Wichita Art Museum Hosts Modernist Marsden Hartley

Thursday, 21 December 2006 13:05

WICHITA, KS - The Wichita Art Museum presents Marsden Hartley: American Modern February 11, 2007 through April 29, 2007.  This national-traveling exhibition features a distinctive display of works by Marsden Hartley, one of the most important artists from the American early modern period.  Organized by the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. The Wichita venue is made possible in part by the City of Wichita, Steve and Ann Starch, the Sam and Rie Bloomfield Foundation and KMUW, Wichita Public Radio.

Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes has called Hartley “the most brilliantly gifted of the early generation of American modernists.”  Hartley was a leading figure in the circle of artists and writers surrounding Alfred Stieglitz in the early decades of twentieth-century New York.  Arthur Dove, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Paul Strand were other artists of this circle and were Hartley’s peers.  Hartley’s vivid hues, muscular paint handling, and pioneering modernism led the Pulitzer-prizewinning novelist John Updike to praise Hartley’s “boldness, jubilance, freshness, and élan.”

Multiple books, exhibitions, and reviews devoted to the artist have been devoted to Hartley over the past twenty-five years.  Audiences now have the opportunity to get a comprehensive look at Hartley’s career and observe many of his strongest works, which were drawn from the artist’s own estate at the Weisman Art Museum.

“This retrospective exhibition presents superb examples of Hartley's work from each chapter of his career,” noted Patricia McDonnell, who originally curated the exhibition and authored the accompanying catalogue, which is available in the Museum Store for $27.95.  McDonnell was recently named the new director at the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University.  “As a committed Hartley scholar, it is rewarding to watch the increasing attention and praise this extraordinary artist attracts.”

Marsden Hartley: American Modern presents thirty-seven paintings and sixteen works on paper.  Early post-impressionist mountain scenes, pre-WWI abstractions completed in Paris and Berlin, Provincetown experiments, Maine and New Mexico landscapes, still-life paintings from the 1920s and 1930s, Bavarian mountain pastels, and primitive 1930s portraits are examples of works included in the exhibition. 

Painter, poet, and critic Marsden Hartley saw momentous political, social, and cultural changes during his lifetime (1877 – 1943).  Hartley’s attitudes and artistic approach also shifted throughout his career, though unfortunately he usually found himself relegated to the status of an outsider.  The exhibition catalogue, Marsden Hartley: American Modern, traces the evolution of this major modern painter.  In the catalogue, McDonnell analyzes Hartley’s shifting artistic practice and beliefs in the context of the cultural and political realities that deeply imposed themselves on the artist.

The Wichita Art Museum opened in 1935.  It is home to The Roland P. Murdock Collection, one of the premier collections of American Art in the country.  The Museum is proud to be supported through public and private funds, owned by the City of Wichita and managed by a private entity, Wichita Art Museum, Inc. Located at 1400 West Museum Boulevard...  Visit : www.wichitaartmuseum.org