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[[left margin]] Art [[?]] [[/left margin]]

March 1941

Still's Legerdermain
The name is Clyfford Still, not John Wellington Wells, but, like the streamlined sorcerer of Gilbert & Sullivan, he too "deals in black magic and spells." At least his paintings, in a one-man show at the Betty Parsons Gallery through April 26, do this. Harking from Vancouver, it may be that he has taken his cue from the Northwest Indians, who were, themselves, no mean purveyors of legerdermain. As paintings, Still's canvases aren't so good technically, being merely jagged patterns in three or four more or less flat colors, particularly browns and blacks. But they evoke curious and foreboding feelings of mysticism which are intriguing and a little frightening. To heighten the mystery, they have no titles.
- A. L.

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Art News, April 1947

Clifford Still (Parsons) a young artist who has lived and studied in the Northwest, except for six months under Vytlacil at the Art Students League, and who has taught art at Spokane University, recently had his second New York one man show. He states he is preoccupied with the theme of the figure in landscape, with overtones of man's struggle against and fusing with nature. But, considering his extremely abstract style, this symbolism seems somewhat far fetched. Brown, fragmented verticals stand against somber, monochrome backgrounds. Imposed on this scheme are touches and lines of intense warm colors. Technically Still seems yet to be unsure of himself - his surfaces are often unpleasantly greasy or chalky, and the heavy palette knife effects are, at times, awkward. But these faults are more than balanced by his original and sincere approach. $250-$1,200.

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Clyfford Still [Parsons] of San Francisco paints a world that is powerful and dense, where death and life themselves merge. The work entering farthest into the area of the subjective is the large gray Number 2, where a granite ghost seems laid open on the canvas surface, stripped of all meaning except that given by the deftly handled areas of color. Still uses mainly black, red, yellow, blue and white in their rawest forms, with occasional browns and ochers. The paintings are enormous and roughly handled with palette-knifed shapes that are strangely sensitive and often a long, irritating red gash, like a dagger, shrieks forth. $800. 
R.G.

Art News, Summer 1950

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seriously.
Rather more startling, on the whole, are the untitled paintings by Clyfford Still at the Betty Parsons Gallery. Still, we are told, seeks to capture the spirit of the Dakota prairies, the grimness of existence, the emanations of great space. These big emotional paintings are almost nonobjective, although Indian motifs and the suggestion of natural objects are occasionally to be discerned. As with most nonobjective work, the emotion to be communicated to the observer is somewhat inexact, to

DEVREE

say the least; but the type of emotion behind these highly [[personal?]] expressions comes through—obscurely but with impact. Grimness, sparseness, melancholy are in them.

Others One by One

The Palestinian painter Rubin, whose recent work is at the Lil-

Transcription Notes:
-four clippings on page, indicated by position -words on the bottom of the top left clipping are cut out -the word that begins in "person-" is blocked by something and cannot be read (in the bottom right clipping)