Under the Skin of New Mexico:
The Art of Cady Wells, 1933-53
January 28 to May 22, 2011
Cady Wells was one of the most innovative modern artists working within the Santa Fe and Taos milieu in the 1930s and 1940s if not one of this country’s most accomplished watercolorists in any period. In the 1940s, he was included in important contemporary watercolor exhibitions, including the Whitney, and in seminal exhibitions such as the 1947 “Abstract and Surrealist Art” exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago that were influential in defining the nature of the new American avant-garde. Wells was regularly touted in the media alongside critical reviews of new abstraction by Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, and Adolph Gottlieb.
Although his earliest paintings were greatly influenced by the plein air landscapes of Andrew Dasburg and John Marin, Wells relied upon his own imagination, fueled by Hispano religious art, the ominous world of the Los Alamos atamoic laboratories, and his mutually inspirational friendship with the modern American dance choreographer, Martha Graham. Guest curated by Lois P. Rudnick, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Under the Skin of New Mexico traces Wells’ brief but intense two decades as a New Mexico modernist who attempted like no other artist in the Southwest to tap the expressive power of the land and its cultures that lay beneath the surface.
An outstanding roster of related events has been organized in conjunction with the exhibition.>> more
The exhibition is made possible by contributions from Aaron Payne, Regina Wells, Mr. and Mrs. Ken Philips, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Moir, Lisa Markham, Daniel Wells Schreck, Ray Dewey, and Douglas Atwell; and by the National Endowment for Humanities and the New Mexico Humanities Council.
The exhibition will continue at The Harwood Museum of Art from June 10 to Spetember 5, 2011.
Of related interest:
"Collecting New Mexico: The Forgotten Cady Wells"
Museum of Spanish Colonial Museum, Santa Fe
|
Twitter
Facebook
