dasburg – MATTHEWS GALLERY BLOG

“Wonderful place. You must come. Am sending ticket. Bring me a cook.” Mabel Dodge Lujan’s telegram to artist Andrew Dasburg is a seminal moment in New Mexico art history. Lujan, a prominent arts champion from New York, had fallen in love with the Taos art colony and was determined to summon artists there from the East. The efforts of Lujan and her counterparts in Santa Fe and Albuquerque sparked a great influx of modernist artists to the region, eclipsing the traditional styles that had reigned there in the late 19th century. Matthews Gallery’s exhibition THE MODERNIST IMPULSE: New Mexico’s 20th Century Avant-Garde, will tell stories of revolutionary artists throughout the previous century in a special rolling exhibition from September through October, 2015.

We’re working in concert with Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and New Mexico Museum of Art’s Fall of Modernism: A Season of American Art event series to trace the grand arc of New Mexico’s modernist history. Starting with Lujan’s circle, which arrived in the 1920s, and moving forward through the decades, we’ll examine the strong impulse of modernist artists to settle in New Mexico and revolutionize the art colonies here.

Over the course of the two-month show, Matthews Gallery’s walls will shift through time. Early Taos modernists will give way for the Taos Moderns movement, Santa Fe artist and art teacher Alfred Morang will pass the baton to students such as Janet Lippincott and William Vincent, and rays of influence from the revolutionary Transcendental Painting Group will stretch far beyond its short existence. Contemporary artist Eli Levin, who came to New Mexico in the 1960’s and knew many notable modernists, will round out the group.

Learn more about our contribution to Fall of Modernism on their newly launched homepage, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for updates on the show.

Andrew Dasburg, April Snow 1967, Pastel on Paper.

Jan Matulka, Landscape circa 1923, Watercolor on Paper.

Cady Wells, Taos, 1947, Ink and Watercolor on Paper.

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.