Jamie Chase, “Sasha Reading”
Our annual solo show for Santa Fe abstract figurative painter, Jamie Chase opens Friday, July 27, with an artist’s reception from 5-7pm at the gallery. The show runs from July 27th through August 9th.
Above is “Sasha Reading”, one of the new paintings that will be in the show.You can follow this link for a sneak preview of more of Jamie’s work that will be included in the exhibition.
Kate Rivers with guests at the Variations opening
*Click here to read our first blog about Variations*
Our opening for Kate Rivers’ “Variations” show was about to start, and Linda was giving everything a final look before the guests arrived. She wiped down the glass on “Cleopatra” one last time, but nothing could have prepared us for the long procession of noses that would soon hover inches from the art. When you look at Kate’s intricate mixed media works, you tend to lean in closer and closer…
Kate Rivers, Western Union (detail)
Kate and her daughter Katie arrived to a round of applause from all of us, and Katie started browsing almost immediately. I sidled up next to her as she pored over “Western Union”, a collage with everything from telegrams to . Kate incorporates letters, tickets, maps, books and other materials that she collects from her own life, estate sales, thrift stores and anywhere else.
“Does she ever use things from your life?” I asked Katie.
“Sometimes, but it looks like she pulled from other places for this one,” she said. “I thought she might have used some of my old stuff when I saw the children’s drawings.”
Kate Rivers, We Are Gods (detail)
Two rooms over, I greeted our artist Jamie Chase and we worked our way through “We Are Gods”, an abstracted landscape made from book covers, book pages and old handwritten notes. We discovered a little to-do list smack in the center of the composition. The last item read “1 qt. very old scotch”.
“It’s written with a different pencil,” Jamie said. “Maybe they added that at the end of a tough day.”
Kate Rivers, Glory (Homage to O’Keeffe)
On another wall, two visitors were searching for books that they’d read in “Glory (Homage to O’Keeffe)”.
“Oh! That’s one of my favorite books!” said the lady, pointing to John Grisham’s “The Client”. “I read that when we were here last year.”
“Do you think you could ever do that to your books?” I asked.
“Absolutely not!” the gentleman said, which sparked a conversation on the book as a sacred object. Why do we keep so many books on our shelves if we hardly read them any more? Are we losing something precious by living our lives in the digital world? Those are two of the artist’s central questions.
Kate Rivers, Reflections (detail)
As the evening wound down, I returned to the front room and found a visitor standing transfixed before “Reflections”.
“I was just passing by, but these things pulled me in,” she said. “They’re so detailed. How does she do it?” We looked over at Kate who was chatting and laughing with some guests nearby.
“I don’t know, it’s magic!” I said.
Come see “Variations” now through June 27, and when you’re viewing the works, don’t be afraid to smudge the glass!
Click here to see more art by Kate Rivers, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for updates on her latest work.
The world’s oldest auction house opened in Stockholm, Sweden in 1674. Art auctions in Great Britain gained popularity a few decades later when the Earl of Oxford’s collection appeared on the block in 1742. That particular sale featured the full range of odd and valuable items you might find in a dusty old castle, from a bust of an unknown bishop (five shillings) to a series of van Dyck paintings (165 guineas).
The beat of the auction mallet has marked the rhythm of the secondary market ever since. It’s a tradition that’s full of strange pageantry and heart pumping excitement. Auction kingpins Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which were both founded in mid-18th century England, often draw the ire of art world players for their tightly controlled sales. “They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are,” wrote art critic Jerry Saltz in 2012 after a version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream sold at Sotheby’s for $119.5 million. “In a gallery, works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them.”
Online auctions have meanwhile been swiftly democratizing the centuries-old process, and that’s where the Matthews Gallery decided to jump in. We launched the EUROPEAN MASTERS, AMERICAN AND SOUTHWESTERN ART AUCTION on July 25 and it runs through July 29. Come browse our virtual auktionsverk of art and, if you’re inspired, make a bid. You’ll find art by European modernists such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, Southwestern legends including Emil Bisttram and Alfred Morang, and notable contemporary artists like Jamie Chase, Eric G. Thompson and Kate Rivers among the lots. Here are some notable pieces from the catalogue:
EUROPEAN MASTERS
Click to view slideshow.Click to see the works on our auction site:
HISTORIC SOUTHWESTERN ART
Click to view slideshow.Click to see the works on our auction site:
CONTEMPORARY ART
Click to view slideshow.See more lots from the auction here, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for auction updates all week!
The front door of Jamie Chase’s house opens to his studio, a sprawling room that’s furnished with a squashy couch, a drum set and an easel. Leaning near the door is a small painting that looks familiar. It’s one of Jamie’s old figurative works, but the woman on the canvas is partially buried under a fresh nebula of white paint.
“Much to the chagrin of anyone who tries to keep track of my inventory, when I get pieces back in my studio I’ll paint over them,” Jamie says. “Until a painting leaves my house for good, it’s not safe.”
This fearless impulse to destroy and reinvent his images is Jamie’s creative engine, but the process isn’t one of chaos so much as measured evolution. For his new show, opening Friday at the Matthews Gallery, the artist painted landscapes for the first time in nearly three decades. His challenge was to tie the new work to the visual language of his figurative paintings, and the solution was as simple and elegant as tilting his head.
“It’s kind of circular in a way, because when I was a kid my grandmother took me to a private teacher to study landscape painting,” Jamie says. The artist grew up near Sacramento in the 1950s and 60s, painting in a style that had its heyday nearly 200 years before. “I thought I was going to be an illustrator in the style of N.C. Wyeth,” he says.
Jamie’s artistic identity crisis came during two short stints in art school in San Francisco, when he saw other students with illustration skills switching to conceptual and abstract art. He was already feeling unglued from the romanticism of the classical landscape, but he wasn’t sure how to portray the modern world without getting too cerebral or losing a sense of spirituality.
A trip through Europe sent Jamie’s head spinning in many different directions, but he was still painting in the style of N.C. Wyeth when he landed in Santa Fe in the 1980s. It was here that he started seeking a balance between his illustration skills and his new knowledge of modernism.
“I thought, if I can bring all of my understandings of art aesthetics… into some weird handwriting of my own then that’s my purpose,” Jamie says. A seed of the artist’s new direction had taken root back in California, when he fell in the love with the work of Nathan Oliveira. Jamie rid his canvases of landscapes altogether and started painting abstracted figures immersed in glowing color fields.
In his studio, Jamie’s figures hover on the walls all around him, many of them only partially finished. When he’s working on a canvas, he’ll paint the figure in detail and then cover it with broader strokes, pulling the image in and out of focus using dozens of layers of paint. The artist is keenly aware of the challenges he faces when painting the female nude—of balancing sexuality and sensuality, of capturing the humanity and spirituality of his abstracted beings in an authentic way.
“Part of why I moved in this direction was to get rid of all the particulars, like the ethnicity, the fashion of the day or the context of the environment,” Jamie says. “I try to get rid of all the trappings that go with the specific moment in time and find something more infinite. I want it to seem more like a human being and not a human doing.”
When he started painting landscapes again for the new show, Jamie had to fight the impulse to place figures within them. Working through this temptation forced him to connect the two bodies of work in an innovative way.
“The thought was that I could turn my figures sideways and make them landscapes so that people would still say, ‘Oh, that’s how Jamie Chase would paint a landscape,’” he says. “Landscapes are highly erotic. You could hide all kinds of subliminal things in there that are all organic and figure-based, but it’s also a landscape so it gives you the safety of thinking, ‘Oh, I’m just appreciating nature.’”
This realization helped Jamie take the new landscapes—even ones based on famous places, like Abiquiu’s Pedernal mesa—to the transcendent realm he’d created for his figures. Painting the new works became a familiar process of adding and removing details, taking the paintings from depictions of real places to abstract color fields and back again.
“There are so many narratives underneath the final painting,” Jamie says. “It starts out as something really dark or really dramatic in contrasty colors, and by the end it’s almost neutral colors, but there’s something moving under the surface.”
If you attend Friday’s opening, keep in mind that those stories could be but a sideways glance away.
Join Jamie at the artist reception for “Figurative and Landscapes” on Friday, August 30 from 5-7 pm, and see the show at the Matthews Gallery from August 30 to September 12. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more information.
Our European, American and Southwestern Art Auction just started on Artfact.com, and it features a particularly vibrant line-up of lots. The charming image above is a color lithograph from turn of the century France by Camille Boutet. It shows three children peering longingly into a confectioner’s shop, and would make a lovely holiday gift. The best part? Bidding starts at $50. Read about more of our offerings below, and make sure to bid before the auction ends on November 17.
Lot 41: Frank Morbillo- Arched Axe
Starting bid: $350
Estimated value: $450-$900
“Arched Axe” is from Frank Morbillo’s sculpture series inspired by the simple, elegant lines of prehistoric hand tools. Several other glass and bronze works from the set appear in the sale, including “Ceremonial Serpent Axe“, which features an intricate floral motif, and the swanlike “Honing Axe“.
Lot 59: Bertram Hartman (1882-1996)- Still Life
Starting bid: $250
Estimated value: $350-$750
Bertram Hartman (1882-1960) was born in Kansas and received training at the Art Institute of Chicago. He continued his studies at the Royal Academy in Munich and Paris, drawing inspiration from Impressionism and other modernist movements. His European influences are clear in this impeccable impasto still life.
Lot 70: Jamie Chase- Bather by the Sea
Starting bid: $400
Estimated price: $600-$900
Jamie Chase’s well-known figurative work and his latest experiments with landscape painting combine in “Bather by the Sea“. An abstracted nude stands on the shore, and the surrounding landscape seems to radiate her serene mood. Jamie’s “Seen” and “Iconic II” are also up for sale in the auction.
Lot 86: Ernest Blumenschein (1874-1960)- Loading
Starting bid: $700
Estimated price: $2,000-$3,500
Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-1960) was a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, and is known for his stunning portrayals of the Southwestern landscape and people. In “Loading” the artist pays homage to his home state of Ohio. A lone figure smokes a cigarette and watches the activity at the Conneaut Mill across the tracks.
Lot 91: William Lumpkins (1909-2000)- The Red Sky
Starting bid: $400
Estimated price: $600-$1,000
Lot 97: William Lumpkins (1909-2000)- Pink Handle
Starting bid: $400
Estimated price: $600-$1,000
“The Red Sky” and “Pink Handle” are from a series of never-before-seen artworks by legendary Santa Fe modernist William Lumpkins (1909-2002). The work was recently released from the collection of a Lumpkins family member, and also features a series of serigraphs.
Lot 102: Eli Levin- Kachina (after Louie Ewing)
Starting bid: $175
Estimated value: $400-$600
Contemporary Southwestern painter and printmaker Eli Levin pays tribute to legendary Santa Fe printmaker Louie Ewing (1908-1983) in this silkscreen of a Pueblo kachina doll. In the 1930s, Ewing received a grant from the WPA’s Federal Art Project to pursue printmaking, and is largely responsible for the enduring popularity of printmaking among contemporary Southwestern artists.
Lot 106: Bettina Steinke (1913-1999)- Santa Clara Dancer
Starting bid: $50
Estimated value: $400-$500
Bettina Steinke (1913-1999) moved to Taos in the 1950s, where she opened a gallery with her husband and mentored young artists. She moved to Santa Fe in the 1970s. The artist was known for her vivid portraits of the Pueblo people, and was particularly interested in traditional Native dancers. Other historic New Mexico artists featured in the auction include Fremont Ellis, John McHugh and Hannah Holliday Stewart.
Check out the European, American and Southwestern Art Auction on Artfact to browse all 116 lots, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to see more highlights from the sale. The auction ends on November 17 at 7:00 pm.
We picked a particularly electrifying time in the art world to throw an auction. A triptych by Francis Bacon just flew off the block for a record-breaking $142.2 million, and the highest-valued Andy Warhol painting ever sold for $102 million. Our European, American and Southwestern Art Auction doesn’t feature price tags that are quite as high, but there are gems throughout the catalogue that would fit into the finest collection. The image above is a watercolor by legendary Colorado landscape painter Charles Partridge Adams (1858-1942) that measures just 13.5 x 17.5 inches and starts at $1,700 in our sale. Check out more lots below, and make sure to place your bids before the auction ends on November 17.
Lot 16: Jack Merriott- Untitled (Boat Dock Scene)
Starting bid: $1,700
Estimated value: $2,200-$3,200
English artist Jack Merriott (1902-1968) is best known for his travel posters commissioned by British railway companies that were displayed in train compartments. This watercolor shows the illustrator’s softer side. Click here to view the lot and register to bid.
Lot 60: Francesco Spicuzza- Children at Beach
Current bid: $250
Estimated value: $350-$750
Francesco Spicuzza (1883-1962) was a talented lithographer and painter, and is one of the most prolific artists ever in his home state of Wisconsin. In this 13.5 x 15.5 in. gouache painting on board, three small figures frolic through the waves on a beach day. Click here to view the lot and register to bid.
Lot 107: Doug Higgins- Horse & Cowboy
Starting bid: $850
Estimated value: $1,200-$1,750
Santa Fe, New Mexico artist Doug Higgins (born 1939) uses simple, elegant lines to depict a cowboy tending to his horse in this charcoal drawing. Click here to view the lot and register to bid.
Don’t forget to bid in our auction before 7 pm on November 17, and browse more highlights in our blog post START YOUR BIDDING: Colorful lots from our fall auction. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for gallery news.
“Where did you get that?”
That’s a common question among Canyon Road visitors when they see historic work by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Salvador Dali and other famous artists on our walls.
There’s no supermarket for art like this. Finding and authenticating it is an elaborate process, and the treasure hunt often begins where you’d least expect it. If you’ve ever wondered about the value of that painting or print on your wall (or in your attic), we might be able to help.
We’ve been in the fine art business for over 15 years, and have assisted hundreds of clients in selling their historic and vintage art. Whether you own a Renoir lithograph or an exquisite painting by a little-known American modernist, a sculpture by Arnaldo Pomodoro or a watercolor by an anonymous 19th century artist, we’d be delighted to take a look at it.
We’re primarily interested in art from four categories: European, American, Southwest and Contemporary. It could be a single work or a collection within any price range. If you’re looking to sell or consign, we offer fair prices.
Contact us at info@thematthewsgallery.com to get the process started, and check out our website and Facebook page to learn more about us.
Frank Morbillo sanding his sculpture Sprung
As we learned in his NEW HORIZONS show, sculptor Frank Morbillo is inspired by the way the elements carve the canyon lands of the American West. It’s fitting that his process is just as elemental. He bends and twists flat pieces of steel and bronze and then welds them into seamless three-dimensional forms, first creating smaller studies and working up to towering sculptures that possess the same gravitas as the rock formations he loves.
Witness the fiery birth of Frank’s sculpture Sprung and read quotes from the artist about his process and influences in this photo montage:
Fitting fabrication
“When you’re working with steel, you can work pretty inexpensively to generate an idea and get proportions down, and then make it a little bit bigger. Eventually this can go to the scale of the piece outside the Matthews Gallery.”
TIG welding
“My background was in ceramics when I first started. For two years of college I thought my major was going to be ceramics, but in my sophomore year I took a blacksmithing class on forging and fabricating metal. I was like, ‘You can heat the stuff up and move it like clay? Oh my God!’”
Welding
“You knock a piece of clay off the table and it breaks on the floor. You knock a piece of metal off and it dents the floor.”
Fine sanding
“A lot of the pieces come from hiking canyons and experiencing the paths that you take in a canyon. If you look at a topo of a canyon, you can see its meandering course. When you’re down in a canyon and you see how it’s been eroded and shaped by water and wind, it takes on another shape.”
Patina
“When I was in the foundry business doing patina work for different artists, we always used to talk about the translucency of bronze. They always wanted that, to where if you put this really nice golden brown patina over metal, you could see the metal coming through.”
Almost there…
“One of the nice things about being out in nature is that all of the things we connect ourselves with are gone. Where does that take you? I think we need to do that still in our lives.”
See Frank’s finished sculpture here and learn more about the Tesuque sculptor on our Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages.
William Lumpkins Jr. next to his father’s serigraph “Abstract Landscape #3“
At last Friday’s opening of NEW MEXICO MODERNS: The Lumpkins Files, William Lumpkins Jr. was a quiet presence. He stood to the side surveying his father’s work or chatted softly with visitors, many of whom were family friends. One woman had known his dad, who died in 2000, through an art discussion group that met at local coffeehouses. “Whenever Bill spoke, we all had to lean in. He was such a lovely, gentle man,” she said.
Will’s father may have passed down his mild temperament, but both men are also legendary for their fierce artistic passion. Will has carefully preserved the artwork in The Lumpkins Files show for years, and meanwhile has developed his own artistic style. The jacket he wore to the show was emblazoned with intricate celtic knots and a dragonfly.
When we asked about his dad, the more colorful side of Will’s personality emerged. Here’s William Lumpkins’ son on his father’s never-before-seen artwork, and why he decided to release it more than 15 years after Lumpkins’ death.
What’s it like to see your dad’s work hanging in the gallery?
Well, his work was all around us growing up, so it’s not that strange. The gallery did an excellent job though.
When did you first bring the work to Matthews Gallery?
About a year and a half ago. I had shopped around and didn’t relate to anybody until I met Larry.
Where did you keep it for all these years?
I had it in a case between sheets of acid-free paper. When I was teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University, I was in charge of museology. It was a whole print and painting conservation training program. So my dad knew that I could take care of them. Watercolors in particular are a sensitive thing for archiving.
Why didn’t he want you to release them until now?
It didn’t have to do with the work. He said to me, ‘Okay, you wait until after you’re 70 because by then your personal artistic statement will be you. You won’t have to mimic me.’ So at 70, my artwork was me and I brought these out again.
Were you ever tempted to release them before that?
No, it just didn’t seem right until I started looking around recently. I trusted you guys.
One of the biggest surprises in this body of work was the watercolor from 1937. That’s one of the earliest Lumpkins pieces we’ve ever seen. Did you know it was in there?
I knew that the work spanned a lot of time. When Dad was closing down the studio, he picked these out because these were the ones that he really liked from different points in his career. He felt that they were significant, and that they weren’t typical. His typical work is pretty well-known, but these he wanted to hold out so that they’d be totally new.
What was your vision for this show?
I gave the work to Larry and said, ‘Do you what you think is best.’ I just want them to be out in the open where they can be seen. If people want them enough, if people like them a lot, that’s good.
Hear more from Will Lumpkins in this week’s Pasatiempo, and visit the show at Matthews Gallery through Friday, April 25. For more images from the opening, check out our photos page and connect with us on Facebook and Instagram.
Jamie Chase with ‘Idyll‘, ‘Time is Still Luminous‘ and ‘Balance‘
It seemed like all of Santa Fe attended last Friday’s opening for ‘POV: New Paintings by Jamie Chase.’ Our front room was a swell window, capturing waves of art lovers and sweeping them through the gallery. As elbow room got tighter and people moved closer and closer to the canvases, art and life blended together. Painted figures became the streamlined shadows of chatting visitors, and an elegant woman’s posture found its soft echo in Chase’s acrylic brushstrokes:
“The human form is the intrinsic architecture of our experience,” Chase wrote in his artist statement for the show. “[It] is… a common, yet universal, reference point.” The Santa Fe artist’s figures are instantly recognizable, but possess carefully plotted gaps in detail that lend them ongoing visual mystery. That’s why viewers often move in close, even when the gallery isn’t packed.
As the show approaches its second week, we talked to Chase about perspective, metaphor, color and finding a satisfactory stopping point. Read the interview below, and make sure to come see the show before it closes on August 8.
Jamie Chase, Basking, Acrylic on Canvas
In your artist statement for the show, you mention the ‘lens of self,’ or the ‘frame through which we interpret the world.’ What did you learn about your own ‘lens’ as you worked on this show?
Part of it is how I look at the world, and how I feel about the human state, but also how I feel about painting and art. A lot of people are looking for more meaning in the paintings than I’m intending. I’m just enjoying the process of painting and finding the balance of the shapes and colors. That becomes my meaning.
Maybe there’s always been an underpinning of some sense of self in the painting I do, a sort of metaphor that attracts me to it. I guess there’s an existential quality to it… that could be cues to a particular story. It’s like meeting the viewer halfway, giving them some cues that lead them to a realization about the human experience, while leaving them to fill in the gaps on their own.
Jamie Chase, Yellow Chair, Acrylic on Canvas
Do you meditate on the perspectives of your subjects?
Only if it’s directly intended to represent a particular person. In the pictures of Sasha, obviously a lot more thought goes into those in that regard. Maybe painting the female figure is my anima. I see that [feminine] representation as having a sense of quietude, more of ‘being as a reason for being.’ Not to say that women aren’t doing a lot, they just seem to have a sense of repose and a receptive nature toward the spiritual life that I don’t see in the traditional representation of males.
I think painting and writing are two of the few art forms in which only one human is involved in making the statement. For me, writing and painting are very intimate, and allow you to have this one-on-one conversation with whoever sees your work. I like that about it.
Not everybody will see my work, and I won’t reach some people because of my particular point of view about art. But I tend to make deep connections with the people who do like it.
Jamie Chase, Ease, Acrylic on Canvas
What are some ways the human figure appears as a ‘metaphor’ in your work?
It’s a metaphor in that you look at the painting of the figure, and you can see that the figure is there, but you are also equally aware that it’s a painting. It’s not a stark representation of a viewpoint. The details I leave out become the reason that I make the painting in the first place.
The positive aspect of that is that the language of figurative painting is so ingrained in us that even if I leave something out, it’s easy to bridge what’s there. If you can get the architecture right, it’s easy to know whether it worked or not, because we’re so familiar with the human figure.
You can distort the figure for an emotional effect or psychological effect, but I tend to take a more classical approach when it comes depicting the human figure.
Jamie Chase, Allusion, Acrylic on Canvas
Is there a tension between naturalism and abstraction in your work, or do they work together?
I like to think they work together. It probably does provide tension for people who think that the painting is unfinished, but other people who really get what the process of painting is about know that painting always exists in some unfinished state.
Jamie Chase, Balance, Acrylic on Panel
For this show, you’ve meditated on ‘when to stop’ painting. What made you think about this, and what are your conclusions?
The ongoing motif of my process has been trying to find that moment when all the vitals are there, when the painting works as a whole. I want to find the point when there’s enough surface interest or color relationship, without taking it to its logical conclusion.
It can be very tempting to add shading here, or a glint in the eye there. I’ve done that sort of work before, and it’s easy to get caught saying, ‘Oh, I know where that light source would hit that.’ I’m trying to remove those details. I guess that’s where abstraction becomes more paramount, just the overall distribution of shapes and weights and colors.
Jamie Chase, Curiosity, Acrylic on Canvas
Would you call yourself a colorist?
No. Color is important, certainly. It’s a very seductive quality of art that tends to get overused. Some artists seem to think that the brighter the colors, the more likely you can sell a painting.
I’m just working with value and tones. With this particular show the palette is even more limited than usual. It’s very subdued, and all within a certain range. I usually think of my palette more as ‘warm and cool.’
Jamie Chase, Distractions, Acrylic on Panel
A lot of visitors remarked that the show feels very cohesive. Is that something you set out to accomplish?
I think because I did all the work within a really narrow time frame, it helped. I had kind of a sensibility of the aesthetic, based on a few paintings that were early in the process.
A lot of the paintings have earlier paintings under them, so there’s a lot of texture built up. There’s a lot of subtext, and what may be considered imperfection.
Jamie Chase, Idyll, Acrylic on Panel
Is it hard to paint over images on older canvases?
Not once I start. There are some paintings that just say, I dare you to do anything else to it. Those ones I call finished. With others, the composition isn’t working exactly the way I want it to. Those ones are easy to paint over.
See more of Jamie Chase’s new paintings here, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily gallery news.
Seats are filling up for our free COLLECTOR’S FORUM workshops, which begin next Friday as part of the Santa Fe Gallery Association’s Art Matters lecture series. The events have already given us the opportunity to connect with art lovers of all stripes. As the news spreads from person to person, a network is forming with links to local art legends like Alfred Morang and Fremont Ellis.
Gertrude Stein with Pablo Picasso’s famous portrait of her
That’s why this lovely friendship map of Parisian modern artists and patrons from the early 20th century caught our eye on Twitter the other day. Celebrated salonniere Gertrude Stein is the spider at the center of the web, of course, with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse and Joseph Stella and Henri-Pierre Roche entangled around her. Mabel Dodge and Marsden Hartley appear too, and their later New Mexico adventures tie this famous circle directly to our own rich cultural history. Forget six degrees of separation, we’re down to one!
The art world is beautifully interconnected, but that doesn’t mean it has to be exclusive. Our workshops are designed for anyone who’s ever considered dipping a toe into the art market, whether you have a full array of masterpieces or a virtual wish list of art treasures on Tumblr. We’ll cover every angle of the art business, including:
The workshops will feature fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from our gallery, and tales of tricky art conservation projects from special guest Matt Horowitz. Shoot us an email to reserve your seat and become a link in the long chain of art connoisseurs, from the City of Light to the City Different!
Learn more about COLLECTOR’S FORUM on our exhibition page, and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter for daily gallery news.
Alfred Morang, 1952
“After Morang’s death, all of a sudden people started to realize that he was a great artist. People regretted that they didn’t pay enough attention to him,” Santa Fe art collector Paul Parker said at the end of our interview last week.
As Parker will tell you, Alfred Morang’s death in a Canyon Road fire in 1958 was the end of an era in Santa Fe. From his arrival in 1937, Morang had helped cultivate a vibrant art scene in the City Different. His house parties of the 1930’s and 40’s earned him a reputation as “one of Santa Fe’s… most colorful Bohemians,” as the Santa Fe New Mexican dubbed him in his obituary. Morang was a masterful painter who drew inspiration from the French Impressionists, and a talented teacher who passed his knowledge to the next generation of Santa Fe artists. He was a great writer, musician and radio broadcaster.
However, towards the end of Morang’s life, he and his wife Dorothy divorced and he became increasingly isolated. He spent most of his time fervently painting in his Canyon Road studio. Santa Fe artist Bill Tate had this recollection of a frigid winter in the 1950’s:
Oh my, it was cold! The snow was pouring down unmercifully and as I walked into Alfred’s tiny studio, I pushed paintings aside to make a path, then found them sliding in behind me as I penetrated the cache of completed canvases. It appeared that paintings were everywhere. There in the middle was Alfred, happily painting away, bundled up like a Siberian monk—galoshes, muffler, sweater, heavy top coat which came to his ankles, and a woman’s hat pulled snuggly down over his ears and neck.
The studio had a sky light, but where the glass was supposed to be, there was none. Alfred had hung an old muslin sheet over the opening to shut out the falling snow. Evidently Alfred had let the fire go out in the small space heater. Or maybe had forgotten to pay his gas bill. I don’t know. But it was awful. I had been there just a few minutes when the muslin partially ripped loose from the ceiling and began flopping in the wind. Snow dumped all over Alfred as well as the canvas.
Alfred never looked up, never stopped painting. His blue-cold hands kept mixing painting and dabbing it on the canvas. Occasionally, he would lean back to assess the effect, but throughout, he was totally oblivious to my presence… or the muslin that danced in the bitter breeze.
I attempted to speak, but only a chatter came out. I retreated to the warmth of my own studio. To the day he died, Alfred never knew I was there.
This somber image of an artist in the winter of his life is not how Parker likes to think of Morang. Soon after he first visited Santa Fe in the 1990’s Parker developed a fascination for the Santa Fe icon that has taken him on many adventures, including a national treasure hunt that inspired our latest exhibition. The artifacts Parker discovered will appear alongside artwork by Morang and his contemporaries in our December 12-26 exhibition MORANG AND FRIENDS, evoking an era full of crackling creativity. Morang stood at its warm heart.
In the story below, Parker captures the Santa Fe zeitgeist before and after Morang’s death, and travels to Paris to complete a mission in Morang’s memory:
Alfred Morang, Untitled (Santa Fe Hillside) 1949, Oil on Canvas
HUNTING FOR ALFRED MORANG
by Paul Parker
I had been thinking about this mission for a long time and I finally find myself in the library seated in front of this antique microfilm viewer the size of a small refrigerator and I have loaded the reel containing the early 1958 issues of the Santa Fe New Mexican.
I was not sure why I had this unremitting need to know more about Alfred Morang. I had first seen his work painted on the adobe walls across from the bar in El Farol on Canyon Road and in Maria’s on Cordova, but I know the real inspiration came from my good friend Jim Parsons in Taos. Jim was an art dealer and appraiser forever and a friend and mentor for 20 years. When he mentioned that Alfred Morang was one of his favorites I knew I needed to pay attention. It was like Willy Wonka telling me about one of his favorite chocolate bars.
It helps that Alfred was such a compelling man, so well versed in music and literature as well as painting. He was the youngest person ever to perform a solo violin concert in the prestigious Jordan Hall in Boston. He was also an accomplished writer. The London Times once called him one of America’s leading non-political short story writers. Erskine Caldwell was a friend of his and he often visited Alfred and his wife Dorothy in Santa Fe. Alfred’s short stories and poems were published alongside Frost, Poe and Mark Twain. I do know the main reason I am so drawn to him is that his art touches me. Behind that art is Alfred’s story, his life experience and that is what drove him to create the art that Jim and I and many others enjoy so much.
Alfred Morang, Untitled (Portrait of a Woman) 1950, Oil on Board
There is a very sad part to his story and it is that part that drew me to the library. Alfred Morang died in a fire in his Canyon Road apartment studio on a cold January night at the age of 56. I had wanted to come here to the library and read the January 29, 1958 issue of the Santa Fe New Mexican for some time. I wanted to know the details, I wanted to read what people said, I wanted to know what page it was on and how big the article was. I was scrolling through the microfilm and as I started approaching the day he died I realized I was reading the papers that he probably read unaware he only had days to live.
The closer I got to the issue of the paper I had come to see the more time I took reading the articles and I even started reading the ads. I lingered the longest on Tuesday’s edition dated January 28, 1958. That was the last paper Alfred could have read.
There was an article on that day that I am sure must have caught Alfred’s eye and the headline read, “French Ballet loses Backing”. Alfred never made it to Paris, but his heart was there. His heroes were the French Impressionists and he considered himself to be one of them. Monet and Bonnard were his favorites. The article explained that the French Education Ministry had withdrawn the government subsidy for the production of Francoise Sagan’s ballet “The Broken Date”. The ministry’s action followed a storm of protest. Apparently one dance was performed in a bathroom setting designed by painter Bernard Buffet and was described by some critics as scandalously erotic. I would like to have gone to Paris with Alfred and attended that performance. A French ballet with a bathroom setting designed by Bernard Buffet coupled with scandalously erotic, I am sure we both would have enjoyed that.
That Tuesday the Lensic was showing “Pal Joey” starring Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak. Kaune’s was having a sale featuring Pork Chops at 59 cents a pound and Swanson’s Pot Pies at four for a dollar with your choice of chicken, turkey or beef. Cherry Motor’s at 607 Cerrillos Road had an ad for the new Rambler American for $1789. The ad proclaimed that one had been driven from New York to Los Angeles using only 80 gallons of gas averaging over 30 mpg. I remembered that time. One week before this ad ran I had celebrated my 12th birthday and becoming a teenager was in sight. Unlike today I was looking forward to getting older and that was the time I began thinking about cars. Chevrolet had just introduced the 283 V-8 a year earlier in the now iconic 1957 Chevy. The fuel economy push left over from the war was fading fast and the Plymouth Hemi and the “Little GTO” were on the horizon. The economical 6 cylinder Rambler American never had a chance.
Alfred Morang, Pecan Grove, Oil on Panel
I read every bit of that Tuesday’s paper. It was as if I felt that Alfred would be okay as long as I did not turn the page, but I knew it was time to see what I had come to see. I took a last look at the classifieds and marveled at an ad for a 2-bedroom adobe with wall-to-wall carpet “close in” for $16,500 and then I hit the button and watched the microfilm reel turn slowly.
The first thing I saw positioned on the top left side of the front page of that Wednesday edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican was a large photograph of a cat crouching on the corner of a charred mattress. The rest of the bed was strewn with papers and tubes of paint. Underneath the right half of the photo was a caption “Mourning for Her Master…This lonely cat was found wandering through the charred ruins of the home of her master Alfred Morang who died in the fire early this morning. The cat is on the bed where he died.” Morang’s friends had commented on his love of cats and noted that he often went hungry himself so he could afford to feed them. Two other cats perished in the fire with him. Unfortunately I discovered that the cat on the mattress in the picture had to be put down because it had extensive lung damage. There was also a picture of Alfred. A cigarette in a holder was hanging from the corner of his mouth dangling over his scraggly beard and he was wearing a black hat with a brim that was tilted slightly to the left making him look decidedly like an artist and decidedly French. The story next to the photo read “Well Known Artist Dies In Home Fire… Alfred Morang, 56, one of Santa Fe’s best known and most colorful Bohemians died at about 1:30 am last night in a tragic fire at his home in the 600 block of Canyon Road.” Friends reported they had last seen Alfred in Claude’s bar around midnight. His apartment was just up the alley out back.
Five days after the fire the New Mexican noted…“Funeral services were held Saturday at the Fairview Memorial Park Crematorium in Albuquerque for Alfred Morang, widely known Santa Fe artist, writer and critic who was burned to death early Wednesday morning in a fire at his home here. The body was escorted to Albuquerque by a group of close friends, including Randall Davey, Will Shuster, Harlan Lizer, Walter Dawley and William Currie. Alfred was transported in a Spanish Colonial coffin made by Abolonio Rodriguez, custodian of the art museum.”
Alfred Morang, Guadalupe Plaza 1947, Oil on Board
Alfred was born in Ellsworth, Maine in 1901 and came to Santa Fe in 1937. Like many who came here he suffered from TB. He immediately became a fixture in the Santa Fe art scene. He wrote a weekly column for the newspaper and he produced a weekly radio program for 17 years on KVSF called “The World of Art with Alfred Morang.” Most of all he was famous for his enthusiasm for art and his ability to teach and many benefited from “The Morang School of Fine Art”.
Walt Wiggins authored a book published in 1979 appropriately titled “Alfred Morang…A Neglected Master”. Walt uncovered several quotes during his research for his book and my favorites include the following. “When Alfred Morang’s life came to a tragic end in January of 1958 nothing before or since has so shaken the New Mexico art colony. Some say it was a sense of guilt that struck the community for not having shown a greater sense of appreciation for one who, by destiny, was different.” One Santa Fe artist reasoned, “Why shouldn’t Santa Fe be stunned with the loss of Alfred? After all, he taught half of us how to paint and the other half how to see.”
The February 10th 1958 issue of the Santa Fe New Mexican carried the report of the local memorial service for Alfred in Lorraine Carr’s column “It Happened in Old Santa Fe”. Dr. Reginald Fisher, director of the Art Museum spoke first. “Friends this is not a funeral, we are simply gathered here for a creative expression of merit and appreciation of a spirit that has been active in an activity that we in Santa Fe like to call art. Alfred was an inventive, searching and daring spirit as French as Lautrec, yet he never saw Paris. Last week his restless spirit found peace.”
Painter and close friend Randall Davey was next. “I have known Alfred since he arrived back in 1937. He was a kind, a gentle and a humble soul and in all those years I never heard him speak unkindly of his fellow man. He was a great painter; many of you did not think so, because often he sold his work for a mere pittance through necessity. Nevertheless it was great art and the happiest work I have seen in New Mexico. He had a love and a delight for painting and I doubt that anyone will surpass him in this field.”
Alfred Morang, Untitled (Mountain Landscape), Oil on Board
I hope Alfred enjoyed himself on that Tuesday. I hope he spent some time with friends and some extra time petting his cats. I hope he wrote another poem and put the final touches on his most recent favorite painting before he headed down the alley to Claude’s that evening.
Claude James ran the well-known Canyon Road bar where he often spent time and, as legend has it, her rowdy spirit was just what was needed to run that place. I would love to have met Alfred there that fateful night for a few drinks. I’m sure we would have talked through the evening about art and life as we cast occasional glances at the ever present ladies that were often the subject of his paintings and when Claude said “It’s midnight, would you fellows like another one?” I would nod and say, how about a couple of shots of your best cognac. I would love to take a sip, lean back and turn to him and say “Alfred I know you often say that you don’t believe in art for art’s sake, but you believe in art for people’s sake. Can you explain to me what you mean by that, and please…take your time?”
A few weeks after I finished writing this story I found myself engrossed in the details of planning a trip to Paris. I was not sure why, but suddenly it came flooding over me with incredible clarity. Human life really is very fragile and it really is all going to come to an end someday and we do not know when. I knew then I needed to go to Paris and I needed to go now. Unfortunately most people have that epiphany too late in life. They start thinking about the things they never got to do after it’s too late to do them. I knew then that this sudden obsession with Paris was a message from Alfred. Paris was his promised land, but he never made it there and I was going to go for both of us.
I told a friend in Santa Fe this story and he said, “You should do something for Alfred in Paris.” It was a great idea, but what would I do? I had been in Paris 5 days when I suddenly knew. I found an image of a Morang painting on my laptop. I printed it and wrote a bit on the back about Alfred and headed off to the Musee d’Orsay. This time as I enjoyed the paintings I was also searching for a repository for Alfred’s work and I finally found it. I can tell you that a fine example of the genius of Alfred Morang now has a home in Musee d’Orsay on the banks of the Seine and it will take a jackhammer to find it. He is close to Monet and Bonnard, the masters he so admired. Alfred, you finally made it.
Source: Bill Tate’s tale first appeared in the 1979 book Alfred Morang: A Neglected Master by Walt Wiggins.
“There are ghosts at El Farol, there’s no question about it,” says Freda Keller with a playful smile. “There’s been a lot that’s happened over the years. In 1835 there were gunfights in the bar. People hear and see ghosts late at night.”
Keller is the general manager at Santa Fe’s oldest restaurant and cantina, and we’re on a hunt for a particular ghost. Alfred Morang (1901-1958) often haunted the establishment in his years among the living. This Thursday, El Farol and Matthews Gallery are throwing a special toast to his lingering spirit in the cantina, where Morang painted a series of stunning murals. The event will christen our December 12-26 exhibition MORANG AND FRIENDS, which features rare artwork and artifacts from the man who was known as Santa Fe’s Toulouse-Lautrec.
“The biggest thing with El Farol, the reason why it’s been around so long, is that it’s family driven,” Keller says. “I think the customers feel like they’re family, and obviously [Morang] did too. Being an artist and offering to do these murals, you would have to be part of the family of El Farol.”
Like any proud clan, the El Farol staff is always happy to take guests on an art tour through their cozy rooms. In addition to Morang’s works, there are murals and paintings by Santa Fe legends William Vincent (a student of Morang), Stan Natchez, Sergio Moyano and Roland van Loon. Keller produces a little fact sheet that helps everyone keep the stories straight. Here’s the write-up on Morang:
When you enter our rustic cantina, one of the first things to catch your eye will be the beautiful murals displayed throughout. The first artist to grace our walls was Alfred Morang. On the long west wall of the bar and one behind the bar, are our oldest murals were painted between 1948 and 1952. Mr. Morang was already an established artist when he frequented El Farol during that period. He painted the murals to settle his tab at El Farol. The scenes are of local landscapes and adobe homes in Santa Fe. We’ve chosen to reproduce our most famous mural of the flamenco dancer in the red dress accompanied by a guitarist as our poster for the 2004 Muralist dinner. From 1968 to 1980 the owner at the time covered the murals with paneling. When Bob Ward purchased El Farol in 1980 he removed the paneling to discover the beautiful murals beneath. When David Salazar purchased El Farol in 1985 he was always mindful of the treasures on the walls. Painting, re-stucco and remodeling were completed while protecting the murals.
Then comes the part of the tour that sends chills up our spines. Do you believe in ghosts? Maybe this will convince you:
On Easter morning in 1997 David and the staff were awakened by phone calls that El Farol had been burned. The murals, though singed, had made it through the fire.
Morang died in a 1958 studio fire, so the news that some of his most notable works survived a blaze decades later is eerie to say the least. We walk over to the cantina to view the murals. When the hostess hears us mention Morang’s name, she lights up.
“That’s right, the murals still have burn marks on them from the fire,” she says, pointing out subtle passages of missing pigment that were lost to the flames. “They still don’t know how that fire started. They think someone may have set it.”
El Farol has long since been restored to its elegant Old West aesthetic, much as it was when Morang would stop by for a shot of cognac and draw inspiration for his impressionistic paintings of Santa Fe’s wild 1940’s nightlife. On Thursday at 6:30 PM, Keller will join the gallery staff to tell stories and toast the artist with a new “Alfred’s Special” cocktail.
“I read up on Morang and learned that he was born in Maine, and how beautiful the landscapes are there,” says Keller. “He did a lot of painting there. His first inspiration was that landscape.” Keller selected a cocktail called Remember the Maine (with rye whiskey, Cherry Heering liqueur and a splash of absinthe) in honor of Morang’s home state. Come have a drink and time travel with us to a true Santa Fe golden age!
Learn more about our Toast to Morang event on the El Farol website and on our gallery homepage, and connect with us Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to learn more about Morang.
If the last two weeks at Matthews Gallery were an Alfred Morang painting, the cover image of this week’s Pasatiempo would be a good representation. Energetic figures dance between brightly colored food and libations in a surreal party scene that’s one part Matisse and two parts Bosch…
Yes, the response to our MORANG AND FRIENDS exhibition has been wild. Here’s a wrap-up of some of the wonderful press we’ve received.
Michael Abatemarco wrote Pasatiempo‘s lovely cover story “To Paris with Love“, which recounted Paul Parker’s hunt for a box of Morang’s possessions and his covert tribute to the artist in the Musee d’Orsay. An excerpt:
Morang and Friends is a rare sort of show for a Canyon Road gallery. Intent on presenting a visual record of the time, its co-curators have included about 40 works by the artist as well as a few made by his students at the Morang School of Fine Art, Janet Lippincott most notable among them. Also on exhibit are several of Morang’s personal effects, such as his violin, scorched in the fatal 1958 fire, as well as sketches, photographs, and a few wine and whiskey jugs the artist probably painted to make a quick buck (Morang often sold his artwork cheaply) — all from private collections. These are the sorts of holdings museums are more likely to show, but for Parker, Morang and Friends is a labor of love, not just an estate, or secondary-market, type of show. “It’s an attempt to reacquaint the public with a seminal artist not only because of his own work, but because of his influence,” Matthews said.
Lisa Barrow of Albuquerque’s Weekly Alibi wrote a beautiful blog post on Alfred Morang’s legacy, titled “To View a Life’s Wreckage“:
His work reflects a distinctive City Different of the 1940s and ‘50s—the color-drenched vistas of northern New Mexico, scenes of nightlife, plazas and adobes. His pen-and-ink compositions shiver with energy, even when depicting something so mundane as his own studio, but his canvases positively bristle with morasses of color and line. Layered with thick wads of oil paint, they’re sometimes abstract, reminiscent of Kandinsky, and other times figurative—underlining that neither Morang’s biography nor his output can be enclosed by simple descriptors.
That’s not to mention blurbs from Santa Fean NOW Magazine and THE Magazine (the latter will publish a review of the show in their February issue), and an in-depth interview on KVSF’s ArtBeat with Kathryn Davis.
Presiding over it all was our Morang expert Paul Parker, who co-curated MORANG AND FRIENDS with tireless enthusiasm. We’ll leave the last word to Parker, who was dubbed “a phenomenal researcher, storyteller, art collector and art guy” by Davis, and who made a touching toast to Morang under the artist’s murals at El Farol last Thursday. Here’s an excerpt from his speech:
Alfred Morang was, as local gallerist Zeb Conley said later, “the kind of person that art circles circled around.” He was a fantastic artist, a huge fan of the impressionists, and his work shows it. He was also a concert violinist, the youngest-ever solo violinist to play in Jordan Hall in Boston. He wrote short stories and poems and plays and was published alongside Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost. […] I wanted to read you a couple things that were said when he died, at his funeral.
This is a quote from a book by Walt Wiggins: “When Alfred Morang’s life came to a tragic end in January of 1958, nothing before or since has so shaken the New Mexican art community. Some say it was a sense of guilt that struck the community for not having shown a greater sense of appreciation for one who by destiny was different. One Santa Fean artist mentioned, ‘Why shouldn’t Santa Fe be stunned by the loss of Alfred? After all, he taught half of us how to paint and the other half how to see.'” I think that’s one of the best quotes about an artist I’ve ever heard.
The director of the art museum at the time Reginald Fisher said, “Friends, this is not a funeral, we are simply gathered here for a creative expression of merit and appreciation of a spirit that has been active in an activity that we in Santa Fe like to call art. Alfred was an inventive, searching and daring spirit, as French as Lautrec, yet he never saw Paris, and last week his restless spirit found peace.”
Randall Davey said, “I have known Alfred since he arrived back in 1937. He was a kind, a gentle and a humble soul. He was a great painter, and many of you did not think so because he often sold his work for a pittance out of necessity” […]
The last night of Alfred’s life, he was in Claude’s Bar down the street until midnight, and then he left and went back to his studio. The word is that he lit a gas heater, but it didn’t light. Then he went over and sat in the chair and lit a cigarette. It wasn’t that the whole place burned down, it was a flash fire.
In this story I wrote, I imagined being in Claude’s that night. It is rumored that the ghost of Alfred Morang walks in this place. As a toast, I’ll tell you what I would’ve said to Alfred that night at Claude’s, and we’ll have a drink and listen for Alfred’s answer.
At midnight, when Alfred supposedly left, I got a couple shots of cognac, and I said, “Alfred, I know you often say that you don’t believe in art for art’s sake, you believe in art for people’s sake. Can you explain to me what you mean by that, and please take your time.”
Come see our MORANG AND FRIENDS exhibition now through December 26th, and stay tuned for our upcoming blog collaboration with ArtBeat’s Kathryn Davis. Also, make sure to connect with on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily gallery news.
*Special thanks to Kathryn Davis for the photographs of Paul Parker’s toast.
Each of Frank Morbillo’s sculptures takes many hours—and hundreds of miles—to create. The Tesuque artist’s creative process begins far from his studio, on long hikes through the canyon lands of the American West. Over the past few months, Morbillo has sent us images and notes as one artwork takes shape. Watch as lines from nature find their way into his fabricated steel composition ‘Expanding Dialog’. Eventually, human concepts begin to influence the artist, and physical geography becomes a metaphor for our political landscape. From Morbillo’s notebook:
In the image below the 120-foot-tall canyon wall, with its shape and layers, is the kind of feature that has influenced this most recent sculpture. The dark streaks on the canyon wall show the path water has taken over the years, is in contrast to lighter areas that have been influenced more by oxidation and erosion from wind and sand. Capturing the sense of scale of both space and time that one feels in the canyons is a challenge. How long did it take to form the canyon? What changes has it gone through and will go through before it’s reduced back to sand?
Images of “Expanding Dialog”, steel, 73″ tall:
The patina is underway on ‘Expanding Dialog’ as shown in these images. The final finish will be similar to the ‘Trilogy’ sculpture outside the gallery.
This shows the sculpture wet after chemical application:
This shows the chemicals starting to dry with patina developing:
The images below show the sculpture dry with the patina starting to develop. It will take multiple applications to produce the required patina finish for this sculpture.
Putting the finishing touches on this sculpture! Sprayed patina, oil patina and drying:
Just moved this outside:
So how do I come up with a title like ‘Expanding Dialog’?
Many of us [are voters], supporting the candidates, policies and government that speak to our concerns. This ongoing process of incremental changes generates dialog that will influence our future and shape the political landscape for years to come. Similarly, small changes over broad expanses of time create layers of rock that make up a canyon wall, layers that support each other, forming a dialog that will influence how water, wind and sand might shape them over time. The accumulations of small events over time shape and create these varied landscapes, human or geologic.
Mostly ‘Expanding Dialog’ is a positive view on the political process. With greater dialog the hope is that our elected officials will interact with one another reaching the best possible solutions in a world that seems to grow more and more divided.
Now on to the next one.
Learn more about Frank Morbillo and his art in our previous blog posts, Sculptor’s Process, Shooting Sparks and New Horizons. Also, make sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more gallery news.
From top: Cowles, Dasburg and Hondius
You’d be surprised at how often we find New Mexico links in the biographies of our historic artists, even if they never lived here. The latest paintings to appear on our walls are good examples. Gerrit Hondius and Russell Cowles were celebrated modern artists in New York: both exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the World’s Fair, and their works are now part of the permanent collections of numerous major museums. Their mutual friend Andrew Dasburg, whose career also took off in New York, would move to Santa Fe in 1921 and help usher in the region’s modernist period.
It goes to show that New Mexico was a major player in the American modernist movement, far beyond Georgia O’Keeffe’s significant contributions. Read on to learn more about these influential artists and their ties to the Land of Enchantment…
Russell Cowles, Untitled (Modernist Landscape), Oil on Panel
“When an artist sees something he wants to paint, his first step should be to look- to look long and sensitively- to feel what nature has to say,” said Russell Cowles (1887-1979). Wherever the modernist set up his easel—from New Mexico to East Asia—he followed this philosophy with the passion of an artist and the intellectual focus of a scholar.
The Iowa-born artist graduated from Dartmouth College in 1909. He studied painting in Paris and Rome, drawing inspiration from the artwork of Cezanne and Gauguin. Cowles returned to the United States in 1920, exhibiting his artwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art soon after. In 1925, he received a medal from the Art Institute of Chicago. These honors marked the beginning of a long and illustrious career that took Cowles as far as China to study with a master of Chinese painting, and Bali to experiment with abstract painting.
Cowles began living in Santa Fe for part of each year in 1930, and befriended John Marin, Andrew Dasburg, Marsden Hartley and other New Mexico modernists. He received a prize at the World’s Fair in New York City in 1937, and his artwork appeared in LIFE Magazine in 1948. He died in New York City in 1979.
Gerrit Hondius, Untitled (Modernist Landscape), Oil on Panel
Gerrit Hondius (1891-1970) was born in the Netherlands and studied painting at the Royal Academy in The Hague. It was there that he developed a passion for Georges Rouault and the French expressionists, but he found a true match for his style and creative energy in New York City.
Hondius moved to New York in 1915, and studied at the Art Students League with Max Weber and Andrew Dasburg. He first caught the eye of the art world with a massive WPA mural in brilliant Fauvist and expressionist hues. In the mural, colorful city people tangled with masked figures, clowns and ballerinas, inviting Old World allegorical figures to frolic in the capital of New World modernity.
In the following years, Hondius split his time between New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, and exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the World’s Fair, the Museum of Modern Art, Rockefeller Center and over fifty other venues across the United States and Europe. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and other institutions across the world. His wife Paula donated his sketchbooks, letters and other personal effects to the Smithsonian Institution after his death.
Check out our website to learn more about Gerrit Hondius and Russell Cowles, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr for daily gallery news.
We’ve had some unseasonably warm days after last weekend’s snowstorm, and it’s making us excited for the end of winter. It’s the perfect time to release our spring exhibition schedule, which is a period of exciting growth at Matthews Gallery.
In light of Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s brilliant Modernism Made in New Mexico exhibition and New Mexico Museum of Art’s recent emphasis on Southwestern modernists, we’re declaring a ‘Spring of Modernism’ in Santa Fe. It begins with our exhibition of influential New Mexico modernists, and features women artists of new mexico, rare artifacts from legendary artists’ studios and much more. Check it out:
Spring of Modernism: Seminal New Mexico Modernists
March 6-31, Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, 5-7 pm
Matthews Gallery declares a “new spring” of modernism, as this rich period in New Mexico art history returns to the spotlight. Featured artists include Emil Bisttram, William Lumpkins and Raymond Jonson of the Transcendental Painting Group, Alfred Morang and Randall Davey of the Santa Fe art colony, and Beatrice Mandelman of the Taos Art Colony.
Collector’s Forum Workshop
April 17, 6:30 pm
We offer an inside look at art collecting for this special Art Matters event. The workshop is for anyone who’s ever considered buying, selling or caring for fine art and has questions about the inner workings of the art world. Forum participants will get an inside look at every step of the process from one of Santa Fe’s top galleries. The event is free but seating is limited, so give us a call if you’d like to participate – 505-992-2882. Read about our past Collector’s Forum workshops here and here.
New Landscapes, New Vistas: Women Artists of New Mexico
May 8-31, Opening Reception: Friday, May 8, 5-7 pm
In the first half of the 20th century, a number of women artists who were frustrated by a lack of the recognition on the East Coast packed up and left everything behind. In New Mexico’s isolated art colonies, they found the freedom and social acceptance to excel. Matthews Gallery presents the stories and artwork of Janet Lippincott, Agnes Sims, Doris Cross and other women who found a powerful voice in the Land of Enchantment.
The Artist’s Toolkit: New Mexico Artists at Work
June 4-10, Opening Reception: Friday, June 5, 5-7 pm
This special exhibition features rare artifacts of legendary New Mexico artists alongside their work, giving visitors insight into the complex process of conceptualizing, mixing and applying color. Visitors will get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view Tommy Macaione’s paint palette, John McHugh’s brushes, Alfred Morang’s notes on color, Hilaire Hiler’s color wheel and other behind-the-scenes ephemera from Santa Fe private collections.
Widening the Horizon: New Mexico Landscapes
June 12-30, Opening Reception: Friday, June 12, 5-7 pm
New Mexico’s endless vistas offer an opportunity and a challenge to artists. Matthews Gallery looks back at legendary artists’ attempts to capture and reimagine the High Desert horizon, from early Santa Fe and Taos art colonists including Datus Myers and William Vincent Kirkpatrick, to modernists including William Lumpkins and Beatrice Mandelman, who evoked the spirit of the landscape through the language of abstraction.
Learn more about our exhibition schedule here, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for daily gallery news.
It was 1901 in New York City, and photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was busy preparing an exhibition that would shake the foundations of the art world. He had worked for years—often to the point of physical exhaustion—to elevate photography to the stature of fine art. A series of juried photography shows, judged mostly by painters, had popularized the aesthetic of pictorialism. Pictorialist photographers approached their art like a painter or illustrator, playing with focus and exposure in innovative ways and even marking the surfaces of their images. The idea was to “make” an image rather than “take” it, projecting emotions into the scene and onto the viewer.
Stieglitz and his friends saw the need for yet another leap forward in this new era of photography. They would mount a show composed entirely of photographs, and judged only by photographers. Or rather, it would be judged by one photographer: Stieglitz himself. He put together the show in two months and dubbed it the Photo-Secession, intending to secede from old conceptions of both photography and fine art. The exhibition was an enormous success, and gave Stieglitz the momentum to launch a photography journal and gallery to promote his ideas.
From left: View of Stieglitz’s Little Galleries of the Photo Secession, which opened in 1905;
Edward S. Curtis in his adventure clothes.
Thousands of miles away in Seattle, Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) was just beginning his photography career. Curtis grew up in Wisconsin and built his first camera when he was a teenager. At 17 he apprenticed in a photography studio in St. Paul, Minnesota, and when his family moved to Seattle in 1887, he bought a partnership in a portrait studio. Over the next few years, he began photographing Native American people of the Washington territory, some of them relatives of Chief Sealth and other important leaders. These early portraits and genre scenes inspired a 30-year adventure through the American West, during which Curtis and his team recorded the lives of over 80 tribes in photographs, writings, recordings and sketches.
Curtis’ expeditions, which he recorded in a series of volumes called The North American Indian, kept him far away from the epicenter of the American avant-garde where Stieglitz resided. “He was an outsider, too far removed from the photographic salons to court or count on ready shows and reviews that had instituted pictorialist photography,” writes Gerald Vizenor in an essay on Curtis. However, it’s this aesthetic that ties Stieglitz and Curtis together in art history.
“Curtis kept abreast of national, even international, trends in photography—and in the visual arts more generally,” writes Mick Gidley. “His early writings for Seattle magazines reveal that he absorbed much from Pictorialism in photography, including the example of Alfred Stieglitz, the founder of the Photo-Secession.” Curtis’ earliest photographs of Native peoples feature the soft focus and sepia tone of some classic pictorialist images, and present his subjects as stoic archetypes of a vanishing culture. In his many adventures, Curtis often posed his subjects and manipulated images to fit his vision of the tribes he was portraying. These techniques have earned Curtis praise as a pictorialist, but have also stirred up controversy. Curtis called himself an ethnologist, but the aesthetically powerful images he created didn’t always aim for scientific accuracy.
In the collection of photographs below, we’ve reunited Curtis with his pictorialist roots, placing some of his most iconic images among significant works by Stieglitz and his contemporaries. As you view the images, ponder Curtis’ position as an outsider during his lifetime, and his new place as a pictorialist in the art history books…
Edward S. Curtis, Girl and Jar, Photogravure
Adolph de Meyer, Marchesa Casati, 1912
Edward S. Curtis, Apache Medicine-Man, Photogravure
Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away, 1858
Edward S. Curtis, The Rush Gatherer, Photogravure
Alvin Langdon Coburn, Spiderwebs, 1908
Edward S. Curtis, Waiting in the Forest— Cheyenne, Photogravure
Paul Haviland, Doris Keane, 1912
Edward S. Curtis, The Storm-Apache, Photogravure
Alfred Stieglitz, The Terminal, 1893
Click here to learn more about Edward S. Curtis, his adventures and the rediscovery of his work in the 1970’s, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily gallery news.
As our SPRING OF MODERNISM exhibition approaches its closing date on March 31st, we’re sharing the incredible stories of 20th century artists who shook the foundations of the New Mexico art community. This week we have Paul Burlin, who battled blindness to create his magnum opus.
Paul Burlin (1886-1969) was born in New York City and had a difficult childhood that he preferred not to discuss. He completed his early education in England before returning to New York at the age of twelve.
He left home at 16, and studied part-time at the National Academy of Art and the New York Art Students League from 1900 to 1912. During that time, he worked as an illustrator under Theodore Dreiser and frequented Alfred Stieglitz‘s 291 gallery. At 291, Burlin developed a taste for Picasso‘s ‘primitive’ artwork that lead him to study African tribal art and, later, the art and culture of the Southwest Pueblos.
Burlin visited New Mexico for the first time in 1910. Paintings from this visit were received warmly in New York and exhibited in 1911. As a result of his early success, he was the youngest artist (at 26 years old) to participate in the 1913 Armory Show.
The same year, Burlin moved back to Santa Fe to develop a new body of work, and continued to exhibit in New York City. With the images and ideas of the Armory Show still prominent in his mind, Burlin was impressed and moved by what he described as the ‘primeval, erosive, forbidding character of the landscape.’ His early works in New Mexico were genre paintings of the Pueblo Indians in a realist style, but he soon developed a colorful abstract vocabulary ruled by symbols both ancient and modern.
Burlin’s time in New Mexico had a profound impact, not only on his own work, but on the development of modernism throughout the Southwest. From University of New Mexico art historian Sharyn Udall:
Burlin was the first Armory Show participant to reach New Mexico, and that fact, coupled with his confident handling of local subject matter, made a definite impression on newcomers [Marsden] Hartley and B.J.O. Nordfeldt… It is clear, moreover, that Burlin’s stature as the first modernist painter in New Mexico was unquestioned; his was the pivotal role in introducing fauve and expressionist modes to the art of New Mexico (Udall 1984; 28).
Though he moved away from New Mexico in 1920—living in New York and Paris for the rest of his days—Burlin’s artistic evolution in the Land of Enchantment influenced his work for the rest of his life, as evidenced in these canvases from the 1950s. Not long after he made this work, Burlin began to lose his sight. His final series of paintings, completed while he was legally blind, were exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1971, two years after Burlin’s death.
From Burlin:
We live in an age of treacherous, harrowing notions of mutability, death and decay…All of the old realities have dissolved…all rigidities of form disappear and enter into a new metamorphosis. This metamorphosis of form and reality is manifested in shape and color, which destroy visual reality and…shape themselves into a reality of their own.
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