Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce the exciting rediscovery of paintings on paper executed by playwright Clifford Odets. Odets's paintings are honest expressions by an extremely creative and sophisticated man and they candidly unveil his complex psyche and perceptions of the world. According to his son, Walt Whitman Odets, Clifford Odets painted at his desk, often at night when suffering from bouts of insomnia and procrastination. The exhibition title, In Hell + Why, is also the title of one particularly poignant and autobiographical self-portrait included in the exhibition.

Clifford Odets gained his status as a legendary cultural figure for his accomplishments as well as his tragic and tumultuous decline. In 1931 at the age of twenty-five, he was a founder of the Group Theater, New York. Awake and Sing (1933), Waiting for Lefty (1935), Paradise Lost (1936), and Golden Boy (1937) are among the plays he wrote. He spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in Hollywood writing screenplays, such as None But the Lonely Heart (1943). In 1947, Odets was named by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a Communist, and in 1952, he was questioned by the Committee. As a result, Odets was blacklisted and persecuted for his left-wing plays and in 1963, Odets died of cancer in Hollywood.