Review / Informed Opinions

 

October Issue 1998

Rediscovering an Era:

The J. Donald Nichols Collection: American Abstract Art of the 1930's and 1940's

A Review

 

by Amy Funderburk

 

Currently on exhibition at the Wake Forest University Fine Arts Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC, is the J. Donald Nichols Collection: American Abstract Art of the 1930's and 1940's. Nichols, an alumni of Wake Forest University, shares what is arguably the best private collection of its kind. This exhibition provides the public with a rare opportunity to see this body of work, for this will be the only venue, and Nichols does not plan to display his collection again publicly. There are many familiar names here, as well as some artists who have only been rediscovered within the last ten to fifteen years. Some are concerned with abstractions derived from life, others with the purely non-objective, while others have a spiritual intent within their work.

 

Curated by Dr. Robert H. Knott, professor of art at Wake Forest University, the exhibition of numerous two and three dimensional works is arranged in a way that will help educate viewers about groups that emerged as artists of like mind banded together to preserve their abstract and non-objective esthetic. Dr. Knott describes that as a result of the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression of the 1930's, the arts were expected to reflect the heightened social consciousness of the times. As a result, attention was given to the narrative styles of the social realists and American Scene regionalist painters by critics and the public alike. Abstraction and the non-objective seemed socially irrelevant. Groups of diverse yet determined artists united by their common goal kept their philosophy alive and found strength in their numbers. The New York based American Abstract Artists Group, the Soloman R. Guggenheim Collection of Non Objective Painting (which became the Guggenheim Museum), and The Chicago Bauhaus, started by German immigrant and Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, are examples of such groups. Artists' works are arranged by their association with these groups. These gallery areas are accompanied by educational explanatory statements. Another advantage to the exhibition design is whenever an artist is represented by more than one work, the pieces are usually hung together, giving the viewer an opportunity to note the development of an artist.

 

Artists in the collection are from diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. Women artists are quite strongly represented in the collection, including Russian born Esphyr Slobodkina. I was delighted to find that she is best known for her work as a children's book illustrator, including Caps For Sale, a book I remember from my childhood.

 

Many artists travelled back and forth to Europe, often bringing with them the influence of European artist friends such as Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky. Both the shapes and daubed strokes in Werner Drewes' oil on canvas, In the Cheerful Grey, 1935, show a definite Kandinsky influence. The influence of Piet Modrian is unmistakable in several works. In fact, Sidney Jones Budnick titled his 1940 oil on panel work Homage to Modrian..

 

Familiar artists Willem de Kooning, Josef Albers, Arshile Gorky, and Stuart Davis are all included here. The two small untitled works by Alexander Calder, both oil on canvas laid down on board, c. 1930, are reminiscent of his better known kinetic sculpture, captured and frozen on a two-dimensional surface.

There are so many strong works here, it is difficult to narrow down just a few favorites. In the 1940 oil on canvas White Circle, Rolph Scarlett plays predominately flat colored large circles against harder edged forms. In the 60 1/4" square canvas, you can see the compass points indenting the canvas within the center of each circle. The emphasis is a small white circle given its importance via the high contrast of a smaller black circle within, and a wet-in-wet blended glow of white into the otherwise grey-blue background. There are no cast shadows, but a few shapes alter color as they intersect, so a push-pull spacial relationship is created as the eye tries to decide between depth or flat space.

 

In Untitled (Geometric Abstraction), a 1934 oil on canvas by Paul Kelpe, shapes are created via lines and a palette of muted pinks, light blues, and greys. While the paint creates no texture and the lines are carefully straight, the canvas itself is very rough. The resulting dichotomy is intriguing. As shapes curl around and float, shadows are cast, lending a convincing existence in space.

 

Color appeals in John Ferren's 1937 oil on canvas Lutte As Ciel. Colors within certain areas were apparently laid down side by side in stripes, then blended just enough to create a unique sort of chiaroscuro. Reds and red browns are the dominate colors, accompanied by more muted yellow, blue and green. As shapes fold and undulate, a sense of object and space are created.

 

Another painting group covered by the collection is The Transcendental Painting group. Formed in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe area of New Mexico and having a strong emphasis on inner vision and the spiritual, this artists' group had a unified direction but different approaches and styles. One of the two founders was Raymond Jonson, who painted Growth Variant VIII, 1935, an oil on canvas. Here a variety of neutralized greens predominate, softly complemented through the use of a red-brown. The emphasis, a tall, thin organic form of darker green, is easily personified as some sort of figure or other growing thing, and is set off by a warm brown structure of lines. The obvious, lively, cross-hatched brushwork keeps the surface quality alive and very organic.

 

Rising Green, from 1942, is a 36" x 32" oil on canvas by Florence Miller, another TTP member. Within the fairly simple yet powerful composition, color impacts the eye. The bottom of the canvas is fuchsia, blending slowly to a light red-orange as you get to the top of the canvas. The central large circle is red-orange at its base, gradually becoming a darker red at the top. A green horseshoe shape painted in thicker directional brushwork seems to rise to a long, bent, thin blue line which sits at a shallow diagonal, reminding one of the hands of a clock. Just above this line is a small circular area of dots. An effective visual tension is created as the green shape is infinitely pushed back down after it "rises" to the limits of the blue line.

 

This extremely educational exhibition reveals great diversity within a seemingly narrow parameter. It offers such a wide scope of approaches that there should be something here for everyone. For the viewer well versed in art history, this exhibit will broaden his or her knowledge in the area of American Abstraction. If you miss the exhibition, a catalog in the form of a book is available. This exhibition of such a fine collection of work certainly warrants such a publication.

 

The exhibition J. Donald Nichols Collection: American Abstract Art of the 1930's and 1940's began August 28th, and will be on display through October 11. Admission is free and open to the public. The Wake Forest University Fine Arts Gallery is located in the Scales Fine Arts Center on the WFU campus in Winston-Salem, NC. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am - 5 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 1 - 5 pm. For more information, call 336-758-5585.

 

Amy Funderburk is an artists, teacher, writer, exhibit coordinator, and art critic living in Winston-Salem, NC. She is also a Board member of Associated Artists of Winston-Salem.

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