New Mexico Museum of Art hosts American Impressionism ~ Paintings From The Phillips Collection |
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| Written by rubin |
| Saturday, 04 July 2009 03:34 |
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Santa Fe, NM - Works by Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, Augustus Vincent Tack, and John Henry Twachtman, are among other American Masters who compose some of this exhibition’s highlights. These artists’ works were among the earliest acquisitions of The Phillips Collection, established in 1921 as America's first museum of modern art. The exhibition opens at the New Mexico Museum and runs through September 13, 2009. This exhibition has been organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The artists represented in this exhibition were among the first generation of American painters to absorb the technique, brighter palette, and subject matter of impressionism from their French counterparts. These artists, considered rebellious in their time, painted atmospheric landscapes, park, and beach scenes, urban views, and charming interiors, with particular interest in optical effects, light, and the different seasons. American Impressionism was a painting style imported into this country after the 1880s by artists who studied in France and by American collectors who developed a taste for this new style of painting. American Impressionists tended to retain more academic influences such as structure and realism in their work than the French; however both favored bucolic outdoor scenes with light being the real subject matter. American Impressionists also differed from their French counterparts by imbuing their work with larger ideas related to the emotional and spiritual character of the landscape. The sixty-five works represented in this exhibition range from some of American Impressionism’s earliest practitioners such as George Inness in the late 1880s to the nearly the end of the movement with work by Robert Spencer in 1931 and from artists both better-known to those less so. A change in the times and the tastes of collectors may have marked the end of Impressionism as a formal movement in America, but its loose brushwork, two-dimensional surface painting defined by pattern and the treatment of paint, and its bright colors opened the doors to modern art.
The New Mexico Museum of Art was founded in 1917 as the Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico. Housed in a spectacular Pueblo Revival building designed by I. H. and William M. Rapp, it was based on their New Mexico building at the Panama-California Exposition (1915). The museum's architecture inaugurated what has come to be known as "Santa Fe Style." For nearly 100 years, the Museum has celebrated the diversity of the visual arts and the legacy of New Mexico as a cultural crossroads by collecting and exhibiting work by leading artists from New Mexico and elsewhere. This tradition continues today with a wide-array of exhibitions with work from the world’s leading artists. The New Mexico Museum of Art brings the art of New Mexico to the world and the art of the world to New Mexico. The New Mexico Museum of Art is a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. Information for the Public Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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