New paintings by Swedish artist Madeleine Hatz will be on view in the artist's third solo exhibition at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery. Madeleine Hatz's paintings are highly textured abstractions with sweeping gestures and colors reminiscent of the Scandinavian landscape and weather. The artist has a home in Sweden and exhibits often in Europe, in addition to having a studio in Brooklyn, NY.

Madeleine Hatz's inspiration is fourfold: the American abstract expressionist tradition, European Baroque painting, Chinese art and her Swedish heritage. The title of this exhibition, "Songs of the Naked Trees" refers to a group of poems composed in the early twentieth century by Swedish poet Sigfried Siwertz. Many of Madeleine Hatz's titles - "Melancholia", "Black Angel", "Tales from a Mountain", "Tales from the Underground" - bring to mind the beauty and hardships of northern regions. Her titles also describe her sense of space - of huge vaulted ceilings and limitless skies.

In writing about Madeleine Hatz's paintings, the art critic Barry Schwabsky has said "When the color is pitched high and light, it's hard not to think of the elaborate skies with which Rococo painters joyfully filled their canvases...but when it deepens and darkens, as it more often tends to do, then the feeling becomes stormier, more nocturnal and romantic"*

Madeleine Hatz's work represents a tour de force in the medium of oil paint. The artist has never abandoned her interest in keeping alive this very European tradition. She works on stretched canvases whose textures range from fine linen to the coarsest burlap. Madeleine Hatz applies the paint by soaking, flinging and creating huge sweeps with large brushes and painting knives. Her work explores the rich contrasts between "fat" (thick layers of oils and varnishes) and "lean" (layers thinned by solvents).

As well as exhibiting in numerous solo exhibitions, Madeleine Hatz has participated in many symposia both here and abroad. Important group exhibitions include the inaugural exhibit for the reopening of the P.S.I. Center for Contemporary Art in New York City, "Unprivileged Spaces", at the Boras Museum in Sweden, "After the Fall - Aspects of Abstract Painting" at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor, NY, "Public Interests Project: Brokkenland ", Leeuwarden, Netherlands, and "Here comes the Bogey Man", Chelsea Art Museum, New York.

*Madeleine Hatz, "Painting and Situations", essay by Barry Schwabsky, published by the Embassy of Sweden, 1998.