​Exhibition Review: “Beate Wheeler’s Abstract Rhythms: 1960s on Tenth Street” at Elizabeth Moss Galleries, Falmouth, Maine (on view through August 9, 2025)

Installation view of Beate Wheeler's Abstract Rhythms: 1960s on 10th Street at Elizabeth Moss Galleries, Falmouth, Maine.

By LIAM OTERO July 1, 2025

Exhibition Link

For the last decade, museums & galleries all over have been making a more concerted effort in shining a light on overlooked female artists associated with the widely influential Abstract Expressionists, from Joan ​Mitchell at Cheim & Reid in 2018 to Miriam Beerman at Monmouth University in 2022. Beate Wheeler (German-American, 1932 - 2017) can now be added to this growing roster thanks to Elizabeth Moss Galleries in Falmouth, Maine. For those unfamiliar with Wheeler, Abstract Rhythms is the perfect introduction to her paintings as the exhibition contains a selection of her work from​ the 1960s to the 1990s - the most pivotal and active periods of her life. ​This is the first time in which her works of the 1960s are exhibited in tandem with her later paintings. 

Beate Wheeler was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1932, but her life in the country was ​b​rief as her family evacuated in ​1938 ​following the rise of Adolf Hitler. ​From 1938 to 1945, Wheeler attended Manumit School, a progressive Christian boarding school in Upstate New York where she studied art which led to her pursuing a BFA at Syracuse University in 1954. Wasting no time, Wheeler relocated to the West Coast and enrolled in UC Berkeley for an MFA shortly thereafter. It was during her advanced studies that she became acquainted with Milton Resnick (Ukrainian-American, 1917 - 2004), one of her art instructors who left a lasting impression on the young Wheeler with his stringent pedagogy on the language of abstraction. It is likely the kinship that developed between them could also be inspired by their shared backgrounds as refugees as Resnick, too, was born into a Jewish family in a largely anti-Jewish environment before immigrating to the United States from Russia at a young age.

Beate Wheeler (German-American, 1932 - 2017), Untitled, 1960s, oil on canvas. 36 x 40 in. 91.4 x 101.6 cm

After she acquired her MFA, Wheeler resettled once more to New York's East Village alongside Resnick and sculptor Mark di Suvero where they established March Gallery on 10th St. by 3rd and 4th avenues. March Gallery was among a coterie of artist-run galleries, collectively referred to as the 10th Street Galleries, that operated in Downtown Manhattan as a counter​front to the more conservative and established art galleries in Midtown (in many ways, this was the mid-20th Century equivalent to the reactionary Salon des Refusés​ in 1860s Paris).

Beate Wheeler (German-American, 1932 - 2017), Untitled, 1969, oil on canvas. 26 x 22 in. 66 x 55.9 cm

Moss Galleries bookends the start of the Abstract Rhythms exhibition with paintings from the 1960s completed during or around the time that Wheeler's distinctive style formulated concurrent with her activities in the 10th Street scene. Three Untitled paintings from different points in that decade each resemble a lush, minutely detailed garden scene abounding with blossoming flowers and other exuberant plant life. Yet, a closer viewing will reveal that these images are masterful compositions evincing an alluring balance between color, light, and form. And with that careful balance comes an equally astute command of the brush, for her 1960s canvases are teeming with hundreds upon hundreds (possibly even thousands) of brushstrokes. An awe-inspiring example of where a painting becomes a labor of love with the amount of attention Wheeler gave to the surface! 

Beate Wheeler (German-American, 1932 - 2017), Untitled, 1970s, oil on canvas. 34 x 24 in. 86.4 x 61 cm

After looking through these earlier works, Wheeler's paintings of the 1970s signify that change was afoot in her stylistic direction. An Untitled vertical canvas wields a vibrant yet bolder color scheme with its thrumming pinkish reds, deep blues, and mossy greens that are rendered in a more eccentric, free-form style of laces, curlicues, and tether-like shapes. Yet, the evocations of gardens persist with the looseness and asymmetry of strokes and natural colors Wheeler employed. Another Untitled from that decade vies for a bright but not so coloristically mixed composition in which traces of yellow and gold are submerged in a sea of white and grey. Whether you stand back or stop and take a closer look, this subject naturally comes across as a field of blooming dandelions. 

Beate Wheeler (German-American, 1932 - 2017), Untitled, 1970s, oil on canvas. 50 x 50 in. 127 x 127 cm

​These visual approaches that Wheeler utilized in the 1970s seemed to carry over into the 1980s with the sole representative work from that decade on view. However, the final decade in this exhibition - the 1990s - could very well be described as an evolutionary moment as this is when Wheeler's strokes grew larger and more feathery. Wheeler's 1998 Untitled painting is a heavenly fusion of aubergine, ocean blue, off-yellow, creamy white, and more isolated pockets of orange and red. The colors move in graceful directions of quiet immersiveness. Though the strokes are very feathery in appearance, Wheeler's colors blend into each other in ways that are redolent of clouds layering over one another or merging into new forms before the gorgeous backdrop of a radiant sky. 

Beate Wheeler (German-American, 1932 - 2017), Untitled, 1998, oil on canvas. 14 x 14 in. 35.6 x 35.6 cm

The title of the exhibition is quite an interesting choice considering most of the paintings date from after the 1960s. However, it seems that the “1960s on 10th Street” is being used here almost as a thesis statement suggestive of Wheeler’s work in that decade ultimately being a catalyst or foreshadowing of the stylistic shifts she pursued for the rest of the late-20th Century. It really is a logical move considering the tightly-bound fields of color created in her 30s slowly but surely morph into wider plains of tonal admixtures, variegated brushstrokes, and fluid patterns as Wheeler’s career unfolds. It is as much a painterly metaphor for the transition from a choreographed, man-made garden to the total embrace of unconstrained, wild, flourishing natural garden. 

​The white walls of Moss Galleries help to reinforce the colorful elegance and luminous richness for each of the 12 paintings on view, which allows one to maintain the utmost diligent and focused looking of Wheeler's breathtaking work! 

Installation view of Beate Wheeler's Abstract Rhythms: 1960s on 10th Street at Elizabeth Moss Galleries, Falmouth, Maine.