At age 19, Charles Seliger received his first solo show at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery The Art of This Century in 1945, and was one of the youngest artists associated with the emergence of Abstract Expressionism. However, unlike most painters in this nascent movement, he never worked on a large scale, nor did he become a gestural or geometric painter. Devoted to nature and Surrealist automatism, he remained a maverick. That independence explains why he is seldom included in surveys of Abstract Expressionism, especially if they focus on stylistic similarities.

In 2010, the year after Seliger died, his then-dealer Michael Rosenfeld presented Charles Seliger: A Memorial Exhibition. Since then, his work has largely flown under the radar. Charles Seliger: The Structure of Matter, A Centennial Exhibition at Hollis Taggart brings overdue attention to this wonderful artist, who saw beauty in the invisible structures and patterns governing the visual world.

The show includes over two dozen works dated between 1944 and 1993, the largest of which measures 34 by 24 inches. The title of the earliest work, “Interior Space” (1944), clues us into the artist’s preoccupations. He was fascinated by the beauty, intricacy, and evolution of cellular structures, and how they connected humans to other forms of life. He was driven by curiosity and wonderment, and by the way paint could make the invisible visible. For that, he did not need to work large.