The Simone Gad Foundation

Foundation Fundraiser

The Simone Gad Foundation invites you to a fundraiser to help support its programs for artists. Join us for a fun night of nibbles, refreshments and exclusive access to art by Simone Gad and Foundation recipient Dena Novak. Saturday January 21st , 6-9pm at bG Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave Santa Monica CA 90404. A tax deductible $40 suggested donation will go towards supporting the foundation. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Simone Gad Foundation seeks to support artists with unique challenges to find footing in the art world and is proud to grant Dena Novak as its first recipient of the Exhibition Program. The Simone Gad Exhibition Program helps secure and support gallery exhibitions for artists.  An emphasis is placed on supporting creative practitioners who have been unfairly overlooked or who have experienced debilitating challenges or setbacks in their careers due to societal challenges, inherited legacies of generational trauma, and/or unexpected personal or financial crises. Recipients are currently selected based on board member nominations and chosen from the Residencies Program. Further information about the foundation can be found at the Exhibition Program Page .

Dena Novak Exhibition

The Simone Gad Foundation presents its first Exhibition Program recipient Dena Novak award to Dena Novak. We are pleased to announce a solo exhibition to this talented artist opening January 14th, 6-9pm at bG Gallery. Click here to go to exhibition page.

Fearlessly Weighted is the artist’s most recent, body of work,  presenting a found freedom that is both harmonious and unleashed. This series manifests in Dena’s work as an intuitive, ritualistic process meditating, dancing and of layering paint onto panels in thick strata that symbolically counteracts the thinning of her body’s connective tissue. 

In the 1980s, Novak was influenced by second-and third-wave feminism. In our tumultuous early 2020s, her work continues to critique ideas of “the feminine” and the subjectivity of beauty through an autobiographical lens that includes her chronic physical illness  she uses heavy impasto to work in deep layers.  These paintings challenge conceptions of beauty and investigate ideas of hope, fear, and transcendence through her experience of living with both Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and Autism.