N.H. Pritchard: Boom!
12 June – 1 August 2025
Opening Thursday, 12 June, 6–8pm
Peter Freeman, Inc. is pleased to present N.H. Pritchard: Boom!, an exhibition of more than thirty collages,
concrete poems, and manuscript pages. Known for his radical use of space, rhythm, and non-lexical typography,
Pritchard made groundbreaking contributions to experimental and sound-based poetry. This is the first-ever
solo exhibition of Pritchard’s work.
Norman Henry Pritchard (b. 1939, Manhattan, New York; d. 1996, Pennsylvania) was one of the most formally
innovative poets of the 1960s and early 1970s. Affiliated with downtown literary and art circles, he was a
member of Umbra, a collective of Black writers and musicians on the Lower East Side, and a regular at
Greenwich Village’s Cedar Tavern. Pritchard published two collections of poetry in his lifetime (The Matrix,
Poems: 1960–1970, Doubleday, 1970, and Eecchhooeess, New York University Press, 1971), which were both
reissued in 2021 by Primary Information & Ugly Duckling Presse and DABA, respectively, and one
posthumous novel, The Mundus, released in 2024 by Primary Information. The 2022 Whitney Biennial
featured his works on paper, including hand-illustrated manuscript pages, several of which the museum
acquired.
Considering himself a mystic, Pritchard developed his own philosophy of “transrealism.” As he elaborated in
an unpublished video from 1981: “I feel there is one reality, and that reality is God; everything else is actual or
what I call transreal.” He manifested this concept in his work, denoting it visually as a circle, sphere, and the
symbol/letter “O.” This exhibition’s title, Boom!—a word the artist used frequently—combines two instances
of the letter “O” and an onomatopoeiaic reference to a large explosion with an ensuing silence, connoting a
destruction of conventional expectations surrounding poetry and visual art.
Pritchard studied art history at New York University and Columbia University, taught at the New School for
Social Research, and was a poet-in-residence at Friends Seminary, New York. His work was published
in Umbra, Liberator, The New Black Poetry, and The East Village Other, among other journals and periodicals.
He performed his poetry on the 1966 Powertree Records album Destinations and the 1967 Broadside Records
album New Jazz Poets compiled by Walter Lowenfels.
A series of programs, including poetry readings and musical performances, will take place during the exhibition.
For more information, please email info@peterfreemaninc.com.
For press and media requests, please contact Anna Lustberg: anna@peterfreemaninc.com.