Why is Winslow Homer a household name in the USA? And what makes his art so important? Follow Homer’s journey, at a time of great upheaval in American history, from magazine illustrator to sought-after artist in oil and watercolour.
Winslow Homer: Force of Nature Ground Floor Galleries Until 8 January 2023
Milton Avery is considered one of North America’s greatest 20th-century painters. Milton Avery: American Colourist is the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in Europe.
It brings together a selection of around 70 of his most celebrated paintings featuring landscapes, portraits, scenes of city life and studies of the human form. Take a tour of the exhibition with curator Edith Devaney, advisor to the Milton Avery Trust Waqas Wajahat, and Avery’s grandson and artist Sean Cavanaugh.
Among the great innovators of contemporary painting, with a lifelong commitment to drawing and printmaking, Pat Steir first came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s for her iconographic canvases and immersive wall drawings.
Pat Steir, Dragon Tooth Waterfall, 1990 © Pat Steir
Pat Steir, Middle Lhamo Waterfall, 1992 © Pat Steir
By the late 1980s, her inventive approach to painting—the rigorous pouring technique seen in her Waterfall works, in which she harnessed the forces of gravity and gesture to achieve works of astonishing lyricism—attracted substantial critical acclaim. Informed by a deep engagement with art history and Eastern philosophy, and a passion for artistic advocacy in the both the visual and literary realms, Steir’s storied five-decade career continues to reach new heights through an intrepid commitment to material exploration and experimentation.
August 2–October 30, 2022, GETTY CENTER
American artist Cy Twombly’s engagement with the art and poetry of ancient Greece and Rome played a central role in his creative process. This exhibition explores Twombly’s lifelong fascination with the ancient Mediterranean world through evocative groupings of his paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture made from the mid-20th to the early 21st century, tracing an imaginative journey of encounters with and responses to ancient texts and artifacts. The presentation includes Greek and Roman antiquities from the artist’s personal collection, on public display for the first time.
Organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities
Major support from Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder
Generously sponsored by
Eric Zener – Rising – May 5 – 28, 2022
Gallery Henoch is pleased to present Rising, an exhibition of new paintings and resins by Eric Zener, which will run May 5 – 28, 2022.
Zener appropriates the natural world to portray moments of personal decision and change. “He uses vast expanses of water and sprawling forests as signifiers of this realm of forces greater than ourselves. In his canvases we find divers suspended midair or swimmers plunging into deep blue water. Each of these subjects are consumed by their activity, and we can savor this state of immersion vicariously through Zener’s work,” observes Peter Brock in the exhibition brochure.
The artist reveals little about the individuals appearing in his paintings: their faces are turned away or obscured. With the focus shifted away from their identity, we are encouraged to consider our relationship to their experience.
While many of the paintings depict figures situated in water, a number of them explore the mysteries of nature devoid of human presence. In these the viewer is introduced to a world characterized by densely forested views or disturbed water. In these works, Zener finds a “connection to an ephemeral experience” that transcends the personal.
Eric Zener lives and works in the Bay Area and has been exhibited in the United States and internationally for over 25 years.
Join Stephanie Herdrich, Associate Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, and Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge—both of the American Wing—for a virtual tour of “Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents.” This ambitious survey reconsiders Homer’s work through the lens of conflict, a theme that crosses his prolific career.
A persistent fascination with struggle permeates his art—from emblematic images of the Civil War and Reconstruction that examine the effects of the conflict on the landscape, soldiers, and formerly enslaved to dramatic scenes of rescue and hunting as well as monumental seascapes and dazzling tropical works painted throughout the Atlantic world.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Homer’s iconic “The Gulf Stream” (The Met), a painting that reveals his lifelong engagement with charged subjects of race and the environment. Featuring 88 oils and watercolors, “Crosscurrents” represents the largest critical overview of Homer’s art and life in more than a quarter of a century.
“In many ways, why we paint is more important than what or how we paint. What we create is more than just something we do, it expresses who we are. My work is a study in contrasts: light and dark, vertical and horizontal, warm and cool, the real and the imagined, and elements of the past, present, and future. I design with conflicting elements – allowing them to find balance and resolution on the surface of the paper in surprising and expressive ways, trying never to paint just what I look at, but rather how it is I see; how I react to the world I see around me and within. The results are reflections of my attempt at becoming more fully present in the process.“
Thomas W. Schaller is an award-winning artist, architect, and author based in Los Angeles. As a renowned architectural artist, he received a Graham Foundation Grant and was a two-time recipient of the Hugh Ferriss Memorial Prize. He has authored three books; the best-selling, and AIA award winner, Architecture in Watercolor (VNR – McGraw Hill) The Art of Architectural Drawing (J.Wiley and Sons), and Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light : Watercolor Paintings by a Master – a retrospective of his recent artwork released by North Light Books / F+W Media and now Penguin / Random House, NYC in 2018.
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