From February 8 through 28 at the Soho Gallery.

Although he was born in Montevideo in 1977, the rich colors and strident strokes in the paintings of Fabian Mowszowicz, who has exhibited widely from Argentina to Milan, call to mind the group of British painters, prominent in the 1950s, known as the "Kitchen Sink School" Led by John Bratby, they were known for their two-fisted approach to portraiture, as well as for everyday subjects and scenes. Like these artists, Mowszowicz is a bold talent, with equal ability in still lifes, cityscapes, and figurative subjects.

The emphasis is on the latter in Mowszowicz's solo exhibition "Visages of Life" at Agora Gallery, 415 West Broadway, in Soho, from February 8 through 28, with a reception on February 9, from 6 to 8 PM. His faces have the immediacy of mug shots; indeed they suggest a veritable rogue's gallery of varied character types when viewed as a group.

Few painters today concentrate as intensely on the human visage as Mowszowicz does here, capturing his subjects with bold yet descriptive strokes of color in a style that goes beyond simply seeking a likeness. For what this artist endeavors to give us is a picture of the inner person. In this regard, Mowszowicz makes one think of Giacometti, although their styles are very different, for the sense of struggle to trap a soul in pigment that his paintings project.

Whether these portraits are from life, memory, or imagination seems altogether beside the point. We see them as the cast of an ongoing human drama to which the painter is an attentive and especially perceptive spectator. One man wears a rumpled hat and a shaggy mustache and gazes out at the viewer with an intensity that recalls some of Van Gogh's most striking self-portraits. Another sports a somewhat more natty black fedora and black coat. He has a long pale face and a spectral presence that reminds one of the late Beat generation novelist William Burroughs. Yet another, laid down more roughly, has a haunted look, with the eyes of a trapped animal.

Face after face confronts one, evoking a sense of the variousness of the human character and condition as vivid and immediate as one might get from strolling through the throngs of Times Square or Grand Central Station at rush hour, coming into contact with the good, the bad, and the ugly. While most of the faces that the artist paints are males, and show few signs of beauty in any conventional sense, there is no moral judgment implicit in these portrayals.
The artist seems to accept all aspects of human strength or folly with equanimity, as if to make clear that all are worthy of his brush. He views people with sympathy and brings them alive with strokes of color that are vigorous and swift. His palette, although not naturalistic, is perfectly attuned to his subjects. His colors are the ones that emotions suggest, rather than merely optically accurate imitations of reality. And while some faces are delineated in a fair amount of detail, others are broadly brushed, creating an expressionistic effect. The one constant in the work of Fabian Mowszowicz is its depth and presence. Face to face with his paintings, one is aware of being in the presence of a major painter.