Pierre Menard Gallery is pleased to announce a special exhibition of drawings and a book signing by Leon Steinmetz.  “The Portrait: A Fantasy in Twenty-One Sheets” (exhibition and book title) presents an exciting and acclaimed new translation by Susanne Fusso of Gogol’s immortal short work, “The Portrait,” accompanied by Steinmetz’s lush and disturbing visual engagements.

In the way a reader immersed in a text will conceive mental images, the drawings of “The Portrait: A Fantasy in Twenty-One Sheets” initially appear as unfocused and ethereal. At their perimeter, the illustrations have an atmospheric haze, with their thin, driftless pen lines, but focusing toward the center where lines are applied more densely and rapidly to produce a tight web or skein of marks which materialize into environments, objects, and characters.  Steinmetz’s extraordinary skill as a draughtsman permits him to extract magnificent emotional range from what at first appears a chaotic tangle of lines.

Steinmetz’s work can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Fine Art, Boston, The Pushkin Museum, Moscow, and The Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, among many other public and private collections.

“The Portrait: A Fantasy in Twenty-One Sheets” is available in a Limited Edition of 600 copies at $150, and in a Collector’s Edition accompanied by a signed giclée print at $350. The books is a magnificently designed and beautifully effected work of the printer’s art. The original drawings for the book as well a number of drawings eventually omitted from the text will be on display and offered for sale during the exhibition.