Drawing 1·16·2010 #2, pencil on paper, January 2010
Still Life with Yellow Table Cloth, oil on canvas, unfinished as of February 21, 2010
About Carl Mehrbach
Carl Mehrbach is fast becoming one of the most important artists of the twenty-first century.Mehrbach began his formal art education at the Art Students’ League in May 1973. His teacher was Bruce Dorfman. Within three months Mr. Dorfman had recommended Mehrbach to the artist Seymour Leichman. For four years Mehrbach was Mr. Leichman’s apprentice.
In 1977 Mehrbach decided to expand his art education: he wanted to work with Philip Guston. Guston's new approach to representative painting fascinated Mehrbach, full, as it was, with gushy paint and cartoon-like, bigger than life figures. Guston was the instructor to the M.F.A. graduate students at Boston University. Mehrbach sent in his application. Guston personally selected him after seeing his slide portfolio. Mehrbach worked with Guston for two years and received his MFA in June of 1979.
For the next twenty-five years Mehrbach's artistic journey is mostly his fighting for individuality. He exhibited constantly, but just as constantly changed directions. For a while Mehrbach did large abstract painting whose forms were three-dimensional. These led to wall sculptures, and then around 1993 he turned back to representation.
Carl Mehrbach's first great achievement in his return to representation and figurative art was his design of a book of songs by his brother, Glenn, entitled Fragile Heart.
Since 1993 Mehrbach has been developing his art some would label "contemporary" and "representational." No name or label can explain the richness of Mehrbach's art. Vivid in contemporary references and personal mythology, Mehrbach's art stands by itself, without the need of verbal identification.