Displaying items by tag: printmaker

Revered as the “Dean of American Craftsmen,” Wharton Harris Esherick played a pivotal role in establishing the American Studio Furniture Movement. A visionary in the truest sense, Esherick was the first craftsman to approach furniture as sculpture -- a notion that influenced an entire generation of designer-craftsmen, including Arthur Espenet Carpenter, Sam Maloof, and Wendell Castle (read more about Wendell Castle and his latest work).

A trained painter and printmaker, Esherick’s fascination with wood began in 1920, when he started carving designs on the frames for his paintings. Soon, he was carving woodcuts and crafting sinuous organic sculptures, furniture, and architectural interiors...

Continue reading this article about Wharton Harris Esherick at Moderne Gallery on InCollect.com.

On Friday, February 6, 2015, the Blanton Museum of Art announced that it will acquire and construct Ellsworth Kelly’s only building. Kelly, an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with Color Field painting, hard-edge painting, and Minimalism, conceived the stand-alone structure in 1986 for a private collector. At the age of 91, he is finally seeing the project come to fruition.

Austin, a 73-by-60-foot stone building, will be constructed on the museum’s grounds at the University of Texas at Austin. The structure will feature luminous colored glass windows, a totemic wood sculpture, and fourteen black-and-white stone panels in marble -- all designed by the artist.  Kelly has gifted the Blanton the design concept for the work, including the building, the totem sculpture, the interior panels, and the glass windows. Once it is complete, Austin will become part of the museum’s permanent collection. The Blanton has launched a campaign to raise $15 million to realize the project and has received commitments totaling $7 million.

The cramped space in which the artist and poet William Blake produced some of the greatest prints in the history of art will be recreated for an exhibition next month at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

The house, the magnificently named 13 Hercules Buildings, in Lambeth, south London, was demolished in 1918. But the floor plans, made for a Victorian survey of the estate, were recently discovered in the Guildhall library by print-maker and guest curator Michael Phillips.

Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1933), a pioneer of American abstract art, will receive a National Medal of Arts from President Obama July 10, 2013 at the White House. The National Medal is the highest honor given to artists and art patrons by the U.S. government.

Kelly, a painter, sculptor and printmaker, began developing his unique approach to minimalism, color field painting and hard-edge painting in the 1950s. By the end of the decade, he had established himself as an important figure in the art world and three of his pieces were selected for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s seminal exhibition Young America 1957. Since setting himself apart from his peers thanks to his innovative style, Kelly has been lauded for his ability to pull abstract form, contour and color contrast from perceived reality.

Kelly, who turned 90 this year, is currently the subject of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series, which is on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York through September 8, 2013.

Dürer, Rembrandt & Whistler: Prints from the Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly is now on view at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. The exhibition is comprised of one of the finest local collections of Old Master prints, which was assembled by Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly. Kelly, who had primarily collected American 20^th century prints and prints by John James Audubon (1785-1851) in the past, began collecting Old Master works in recent years.

Kelly’s collection includes rare etching, woodcuts and engravings by German printmaker Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528); nearly 30 works by Rembrandt (1606-1669); sheets by Canaletto (1697-1768); and several sheets by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya (1746-1828). The collection is rounded out by a group of etched cityscapes and figure studies by James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903).

 Dürer, Rembrandt & Whistler: Prints from the Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly will be on view at the Bruce Museum through August 18, 2013. A scholarly catalogue and educational programs complement it.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the birth of the Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch (1863-1944) with an exhibition of over 20 works from its collection. Edvard Munch: A 150^th Anniversary Tribute presents prints and drawings by the artist including Geschrei (The Scream) (1895), The Madonna (1895), and Two Women on the Shore (1898).

Best known for his seminal painting The Scream (1893), Munch is revered for his visceral works that expertly capture the human condition. In addition to his emotionally raw paintings, Munch also created tender depictions of women, children, and lovers.

The National Gallery has organized three major exhibitions of Munch’s work in recent decades with the last taking place in 2010. Curated by Andrew Robison, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery, Edvard Munch: A 150^th Anniversary Tribute will be on view at the museum through July 28, 2013.

On June 15, 2013 the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA will present the exhibition Jamie Wyeth, Rockwell Kent and Monhegan. Located off of the coast of Maine, Monhegan has been a popular destination for artists looking to capture its rugged wilderness, sweeping ocean views, and enduring inhabitants.

The Brandywine River Museum’s exhibition will focus on the works of Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), a contemporary realist painter who favors figurative compositions over landscapes, and Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), a realist painter, printmaker, and illustrator who often drew inspiration from the natural world and man’s relationship with its almighty forces. While Wyeth and Kent never met, their works are inextricably linked thanks to Monhegan’s evocative nature. Together, their works tell the story of the island and its people, which spans a century.

Highlights from the exhibition include Wyeth’s most recent paintings of Monhegan as well as a number of Kent’s coastal landscapes from Wyeth’s personal collection. Jamie Wyeth, Rockwell Kent and Monhegan, which was organized by Maine’s Farnsworth Museum, will be on view through November 17, 2013.

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 Norwegian officials announced that the country’s government would help fund a new museum devoted to the influential painter and printmaker Edvard Munch (1863-1944). The new institution will replace the current Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, which was built after World War II in a notoriously rundown neighborhood. Many believe that the shoddily constructed museum does not do justice to Munch, his art or his legacy.

The city council has been discussing the creation of a new museum since 2008 but plans were stymied by disagreements over cost, location, and architecture. After years of disputes and little progress, the Norwegian state decided to step in by offering to help fund the $278 million project as well as assist with project management. State officials are asking Oslo’s city council to make a formal request for the support, which would hopefully lift the museum out of its dismal financial situation.

Upon his death in 1944, Munch bequeathed a large portion of his collection to the city of Oslo including two versions of his seminal painting The Scream. While many people hope that the government’s offer will help move the museum project along, others are not as optimistic. Carl Ivar Hagen, a member of the city council, doesn’t expect the matter to be resolved anytime soon. Hagen believes that even with the state’s assistance disputes over the new museum’s location will continue to halt progress.

An Edward Hopper (1882-1967) retrospective, which was on view from October 10, 2012 to February 3, 2013 at the Grand Palais in Paris, welcomed a surprising number of visitors during its run. A total of 784,269 patrons visited the exhibition in less than four months, surpassing a blockbuster exhibition featuring the work of long-time Paris resident Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), which ran from 2008-2009 at the same French institution.  

To accommodate the high number of visitors, the museum stayed opened around the clock during the show’s final weekend. 48,000 people visited the Grand Palais to catch a final glimpse of the Hopper show, including Jill Biden, the wife of US Vice President, Joe Biden.

The exhibition’s popularity came as somewhat of a surprise to museum officials as the American realist painter and printmaker has never drawn such a crowd in the United States. While he came close, Hopper was unable to surpass the popularity of the 2010-2011 Claude Monet (1840-1926) retrospective, which saw 913,064 visitors.

Hopper, who didn’t sell his first painting until he was 40, has grown considerably in popularity since his death at 85. Wildly successful exhibitions in Madrid, London, Milan, and Rome, which took place before Hopper’s show at the Grand Palais are a testament to the artist’s continued relevance.

Ellsworth Kelly: Colored Paper Images is currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through December 1, 2013. Kelly (b. 1923), a painter, printmaker, and sculptor, is best known for his hard-edge and Color Field paintings as well as for his involvement in the minimalist movement.

The exhibition at the National Gallery features a series of paper-pulp works that were first unveiled in 1977. The 23 works, which are drawn from the museum’s collection, feature erratic edges and irregular textures, a departure from Kelly’s previous works, which are comprised of sharp angles and precise curves. Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art said, “Kelly has long been recognized for his mastery of form and color, but even to those who know his work well, these Colored Paper Images will come as a revelation.”

A pioneering force in postwar abstraction, Kelly created his colored paper images by placing molds on single sheets of paper and filling them with colored and pressed paper pulp. Once the pulp settled, the molds were removed and the sheet along with the colored pulp was run through a printing press, fusing the damp paper layers together. Multiple impressions were made of each image.

The National Gallery of Art has a longstanding relationship with Kelly, which began in 1975 when the institution acquired its first work by the artist. The Gallery now owns over 200 pieces by Kelly including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints.