Matthews Gallery – Page 5 – MATTHEWS GALLERY BLOG

What color is memory? Is the human soul tinted by life’s great joys and sorrows?

Jan van Leeuwen‘s darkest recollections are a deep blue tide. His self-portraits take shape much like memories do. It’s a long process with details fading in and out of focus, projecting visions of the self that never feel quite complete. It took a lifetime for the photographer to discover his medium, but when he did the images came spilling out.

Leeuwen was born in Amsterdam in 1932. In 1940, when the artist was 8 years old, the Dutch surrendered to the Nazis and Leeuwen watched as his community fell apart. Jewish neighbors and schoolmates fled or were taken. Over the course of the four-year occupation, the young boy’s confusion turned to anger, frustration and guilt.

Leeuwen’s first career was as a kitchen wares distributor, and he learned how to work a camera by photographing the products. He took his first serious stab at the medium in 1986 when he was in his 50’s, mostly so he’d have something to do when he retired.

Drawing inspiration from the innovative spirit of the Dutch Renaissance masters, Leeuwen developed his own method of producing photographs. He uses a 100-year-old wood camera to capture an image on resin-coated paper, creates a negative and then makes a contact print using a UV-B lightbox.

The process of capturing and transferring the images echoes the artist’s struggles with the trauma he experienced in his youth and the impact it has had on his identity. For the cyanotype in our collection, the artist used a long exposure to fracture himself into eight meshed figures. The only thing starker than their furrowed brows is the strand of barbed wire that stands in their way.

Leeuwen created Barbed Wire No. 1 in 1993. A year later he quit his job to pursue photography full-time. Since then he’s had a stellar contemporary art career, with shows across the world and artwork in The Photo Review, Art in America and many other publications.

The artist’s success hasn’t dampened the intimacy of his self-portraits, or lightened the burden of his memories. However, Leeuwen reminds us that sadness is accompanied by beauty, and creation always surmounts the pain of destruction.

Learn more about Jan van Leeuwen’s art and life on the Matthews Gallery homepage, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more gallery news.

CURATE THIS, CURATE THAT: Place your votes!

January 22, 2014January 22, 2014 Matthews Gallery1 Comment

The selection process for our social media-curated show COLLECTOR’S CHOICE is underway, and fans on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and other networks have placed their votes. It’s time for some tie breakers on WordPress! Check out the match-ups below and vote for your favorites in the comments section. From January 31 to February 5, we’ll unveil your selections in the gallery and online.

JAMIE CHASE

ROUND 1! Jamie Chase is known for his figurative work like image #1, and also his abstracted landscapes like #2. Which one should appear in the show? Take the curatorial reins!

WILLIAM LUMPKINS

Do you prefer William Lumpkins‘ careful watercolor brushstrokes (#1) or experimental wild felt-tip pen marks (#2)? Read more about the influential Santa Fe modernist here before you decide…

KATE RIVERS

Curate this! Should we feature a Kate Rivers book collage in the show, or one of her nests? Read about her mixed media work in this blog post, and vote for #1 or #2 in the comments.

HANNAH HOLLIDAY STEWART

These tall, spindly bronzes might be very different, but they’re both by powerhouse feminist sculptor Hannah Holliday Stewart. Figurative or abstract? Curate that!

PAUL GAUGUIN

Two Tahitian myths inspired these woodblock prints by Paul Gauguin. Which do you prefer? Read about them in this blog post, and vote now!

Thanks for participating in COLLECTOR’S CHOICE! To place your vote on other social networks, connect with us through the links on our About Page.

BE OUR CURATOR: A Social (Media) Experiment

January 16, 2014January 16, 2014 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

When we cooked up a full-fledged social media strategy for the gallery early last year, we had no idea what we were in for. Twelve months and countless posts, photos, tweets, likes and pins later, we’ve learned a lot. No offense to professors past, but engaging with our vibrant online community of aesthetes has been the best art course we’ve ever taken. It’s high time we thanked you for your passion, so pull out your CV and add “curator” to the list. Starting tomorrow, we’re giving you the opportunity to help us put together a very special show.

COLLECTOR’S CHOICE: 10 Artworks We Love will feature art chosen by online fans across all of our social media platforms. Keep an eye on Matthews Gallery’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other networks from Friday, January 17 through January 30 to vote on your favorite work in our collection. From January 31 through February 5, we’ll unveil your selections in the gallery and online.

Join us as we shatter the definition of an art curator and gallery show. There’s no one we’d rather collaborate with! Learn more about the show on the Matthews Gallery website.

SHOOTING SPARKS: Frank Morbillo’s Elemental Process

January 1, 2014January 7, 2014 Matthews Gallery1 Comment

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.

LET THE HUNT BEGIN…

December 21, 2013 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

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“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.

ONE WORK OF ART: Salvador Dali’s “Frontispiece for Goya Suite”

December 15, 2013January 7, 2014 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

Salvador Dali, Frontispiece for Goya Suite (1973), multi-plate etching

You can see rare prints by Francisco Goya at the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain, the only U.S. stop of a special traveling exhibition from the British Museum. Learn about Salvador Dali’s twist on one of Goya’s most famous works below, and come see it at Matthews Gallery on Canyon Road.

In 1797, Francisco Goya embarked on a political art project that almost brought him up against the Spanish Inquisition. In a series of 80 aquatints entitled Los Caprichos (The Whims) he outlined the “innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized societies.”

The hardly whimsical opus was a critique of 18th century Spain, which Goya depicted as full of deformed monsters and foolish beasts. The artist avoided punishment at the hands of the ruling class when the king spoke up for him, but the prints were still withdrawn from public sale in 1799.

174 years later, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (left) from Los Caprichos was considered one of Goya’s most iconic works, and another Spaniard by the name of Salvador Dali decided to create a Surrealist tribute to the series. In the etching Frontispiece for Goya Suite Dali used the first image from Los Caprichos, a self-portrait of Goya in a top hat.

Dali drops Goya into a universe even more bizarre than that of the original Caprichos, stitching his predecessor’s visage atop the body of a dragon-like beast. A second, more monstrous head with a drippy nose and lumpy halo emerges from behind Goya, and a shadowy figure in the distance leaves a trail like a comet.

Is Dali’s remix another critique of Spanish society, refreshed for the weird world of 1973? The artist drops a slippery hint in this work’s alternate title, Lenguado Menguado. Lenguado could mean “flat-fish” or “sole”, and menguado is either “well-dressed” or “diminished”.

So, Dali could be calling Goya a stylish fish or a diminished one. The title might refer to the worn—or fashionable—shoes of the pedestrian in the background. In any case, the artist seems to be commenting on Spain’s obsession with appearances, a theme first explored in several of Goya’s Caprichos. Of course, Dali was himself an offender when it came to sartorial dalliances, but that adds some spice to the criticism.

View Dali’s bizarre reworking of a classic Goya print at Matthews Gallery, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more news from Canyon Road.

FOCUS ON THE FIGURE: The good, the bad and the body

December 10, 2013December 11, 2013 Matthews Gallery2 Comments

Two Odalisques by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (left) and Jamie Chase (right)

No matter their preferred medium or subject matter, one of the first things young art students are challenged to do is pick up a pencil and draw from life.

“It’s only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise, that you have rendered something in its true character,” said Camille Pissarro, mentor to the Impressionists.

Of course, Pissarro had a different idea of what it meant to evoke something’s “true character” than, say, Paul Gauguin. As we discussed in our last post, Vermeer and de Kooning painted female figures in oil to highly divergent ends.

Our FOCUS ON THE FIGURE survey show, running now through the end of December, has us pondering the artist’s eye for the human body. History’s verdict on the success or failure of a particular depiction is often entirely based on the culture that first viewed it. Even in the hands of the most technically talented artists, the human body has a unique capacity to spark fiery controversies. Here are some notorious offending body parts:

SKIN

The Last Judgment (detail), Michelangelo

Believe it or not, that’s a woman in the image above. Michelangelo (1475-1564) had a hard time depicting feminine grace, probably because he used massive body builders as models. That’s not the reason the artist’s Last Judgment mural in the Sistine Chapel drew the ire of the church, though. Michelangelo left many of his buff bodies unclothed and the clergy was afraid they would provoke sinful titillation. After the artist’s death, fig leaves were swiftly deployed.

TEETH

Self portrait, Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun

As chronicled in our blog series 10 Women Who Changed Art History Forever, even fully clothed models (with frilly collars) could show too much. When Marie Antoinette’s court painter Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842) dared to flash a smile for this self-portrait she was roundly condemned for diverging from the style of “the Ancients”. Read what one gossip columnist had to say about it here.

EARS

Madame X, John Singer Sargent

Top Paris socialite and legendary beauty Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau couldn’t resist John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) offer to paint her portrait in 1883. When conservative viewers at the Paris Salon were scandalized by Gautreau’s bare white shoulder and bright red ear in the painting, Sargent attempted some damage control by painting in a shoulder strap and renaming the painting Madame X. Alas, Gautreau’s reputation was forever damaged.

FACES

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) always referred to his seminal painting of a group of Spanish prostitutes as The Brothel of Avignon. The canvas sat in his studio for years before he exhibited it under the title Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) in 1916. Even after its rebranding, the painting caused a stir because the women’s faces—influenced by traditional Iberian art, African tribal masks and the art of Oceania—were considered savage and their postures barbaric and aggressive.

After the show, the work was rolled up and stored away for years. It wouldn’t be recognized for its visual innovations until later, when designer Jacques Doucet bought it for 25,000 francs in 1924. “It is a work which to my mind transcends painting; it is the theater of everything that has happened in the last 50 years,” Doucet said.

Our FOCUS ON THE FIGURE show features art by Jamie Chase, Kate Rivers, Eric G. Thompson, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Harold Frank, Pablo Picasso and more. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more news about the exhibition.

FOCUS ON THE FIGURE: A Daub of Flesh

November 27, 2013December 4, 2013 Matthews Gallery1 Comment

“Flesh was the reason oil painting was invented,” said Willem de Kooning. The quote is a nod to the Dutch masters, who developed the medium to accurately evoke the semi-translucent glow of human skin in the crisp light of 17th century Delft.

By the mid-1900s, de Kooning was using the same medium to very different ends. His nudes unraveled across the canvas, their mottled flesh mimicking the dark tones of a bruised peach or the sickly hues of a jaundiced child.

The abstract expressionist encoded in painted skin the darkest sexual desires and terrors of the modern world, but he wasn’t blind to the way the inherent qualities of oil linked him to a much different time and place.

Our new exhibition FOCUS ON THE FIGURE, running December 2 to 9, holds a similar philosophy at its heart. The use of figures in art stretches back to prehistory, and new explorations into the subject have always looked to the past in one way or another.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (1841-1919) etching Odalisque refers to Turkish concubines, but that wasn’t necessarily the artist’s intended title. Renoir submitted a painting of a nude called Diana to the Paris Salon in 1867. The erotic depiction of the Roman goddess offended the judges and the painting was rejected.

Three years later the artist used the same model for a painting called Odalisque and made sure she was fully clothed. The second work, stripped of its mythological significance and given an exotic twist, was accepted to the Salon.

In this etching with the same title Renoir refuses to hold back. The nude Odalisque is so tenderly rendered her skin looks as soft as butter. “When I’ve painted a woman’s bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished,” the artist said.

Harold Frank (1917-1995) was born in England and grew up in New York, where he drew inspiration from American modernism and abstract expressionism. His take on the female figure in Blue Nude features quick, expressive brushwork that was no doubt inspired by de Kooning.

Both artists incorporated drips and splatters of paint into their compositions to create spacial ambiguities in the picture plane. Is Frank’s nude standing in a corner or floating in a color field? The answer seems to change with every glance.

Jamie Chase immerses a figure in a vibrant yellow atmosphere in Turning Point. It brings to mind both Mark Rothko and Nathan Oliveira, but Chase’s influences stretch farther back in art history.

Chase grew up in San Francisco and attended art school there for a short time before dropping out to travel Europe. He lived in various cities and educated himself on the masters before returning to San Francisco in the early 1970s. There he painted murals for a bookstore, drawing inspiration from ancient Egyptian art, European cave paintings and Native American art.

Come trace the history of the artist’s impulse to capture the figure at the exhibition this December, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more news from the gallery.

ONE WORK OF ART: Charles Partridge Adams

October 29, 2013 Matthews Gallery1 Comment

When Charles Partridge Adams moved from Vermont to Denver in 1876, it had nothing to do with art. The 18-year-old’s family hoped Colorado’s arid climate could save his sister from tuberculosis. The girl died, but Adams discovered unexpected beauty in the tragic situation.

The teen fell in love with the Rocky Mountains, enrolling in art classes a year after his arrival so he could learn to capture their majesty. It was his first and last formal training. For the rest of his days, Adams developed his skills on intrepid painting expeditions across Colorado and the American West.

“I saw the Rocky Mountains as I had dreamed of them before I came West,” Adams wrote of a horseback ride in Estes Park in 1881. “Towering above a great valley filled with afternoon mists, their summits glistening with the pure white of winter snows. They formed an entrancing sight that I can never forget.”

Adams started out as a realist, but by the 1890s he was removing details and loosening his brushstrokes. He developed a bright, impressionistic style and took cues from tonalism, carefully detailing the thin mists that cleave to the foothills of the Rockies in the morning and the almost opaque storm clouds that crown their peaks in the afternoon.

The artist’s influences are clear in “Untitled (Landscape)”, a serene watercolor of a still lake under a sunset sky. Splashy clusters of brushstrokes form wild foliage that contrasts with the crystalline water, and the sky above fills the air with a rosy haze. Adams was known for his bold palette, but here he used muted colors in thin layers to mimic the atmospheric effects of dusk. His touch is so delicate that the lightest ribbon of color in the sky isn’t paint but bare white paper.

“He was… sophisticated in his use of watercolor,” says Thomas Smith, director of the Denver Art Museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art, which organized an exhibition of Adams’ work last year. “This was a self-taught artist, but he really grew up and he really taught himself things about the medium.”

“Untitled (Landscape)” may measure just 6 1/2 by 10 1/4 inches, but Adams had the loftiest intentions no matter the size of the paper. “At his best, the landscapist is able through the grandest, as well as the humblest forms of earth and sky and sea, to at least suggest the grandeur, poetry, mystery and beauty of this natural world,” he wrote. It was with these noble ambitions that Adams would become one of Colorado’s most beloved landscape painters of all time.

Come see Charles Partridge Adams’ “Untitled (Landscape)” in our NEW HORIZONS: Focus on Landscapes show. If you’d like to inquire about the piece, don’t hesitate to call the Matthews Gallery at 505-992-2882 or connect with us through Facebook or Twitter.

ART ON PAPER: A (Brief) Visual History of Printmaking

October 24, 2013October 24, 2013 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

Prehistoric handprints on a cave wall, a Sumerian cylinder seal from ancient Mesopotamia, a woodblock print from the Chinese Diamond Sutra, a page of the Gutenberg Bible, a woodcut from the Ars moriendi, an etching by Albrecht Durer, a stencil print on silk from the Japanese Edo Period, an intaglio print by Rembrandt, a lithograph of Aloys Senefelder, an etching by Whistler, an offset lithograph by the New York Times company and an aquatint and etching by Pablo Picasso!

What does it all mean? Come to Matthews Gallery’s ART ON PAPER: Fine Art Prints reception on Friday, October 25 from 5-7 pm to find out.