Feature Articles

June Issue 1999

 

Asheville Museum's Summer Exhibition Looks at Abstraction in American Art

 

 

The Asheville Art Museum, located at Pack Square in downtown Asheville, NC, is featuring the exhibit, Abstraction in American Art 1940-1965, Masterpieces from the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibit looks at mid-century abstraction and the artists who did so much to change the history of American art forever. The exhibit will be on display through Oct. 1, 1999.

More than any other artistic style or orientation, abstraction has prevailed as the defining aesthetic of 20th century art. This summer's exhibition will focus specifically on the years between 1940-1965, a time of remarkable growth and change in America when a mood of continuous discovery pervaded painting and sculpture.

As with the first collaborative project, this exhibition from the Whitney Museum of American Art brings to Western North Carolina an outstanding array of works of art by some of this century's most renowned artists, including Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Jasper Johns. The works that come together in this exhibition are predominantly non-representational and range from strictly geometrical to energetically gestural. These artists, using color, line, shape, texture, and form sought to create a universal language that attempts to transcend barriers of place and time.

The exhibition will also look at the dynamic, experimental, creative educational environment of Black Mountain College, where many of the artists were students or faculty.

Also on view through Aug. 1, 1999, is the exhibit, John Sloan's Etchings: Imagination, Invention, and a Passion for "Needling In".

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings or call the Museum at 828/251-5652.

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