Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. ​​Los Tres Grandes: Obras de Rivera, Siqueiros y Orozcois

 The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio is offering a rare opportunity to see nearly all of the prints in its Permanent Collection by los tres grandes or “the three greats” of Mexican modernism–Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. ​​Los Tres Grandes: Obras de Rivera, Siqueiros y Orozcois on view in the Frost Galleries through January 3, 2021.

Mexico has the longest printmaking tradition in all the Americas—dating back to 1539. Spurred by the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the golden age of printmaking began in the 1920s and lasted through the 1940s. The great influence of the revolution reveals itself in the prints on view, ranging from Rivera’s heroic depiction of Emiliano Zapata, to Siqueiros’s exploration of sculpture in his large-scale lithographs, to Orozco’s condemnation of war. Through their monumental mural cycles, these three artists became the first Mexican artists to achieve worldwide fame.

A selection of artworks in the exhibition by the next generation of Mexican printmakers—the artists who founded the collaborative print workshop El Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) in 1937—illustrate the lasting influence of los tres grandes and include masterful lithographs and linocuts by Jesus Escobedo, Leopoldo Mendez, and Francisco Mora. Like “the three greats,” these artists continued to explore the history and aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.

“The McNay has one of the strongest collections of Mexican modernist prints in the world,” said Lyle W. Williams, Curator of Collections. “The Collection dates back to the late 1920s, when our founder Marion Koogler McNay purchased Diego Rivera’s painting, Delfina Flores.”

The museum’s commitment to Mexican art deepened over the last 66 years through a number of acquisitions, including a highly important group of prints produced at TGP in Mexico City, and the acquisition of duplicate prints by los tres grandes from the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2000.

Los Tres Grandes: Obras de Rivera, Siqueiros y Orozco is organized for the McNay Art Museum by Lyle W. Williams, Curator of Collections.

José Clemente Orozco. Mexican, 1883 - 1949. Rear Guard, 1929. Lithograph. McNay Museum purchase with funds from the Cullen Foundation, the Friends of the McNay, Charles Butt, Margaret Pace Willson, and Jane and Arthur Stieren

McNay Art Museum

Diego Rivera, Mexican, 1886 - 1957, Sleep, 1932. Lithograph. McNay Museum purchase with funds from the Cullen Foundation, the Friends of the McNay, Charles Butt, Margaret Pace Willson, and Jane and Arthur Stieren. © Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

McNay Art Museum

David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican, 1896 - 1974, Portrait of William Spratling, Taxco 1939. Lithograph. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry C. Burkhalter 1962.10

McNay Art Museum

Reckoning with “The Incident”: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural.

  

John Wilson, Compositional study for The Incident, 1952. Opaque and transparent watercolor, ink, and graphite, squared for transfer. Yale University Art Gallery, Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund. © Estate of John Wilson

John Wilson, Negro Woman, study for The Incident, 1952. Oil on Masonite. Clark Atlanta University Art Collection, Atlanta Annuals. © Estate of John Wilson. Courtesy Clark Atlanta University Art Collection

On September 25, the Yale University Art Gallery opened to visitors for the first time in nearly seven months with new covid-19 safety measures in place.

“Our world has transformed in ways we never could have imagined since the Gallery closed in March. Now, more than ever, cultural institutions strive to be a place for communities to listen, learn, and grow amid rapidly changing current events,” said Stephanie Wiles, the Henry J. Heinz II Director, Yale University Art Gallery.

Three timely exhibitions have been extended through Sunday, February 28, 2021, including Reckoning with “The Incident”: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural.

In 1952, while studying at La Esmeralda, the national school of art in Mexico City, African American artist John Wilson (1922–2015) painted The Incident, a fresco mural of a racial terror lynching at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Executed on an exterior wall at street level, the mural was intended to be temporary, but its commanding composition prompted renowned Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros—who was then the head of Mexico’s department for the protection and restoration of murals—to advocate for its preservation. Though the mural itself is no longer extant, Reckoning with “The Incident”: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural brings together nearly all of the known preparatory sketches and painted studies for the fresco, as well as related drawings and prints, from the collections of the Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Iowa, the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and select private lenders.

Albrecht Dürer: The Age of Reformation and Renaissance

 

he Frist Art Museum presents Albrecht Dürer: The Age of Reformation and Renaissance, an exhibition featuring one hundred engravings, etchings, and woodcuts by the brilliant and versatile German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum, the exhibition will be on view in the Frist’s Upper-Level Galleries from November 6, 2020, through February 7, 2021. Dürer is celebrated as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance and one of the finest printmakers of all time. This exhibition spans nearly his entire career, from his early works as an independent master through the end of his life. It highlights the major themes of his art, such as the Apocalypse and the Passion, and his interest in nature, linear perspective, and ideal human proportions. Dürer lived in the prosperous city of Nuremberg during the advent of the Protestant Reformation, and the exhibition explores how the religious turmoil affected both the artist and his art. “Already by the time he was thirty years old, Dürer had become the most famous artist in Europe, which is especially notable because he was a contemporary of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael,” says Frist Art Museum curator Trinita Kennedy. He achieved fame primarily with his prints, which were reproduced in multiples and sold widely. “Inexpensive, portable, and mass produced, prints were a new medium of communication and an accessible art form that aided the spread of information and knowledge during the Renaissance, much like the internet in our own times,” says Kennedy. “By using his ADmonogram as a means of declaring the authorship of images, Dürer is also a key figure in the development of modern ideas of authorship and copyright.”

Organized chronologically, the exhibition begins with an overview of Dürer’s training and early travels and then focuses on the opening of his workshop, his major works, and his later travels to Italy and the Netherlands. The exhibition concludes with a study of Dürer’s last decade and legacy.  The exhibition includes prints from five major devotional books by Dürer: the Apocalypse, the Large Passion, the Life of the Virgin, the Small Passion, and the Engraved Passion. It also features Dürer’s greatest Renaissance nudes— Nemesis (The Great Fortune)  Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). Adam and Eve, 1504. Engraving, platemark: 9 5/8 x 7 1/2 in. Cincinnati Art Museum, Bequest of Herbert Greer French, 1943.193 and Adam and Eve— plus outstanding exemplars of all three Master Engravings:  Knight, Death, and the Devil;  Melencolia I;  and St. Jerome in His Study. To provide historical context, works by Dürer’s predecessors, contemporaries, and followers are also on view, as well as maps and a timeline. A video produced by the Frist Art Museum with local artists explains the three most important printmaking techniques used by Dürer: engraving, etching, and woodcut. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). The Four Horsemen for the Apocalypse, 1497–98. Woodcut (proof before text), image:  15 3/8 x11 1/8 in. Cincinnati Art Museum, Bequest of Herbert  Greer French, 1943.212

Book: Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch

A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans

Walker Evans (1903–75) was a great American artist photographing people and places in the United States in unforgettable ways. He is known for his work for the Farm Security Administration, addressing the Great Depression, but what he actually saw was the diversity of people and the damage of the long Civil War. 

In Walker Evans, renowned art historian Svetlana Alpers explores how Evans made his distinctive photographs. Delving into a lavish selection of Evans’s work, Alpers uncovers rich parallels between his creative approach and those of numerous literary and cultural figures, locating Evans within the wide context of a truly international circle.

Alpers demonstrates that Evans’s practice relied on his camera choices and willingness to edit multiple versions of a shot, as well as his keen eye and his distant straight-on view of visual objects. Illustrating the vital role of Evans’s dual love of text and images, Alpers places his writings in conversation with his photographs. She brings his techniques into dialogue with the work of a global cast of important artists—from Flaubert and Baudelaire to Elizabeth Bishop and William Faulkner—underscoring how Evans’s travels abroad in such places as France and Cuba, along with his expansive literary and artistic tastes, informed his quintessentially American photographic style.

A magisterial account of a great twentieth-century artist, Walker Evans urges us to look anew at the act of seeing the world—to reconsider how Evans saw his subjects, how he saw his photographs, and how we can see his images as if for the first time.

American Art at Swann - Sept 17: Childe Hassam, Grandma Moses, Guy Wiggins & More

Swann Galleries will open the fall 2020 auction season with a sale of American Art on September 17. The sale encompasses the visions of Impressionism, Regionalism and early Modernism, with seaside portraits showcasing various coastal destinations featuring prominently throughout the sale.

A top highlight of the auction is a work by Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses. Completed at 101 years of age, Happy Days is a 1961 oil-on-masonite painting depicting a typical scene of Moses’s, a rural family working happily on their farm. The work is set to come across the block estimated at $50,000 to $80,000. The painting, with exhibition and publication history, last appeared on the market more than 40 years ago.

Works from the nineteenth century include a run of circa-1880 coastal scenes by Alfred Thompson Bricher with the oil-on-canvas works Low Tide, South Head, Grand Manan Island ($20,000-30,000), and Schooner off the Coast, Bishop’s Rock, Grand Manon Island ($15,000-20,000), as well as the watercolor A Coastal Scene($2,000-3,000). Also of note are still life scenes with fruit, including an 1850s oil-on-wood panel by Severin Roesen ($15,000-20,000), and a circa-1860 oil by William Mason Brown.

            Impressionist scenes lead the sale with coastal watercolors by Childe Hassam: A Shady Spot (Appledore, Isle of Shoals), 1892 ($80,000-120,000), and Sailboat off the Coast, Isle of Shoals, 1894 ($30,000-50,000). Also depicting the Isle of Shoals is John Appleton Brown’s circa-1890 color pastel Celia Thaxter’s Garden and View of the Sea, Isle of Shoals ($7,000-10,000). Further Impressionist works of note include Alice Mary (Beach) Winter’s circa-1915 oil-on-canvas View of Gloucester ($5,000-8,000), Edward Potthast’s oil-on-canvas New England Harbor Scene, circa 1900–10 ($5,000-8,000), and a small run of works by Gertrude Fiske including the oil board Boston Waterfront, circa 1919–22 ($2,000-3,000).

            Marsden Hartley’s 1922–23 color crayon and pastel drawing Seated Male Nude stands out in an offering of early Modernism ($30,000-50,000). Charles Burchfield is present with Untitled (Harmony in Nature) gouache over pencil, circa 1915–16 ($7,000-10,000), and Frozen House in Winter, watercolor and gouache, circa 1918 ($10,000-15,000). Joseph Stella’s oil-on-canvas Still Life with Chrysanthemums and Goldfish, circa 1911–12 makes an appearance ($12,000-18,000). Additional highlights include works by Walt Kuhn and Jerome Myers.

            Scenes of New York City throughout the seasons include Guy Wiggins’s circa-1940 oil-on-canvas Snow Scene, depicting a busy winter day as people make their way to their destinations in a snowstorm ($20,000-30,000). Reginald Marsh’s circa-1930 oil-on-canvas Manhattan, Waterfront, which depicts the Manhattan skyline on a clear day ($15,000-20,000), and John Marin’s 1953 watercolor View of Central Park, New York, showing a loose rendering of the park’s trees and the city skyline ($15,000-20,000), are also available.