Saul Chase
Birth Date: 1945

Artist Gallery
Saul Chase graduated from City College of New York and received his MFA from City University of New York. His interest in drawing and painting as a boy growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s was intensified by his fascination with the endless play of light and shadow on the structures that surrounded him. The West Bronx landscape with its juxtaposed elements proved a universe of urban odds and ends and hidden elements for subjects. Chase taught classes in oil and watercolor painting at the City College of New York. He also taught art to under privileged adolescents in the South Bronx. Chase is a realist with predilection for geometric abstraction; Chase works loosely from photographs, but dissects and reconstructs the buildings, store fronts, streets, bridges and skies captured by his camera. His urban landscapes are devoid of people and action and possess a precise linearity and atmospheric clarity that derive from the rectilinear planes and surface of his subjects. As an early inhabitant of Soho, arriving in the 1970s, Chase soon felt a romantic affection for the bleak isolation of this yet to be discovered decaying factory district. It was the perfect setting for any artist, but it didn’t last long. By the late 1970s, the desolate, roughhewn enclave had evolved overnight into a chic and expensive place to live, shop, eat and be seen. This change, along with a growing desire to escape the New York Art Scene made departure inevitable. After selling his Green Street loft in 1981, Chase moved with his wife and children to a secluded hilltop home and studio north of the city.