Marie Wilson | A Poet of Forms and Colors

Gallery Wendi Norris

436 Jackson Street, San Francisco

Gallery Wendi Norris is proud to present its debut exhibition with Marie Wilson (1922, Cedarville, CA – 2017, Athens, Greece). The first major solo exhibition in San Francisco of her work since 1984—when Lawrence Ferlinghetti staged Apparitions: The Mythical World of Marie Wilson at City Lights Bookstore—A Poet of Forms and Colors spans five decades of Wilson’s career and reintroduces her revelatory and singular body of work.

Across sixteen paintings and seven works on paper, this exhibition traces the evolution of Wilson’s practice, from the hazy landscapes, cosmic imagery, and biomorphic forms of her early period to the meticulously executed symmetrical compositions that defined her mature work. Rooted equally in the cultural and spiritual milieu of Northern California and the Bay Area of her youth, and in the intellectual currents of European surrealism, which she experienced while living and working among the movement’s central figures, her practice explored new surrealist horizons and expanded the possibilities of modern art.

Wilson’s early works, dated 1952–54, reflect the avant-garde styles she encountered following her graduate studies in fine arts at the University of California, Berkeley. Entering the Bay Area’s vibrant postwar art scene under the guidance of Greek artist Jean Varda and British surrealist Gordon Onslow Ford, Wilson became part of the intellectual circle surrounding the influential Dynaton movement co-founded by Austrian surrealist and theorist Wolfgang Paalen. In such early works as Angel Stretching its Wing (1952–54), created after her move from California to Paris in 1952 with Paalen, she fused lyrical abstraction with biomorphic, mosaic-like forms, synthesizing the surrealists’ interests in automatism, occultism, and global spiritual traditions.

By 1954, Wilson began to develop what would become her signature style: meticulous, symmetrical compositions of striking complexity, clarity, and precision. Introduced by André Breton to the mediumistic practices of Fleury Joseph Crépin and Augustin Lesage, Wilson later recalled that these encounters “opened up a vision for me, and within a year or two my work became completely symmetrical.” In Pillar of the Central Void (1961–62), vividly rendered organic curves and geometric forms unfold across an axial structure charged with symbolic, spiritual, and mythic intensity. Almost totemic in structure, this work exemplifies Wilson’s exacting technique, confident and ritualistic style, and the profound resonance she achieved through symmetry.

The exhibition also features works on paper that further demonstrate the refinement of Wilson’s practice. Rising Fury (1980-81), a minutely crafted work of sgraffito, in which she scratched dense patterning into coated paper, stands as a powerful evocation of restrained energy and concentrated force.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by a description from Wilson’s husband and frequent collaborator, the celebrated Greek poet Nanos Valaoritis, who wrote that “Marie, by entangling lines and shapes in intermingling, intertwining wholes is a poet of forms and colors…”

On February 19 at 6 pm, the gallery will host a conversation with Marin Sarvé-Tarr, assistant curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA, and Zully Adler, Director of the Further Triennial, on Wilson’s art and the historical context of her practice. The exhibition also coincides with Gallery Wendi Norris’ debut presentation at FOG Design+Art Fair in San Francisco’s Fort Mason, on view January 21 - 25, 2026, which will feature a selection of Wilson’s work.

About Marie Wilson

Marie Wilson (1922, Cedarville, CA – 2017, Athens, Greece) emerged from her Northern California upbringing with a conviction that she had “been born an artist.” After studying art at Mills College, Oakland, and the University of California, Berkeley, she entered the Bay Area’s vibrant postwar avant-garde, guided by the Greek artist Jean Varda and British surrealist Gordon Onslow Ford, and was drawn into the intellectual circle of the influential Dynaton movement.

Her move to Paris in 1952 with Austrian surrealist and theorist Wolfgang Paalen marked a turning point. She worked with the leading figures of European surrealism, notably André Breton, the co-founder of the movement, who exhibited her alongside other surrealists’ works and included her in avant-garde journals and reviews. During this period she deepened her engagement with automatism, occultism, and global spiritual traditions. Early works from this period fused lyrical abstraction with biomorphic, mosaic-like forms, reflecting a synthesis of surrealist experimentation and her longstanding interest in Indigenous American, pre-Columbian, and other non-Western iconographies.

By the mid-1950s, Wilson had forged an unmistakable, signature style: symmetrical, meticulously rendered, spiritually charged compositions that she approached with intense concentration and an almost ritualistic method. Inspired by "outsider" visionaries such as Fleury Joseph Crépin and Augustin Lesage, she developed a deliberate form of automatism. Her work from this period and beyond, including collaborations with her husband, the poet Nanos Valaoritis, reveals a visual language that echoes Navajo sand paintings, Tibetan mandalas, and Pacific Northwest art—a confluence of the cosmic and the totemic. She once described her process as such:

“When I look at an empty canvas, I go to the center automatically. Usually, I start a little above center, and draw a dot or maybe a little shadow there—something. Then I put another bit to the right and to the left, and then above and then below. It’s like a cross. I work like that, as if I were making lace. I invent it as I go. I am not starting with an idea. I don’t know where or what I am going to do when I begin a drawing or a painting.”