Displaying items by tag: charles sheeler

Modern Dialect: American Paintings from the John and Susan Horseman Collection, a striking new exhibition, opened at the Columbus Museum of Art June 6. The exhibition, on view through August 31, showcases American Modernist paintings from the 1920s to the beginning of World War II, a period marked by significant change and compounded by the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The more than sixty artists featured in Modern Dialect hail from all parts of the United States, and painted wherever they found inspiration. These artists adhere to a common interest, more than to a single style, in portraying their realities in a decidedly modern fashion. The exhibition reveals the scope of the American modernist aesthetic in the early 20th century, and the vision and integrity each artist brought to the representation of the American experience – from rural landscapes to modern industrial cities (and the people who inhabit them) to purely abstracted compositions.

The Currier Museum of Art announced the acquisition of an important late oil painting by American John Marin (1870-1953). Movement in Red (1946) reveals Marin’s bold technique, which conveys a dynamic vision of boats sailing off the coast of Cape Split, Maine. It is on view in the Currier’s Modern Gallery.

“The Currier has a long tradition of thoughtfully acquiring important works of art that support our collection,” said Susan Strickler, Currier CEO and director. “Marin’s stunning painting joins major paintings in the Museum’s collection by his contemporaries Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and Charles Sheeler. They offer our community an exceptional view of one of America’s most important and innovative artists of the first half of the 20th century.”

On Saturday, July 27, 2013 the Springfield Museum of Art in Springfield, MO will reunite two portraits that have been separated for 100 year. The paintings of Lewis Allen Dickens Crenshaw and his wife, Fanny Smith Crenshaw, are by the lauded 19^th century Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham.

Bingham, a pioneer of the Luminist style, painted the portraits late in his life. Mrs. Crenshaw’s portrait has been in the museum’s collection since 1990 after being donated by the couple’s late daughter. Mr. Crenshaw’s portrait remains in the family and is on loan to the museum through Rachael Cozad Fine Art, a Kansas City-based gallery.

The Crenshaws portraits will be hung side by side as part of a permanent “exhibition” highlighting the Springfield Museum’s collection. Other featured artists include Grant Wood, Charles Sheeler and Thomas Hart Benton.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on August 17, 2013. The exhibition will draw from MoMA’s extensive collection of American art made between 1915 and 1950. Using some of the finest paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures from the period, American Modern will illustrate the evolution of society and culture during the first half of the 20^th century.

Subjects explored in the exhibition will include urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still lifes and portraiture. Works by modern art masters such as George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz and Andrew Wyeth will be arranged thematically.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will be on view at MoMA through January 26, 2014.

The 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, referred to today as the Armory Show, was one of the most influential art events to take place during the 20^th century. The show, which was held in New York City’s 69^th Regiment Armory, introduced the American public to experimental European art movements including Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism. While realistic movements dominated the country’s art scene, works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) left the Armory Show’s American visitors awestruck.

On February 17, 2013, 100 years after the Armory Show took place, the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey presented The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913. The exhibition does more than just celebrate the significant art event; it commends the American artists who presented two-thirds of the nearly 1,200 works on view. While European art was a hugely important part of the Armory Show, The New Spirit aims to disprove the notion that the American art featured at the show was largely provincial.        

The New Spirit brings together 40 diverse works of American modern art including realist works from the Ashcan School as well as more experimental pieces executed by the painters associated with the influential photographer and art dealer, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). The Montclair exhibition presents works by well-known artists such as Edward Hopper (1882-1967), William Glackens (1870-1938), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), Robert Henri (1865-1929), and John Marin (1870-1953) alongside works by lesser-known artists including Manierre Dawson (1887-1969), Kathleen McEnery (1885-1971), and E. Ambrose Webster (1869-1935). The exhibition will also feature works by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Matisse to illustrate the influence of European modern art on its American counterpart.

The New Spirit will be on view through June 16, 2013.  

Suspended Forms: American Modernism 1908-1928 opened yesterday, January 31, 2013 at Driscoll Babcock Galleries in New York and will run through February 16, 2013. The exhibition focuses on American modern art’s earlier phase and includes paintings and drawings by modern masters such as Alfred Maurer (1868-1932), Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), and Joseph Stella (1877-1946).

Suspended Forms will be held at Driscoll Babcock’s relatively new location in Chelsea. Founded 160 years ago, Driscoll Babcock Galleries moved from its former Fifth Avenue location to Chelsea in September 2012.

100 years after the seminal Armory Show in New York City, The Heckscher Museum of Art presents Modernizing America: Artists of the Armory Show. On view through April 14, 2013, the exhibition features works from the museum’s permanent collection and explores the show that changed the country’s perception of modern art.

Organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the Armory Show, officially titled the International Exhibition of Modern Art, took place at the 69^th Regiment Armory and introduced radical works of art to the public; a far cry from the realistic art they were accustomed to. Artists, critics, and patrons were presented with European works that boasted avant-garde sensibilities and spanned genres like Futurism, Cubism, and Fauvism. The show transformed the landscape of modern art and inspired an unmatched growth and progression in American art.

Works on view include paintings by Marguerite Zorach (1877-1968) and Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952); works on paper by Joseph Stella (1877-1946), Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938), and Charles Sheeler (1883-1965); and sculptures by artists such as Walter Kuhn (1877-1949).

The Heckscher Museum of Art was founded in 1920 by August Heckscher in Huntington, New York. The museum boasts over 2,000 works and focuses mainly on American landscape paintings as well as American and European modernism and photography.

When the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened its doors for the first time in Bentonville, Arkansas on November 11, 2011, the institution presented about 450 works of art, nearly half of its entire holdings. A little over a year later, the Crystal Bridges’ collection has ballooned and now includes over 2,000 artworks thanks to an active acquisition program led by Executive Director Don Bacigalupi, museum curators, and a solid leadership board. Within the past year, the Crystal Bridges Museum has acquired five sculptures, eight paintings, one mixed media work, 468 prints, and 504 works on paper, including photographs, drawings, and watercolors.

Museum officials were particularly excited to acquire a large painting by Abstract Expressionist artist, Mark Rothko, titled No. 210/No.2011 (Orange) (1960) and held an official unveiling back in October. The piece, which has only been exhibited twice in public, is currently part of the museum’s temporary exhibition, See the Light: The Luminist Tradition in American Art. After the show closes in late January, the Rothko work will be moved to the museum’s Twentieth-Century Art Gallery.

Other major acquisition include a portrait by American folk artist Ammi Phillips (1788-1865), titled Woman in Black Ruffled Dress (circa 1835); a neoclassical white marble sculpture completed in 1867 by William Wetmore Story (1819-1895); a contemporary mixed-media work from the early 1980s by Californian artist Miriam Schapiro (b. 1923); and a large painting titled Tobacco Sorters (1942-44) by the twentieth-century American artist, Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), which was commissioned by the American Tobacco Company.

A private collector who specialized in early twentieth-century works facilitated the major growth in the museum’s print department. The recent acquisitions vary in style from Benton’s Regionalism to Charles Sheeler’s (1883-1965) Precisionism and include drypoints, etchings, engravings, lithographs, screenprints, woodcuts, and wood engravings. A selection of recently acquired prints will be part of the temporary exhibition Art Under Pressure: Early Twentieth Century American Prints, which will be on view from December 21 through April 22, 2013.

After twenty-two years, Nicholas Capasso will be leaving his post at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA. Capasso, who is currently the deCordova’s deputy director for Curatorial Affairs, has been named the new director of the Fitchburg Art Museum and will start his latest venture on December 3.

During his time at the deCordova, Capasso has overseen a permanent collection that included 3,500 objects, changing gallery exhibitions, and an outdoor sculpture park. He helped to bring recognition to the institution and to reposition it as an important contemporary museum.

While Capasso specializes in contemporary art, he is eager to work with the Fitchburg Art Museum’s collection that spans more than 5,000 years and includes American and European paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics, decorative arts, and Greek, Roman, Asian, and pre-Columbian antiquities. The Museum’s collection, which is housed between twelve galleries, includes works by William Zorach, John Singleton Copley, Joseph Stella, Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield, Charles Sheeler, Walker Evans, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Capasso will take over the role of director from the soon-to-be-retired Peter Timms who has held the position since 1973.