Kirkland Museum in Denver Highlights The Modernist Clashes of the 1940's

Written by Kent Marlborough Friday, 10 June 2011 23:53

Denver, CO.- The Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art in Denver presents "15 Colorado Artists: Breaking With tradition" on view until July 31st. Original artwork of the founding members of this modernist group, some from their first exhibit launched in December of 1948, will be on view. Never-before-seen vintage photos of the artists and reproductions of the newspapers where much of the modernist debate in Denver was hashed out will also be displayed. Those who led the modernist charge in 1948 (and who are featured in the exhibition) include  Don Allen, John Billmyer, Marion Buchan, Mina Conant, Eo Kirchner, Moritz Krieg, Duard Marshall, Louise Ronnebeck, William Sanderson, Paul K. Smith, J. Richard Sorby, Frank Vavra and Vance Kirkland, in whose former home the Kirkland Museum is based. Curators Hugh Grant and Deborah Wadsworth will publish articles in a book that will accompany the exhibition.

It is difficult now to imagine the controversy that modern art generated in the first half of the twentieth century, but to many it was almost the end of the world, and it was creeping ever closer to them. An alarm was sounded by Rocky Mountain News columnist Lee Casey on 11 February 1948:  “The influence of decadent Parisians…Pablo Picasso and Paul Cezanne…has even been felt in the West. Santa Fe has been damaged by it and Denver has not wholly escaped the blight….In Western art, Western literature and bourbon, I’ll take mine straight.” Denver newspaper articles trumpeted the conflict between "conservative" and "radical" artists. The debate climaxed in 1948 with the break from the 20-year-old Denver Artists Guild. A group of rebels joined with colleagues to form a modernist group called 15 Colorado Artists. The departure and formation of the 15 Colorado Artists was led by a cadre of professors at the University of Denver who believed that the boundaries of art must be explored and that the DAG was too provincial for their taste. Debates in meetings and in the newspapers had people lining up on both sides of the fence. Were they radicals? Or, were the artists that broke from the DAG riding the modernist wave that had already been sweeping the country? This exhibition gives the public the chance to decide for themselves.

The Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art in Denver has a nationally important display of international decorative art. More than 3,300 works are on view of Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, Glasgow Style, Wiener Werkstätte, De Stijl, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Modern and Pop Art. This collection concentrates on a period from the 1860s to about 1980. A major survey of regional art, with a focus on Colorado art, is documented. More than 700 works by about 170 artists are displayed at any one time. The regional art collection has an emphasis from 1820 to about 1980. The museum also shows a retrospective of Colorado's distinguished painter, Vance Kirkland (1904-1981). Kirkland Museum is a member of the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kirklandmuseum.org

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