Eric Sutphin reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Lee Lozano: c. 1962 at KARMA, New York.

Sutphin writes: “The recent exhibition at Karma offered an important and illuminating look at Lozano’s rarely seen early work, from around 1962 … The paintings here (all untitled) can be read as studies made on the path toward her mature work: fighter planes, vampiric mouths, phalluses, and body parts foreshadow the violent, brash utility that would soon explode in the ‘Tools.’ … Masters of anxiety like James Ensor and Philip Guston are summoned forth in the toothy grins, grotesque faces, skulls, and cartoonish, anthropomorphized objects that populate much of the works on view.”