The French artist Matisse, (1869-1954), is known for his use of glorious color in both his paintings and lithographs.However, this exhibit, according to the Art Museum of Chicago curators, focuses on “the time between his 1913 return from Morocco and his 1917 departure for Nice witnessed the production of the artist’s most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic works: paintings that are abstracted and rigorously purged of descriptive detail, geometric and sharply composed, and dominated by the colors black and gray.“
About 100 pieces will be included in:
“Matisse and the Methods of Modern Construction” * 3/20 – 6/6/10
The Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
The ClevelandMuseum presents over 100 pieces – paintings, wood work, drawings, ceramics – by French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin, 1848-1903, to track how he developed his style in the year 1889.
“The exhibition documents the development of familiar motifs—such as the mourning Eve, the woman in the waves, and fruit bearers—that would distinguish Gauguin’s work for the rest of his career.”
This event is also intended to “…re-create on a smaller scale the radical independent exhibition that Gauguin organized with his artistic disciples on the grounds of the 1889 Exhibition Universelle—a display of about 100 paintings now recognized as the first Symbolist exhibition in Paris. “
Italian Neorealist Director Roberto Rossellini, (1906-1977), made a series of films just after World War II labeled the “War Trilogy”. They have been issued as a DVD box set :
“Rome Open City, (1945)” “Paisan” (1946) and “Germany Year Zero” (1948)
Acclaimed by French directors François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, their articles appeared in the film magazine, “Cahiers du Cinema” declaring Rosselini “the father of the French New Wave”. His use of non-actors, his focus on little human interest stories and his use of the Italian street as back drop gave Rossellini ‘s films a grittiness and realism rarely seen in Europe before the war.
Until January 24th, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915” – an exhibition that includes “more than 100 masterpieces of American painting explores a major mode of artistic expression from the pre-Revolutionary era to the beginning of World War I: figural scenes of ordinary people engaged in life’s tasks and pleasures. In the exhibition’s first section (ca. 1765–1830), John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Samuel F. B. Morse and others produce evocative portraits that tell personal stories and reflect the shift from colonies to nation. The second section (ca. 1830–1860) includes multi-figured compositions by William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, Lilly Martin Spencer, and others that help to define national identity and national character. In the exhibition’s third section (ca. 1860–1876), Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Thomas Eakins, and others respond to the Civil War and, going forward, encode Reconstruction and the Centennial in pictures that contribute to healing the nation’s spirit. In the fourth and final section (ca. 1876–1915), Homer and Eakins are joined by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Sloan, George Bellows, and others who respond to new subjects and new expressive modes in an increasingly cosmopolitan age.”
Abstracts by the colorful Alejandro Santiago and other contemporary artists, such as Roldolfo Morales and Adan Paredes, are hung along side the work of established painters such as Diego Rivera as examples of the Bond Gallery’s varied collection of Latin art.
I spent some time at the Art Students League studying with Harvey Dinnerstein and admittedly imitated as I looked at some of the work done by very gifted students and being hard on myself for waiting so long to get back to painting. This morning for no apparent reason I recalled some of the conversation I had with Dinnerstein about my work and what he wanted me to see. This morning was my seeing what he was talking about. It’s going to be a great 2010!
