Blinky Palermo. (Preview).

MUSEU D'ART CONTEMPORANI

Was there ever a nom-de-whatever as seriously off as "Blinky Palermo"? Born Peter Schwarze, the German artist was rechristened by teacher Joseph Beuys because of his supposed resemblance to the fight-fixing goodfella who owned heavyweight Sonny Liston in the '60s. But Palermo the Younger's work is as subtle, nimble, even delicate as it comes: American critics have sometimes cast the artist, who died in 1977, at age thirty-four, as a Teutonic Tuttle. From the Stoffbilder, pictures fabricated from yards of store-bought cloth, to the late wall paintings (in which the "extended field of painting" embraces the architectural setting itself), guest curator Gloria Moure's 150-work retrospective will showcase an artist's artist who let abstract painting and freestanding object duke it out. Dec. 12-Feb. 16.