Opening its 2014 season from 9/26/2013-1/26/2014
with SEE IT LOUD: SEVEN POST-WAR AMERICAN PAINTERS, the National Academy presents the work of American representational artists — Leland Bell, Paul Georges, Paul Resika,Neil Welliver, Albert Kresch, Stanley Lewis and Peter Heinemann — who forged an original and dynamic synthesis between representational and abstract art.
On view are: the 80 works are drawn from the collection of the Center for Figurative Painting, established in 2000 to encourage a reassessment of post-war American representational painting. Painting workshops, panel discussions and lectures with some of today’s most influential artists, will demonstrate the important role painting plays in American art — past and present.
Many of the featured painters began their careers when abstraction and representation were not only polarized in the American art world, but seemingly irreconcilable. “There was very nearly a moral dimension to the opposition between representation and abstraction”, states Bruce Weber, Senior Curator 19th and Early 20th Century Art and the curator of the exhibition. “American painters who came of age in the 1940s and 1950s were expected to choose an allegiance between the two.”
Crossing the line and ultimately embracing the possibilities of a dialectical synthesis between abstraction and representation, Paul Georges, Paul Resika, Leland Bell, Albert Kresch, Peter Heinemann, and Neil Welliver, born before the outbreak of World War II, ventured to claim this aesthetic no-man’s land. Their junior contemporary, Stanley Lewis, born ten years after the youngest of those six, boldly joined them.
Some of the artists had begun their careers as abstract painters under the instruction of Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) or Josef Albers (1888-1976). Some were influenced by the work of Abstract Expressionists, yet felt the need to expand the resources of their art by working directly from nature or the figure. All were in direct contact with the American artists and “schools” of their own day, but they also found profound inspiration in the work of such older twentieth-century European masters as Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Balthus (1908-2001), Jean Hélion (1904-1987), Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), André Derain (1880-1954), and Max Beckmann (1884-1950). And many in the group looked to Europeans of the past, including Titian (c. 1488/90-1556), Canaletto (1697-1768), Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875), and Édouard Manet (1832-1883), to assist them in building powerful and significant styles of their own.
In the spring, the Academy presents the first comprehensive retrospective of Anders Zorn, showcasing Zorn’s work for the first time in the United States in nearly thirty years. On view February 27 through May 18, 2014, ANDERS ZORN: SWEDEN’S MASTER PAINTER, features approximately 90 paintings and works on paper from European and American museums and private collections. The exhibition explores the evolution of Zorn’s distinctive style in the diverse genres of landscape, portraiture, the nude, and modern life. ANDERS ZORN presents an overview of the artist’s career from his beginnings in Stockholm to his European and American travels and his extensive work in and around his home in Mora, Sweden.The exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
FUNDING
SEE IT LOUD: SEVEN POST-WAR AMERICAN PAINTERS: The National Academy Museum & School is grateful to the Center for Figurative Painting and the following for their generous support of our operations: The Bodman Foundation, The Bonnie Cashin Fund, in honor of Henry W. Grady, the Alex J. Ettl Foundation, the F. Donald Kenney Exhibition Fund, The Estate of Geoffrey Wagner in memory of Colleen Browning, NA, The Reed Foundation, Inc. and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY
The National Academy is one of the country’s oldest art organizations, founded in 1825 by artists Samuel F. B. Morse, Thomas Cole, and Asher B. Durand as a place to exhibit and teach art. Each year, artists and architects are named by their peers as National Academicians. Recent Academicians include Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, James Rosenquist, Lorna Simpson, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Sze, Carrie Mae Weems, Fred Wilson, Bill Viola; and architects Jeanne Gang, Kate Orff, William Pedersen, Renzo Piano, and Moshe Safdie.