"Victor Elmaleh (Staempfli Gallery...): Shades of Paul Klee and Julius Bissier! the viewer might think on first glance at the dozen of tiny, abstract watercolors and collages with which Victor Elmaleh regales him. But on closer inspection, these minuscule renderings (actually, some achieve the size of, say, a page in a desk dictionary) have a lyrical presence very much their own. The imagery ranges from landscape - very unparticularized - to biomorphic abstraction to calligraphy, and the tones, applied with infinite delicacy, from the palest of washes to intense saturations. You never can tell what Mr. Elmaleh will do next - in a particularly lovely watercolor, he gives hints .... The more you look, the larger these works become."

From John Canaday on Victor Elmaleh:

".... Mr. Elmaleh may or may not work with indirect reference to nature in mind, but whether he does or doesn't, his watercolors are abstractions. They are also improvisations, and their greatest charm lies exactly there. They make us feel that we are watching while the artists exercises a lyrical sensitivity for his own pleasure.

Mr. Elmaleh has also been trying his hand lately at collage, a medium that allows for adjustments through trial and error, as opposed to watercolor, where a falso note once set down must remain false ....

The watercolors are miniature by definition .... But they are not miniature in the usual sense of miniature portraits .... Mr. Elmaleh's watercolors .... are open, flowing compositions, never seeming cramped within their acutely limited boundaries. Yet today, when inflated dimensions have become the rule in painting, it is difficult on first acquaintance to get past the point where we are conscious of the miniature scale Mr. Elmaleh has chosen .... The general public has fortunately been badly educated to accept a direct ratio between content and size.... It is up to the observer to adjust to Mr. Elmaleh's unfamiliar scale, rather than to the artist to compromise with our habits of seeing."