrer’s women—her intelligent, unapologetic, attention-stealing women—that break the strained silence of conformity and complicity in our society. Cold War politics, sexism, and male hypocrisy seem no match for Sharrer’s pointed humanism and unsparing critique. Her paintings’ potency places Sharrer at the vanguard of artistic discourse to this day.

Hirschl & Adler Modern is proud to represent the Estate of Honoré Sharrer.

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