Visionaries: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Photographs and Prints
March 6 – June 28, 2015
In the late 19th century artists rejected the recognizable imagery in favor of the imagination and the
unconscious. In the early 20th century Vasily Kandinsky was the first artist to have achieved a truly
abstract visual language in painting and to have created purely abstract images. The Abstract
Expressionist artists were heavily indebted to Kandinsky and other European pioneers of abstraction.
The 20th century witnessed the greatest rate of art movements and art styles being developed. As one
movement was founded another soon followed, due to the evolution of ideas during the previous
movement. It is important to emphasize the nonlinear aspect of the developments that took place in art
during the 20th century, and use it as the organizing principle. The exhibition is a reflection of the period
in which some movements were unfolding concurrently. The goal of this exhibition is to present to the
viewer the vision and contribution of each artist.
The artworks selected for the exhibition consist of prints and photographs pulled from the Museum’s
permanent collection (one or several examples of each artist’s work). Each artwork, or group of artworks,
provides important viewpoints on the enduring creativity of each artist.
The list of artists includes: Vassily Kandinsky, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Jean Arp, Andre Masson,
Fernand Léger, Sonia Delaunay, Rene Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró,
Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Marc Chagall, Francis Bacon, Roberto Matta, Rufino Tamayo,
Alexander Calder, Victor Vasarely, Robert Motherwell, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Zao Wu Ki, Karel
Appel, Antoni Tàpies, Hans Hartung, Eduardo Chillida, Jean Dubuffet, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly,
Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Kienholz, Jean Tinguely, Richard Hamilton,
James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Paschke, Alex Katz, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom
Wesselmann, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Christo Jachareff, Kiki Smith, Alice Neel, Ari Marcopoulous,
Yoshitomo Nara,
Braque's works from the period of 1917-1920, are derived compositionally from synthetic cubism which
began about 1914. Arp was a pioneer of abstract art and one of the founders of Dada in Zurich in 1916.
In 1917 he created his first abstract wooden reliefs and paved the road for assemblage art.
Sonya and Robert Delaunay developed Orphism or Orphic Cubism in 1910, a movement that brought
lyricism and color to Cubism.
Max Ernst, one of the pioneers of Dadaism and Surrealism developed the Surrealism's idea of
automatism which became vital to Abstract Expressionists.
Roberto Matta, a central figure in the Surrealist movement, in the 1950s and 1960s successfully
combined the political and the semi-abstract. Matta believed that art can be a catalist for social change.
He was very involved in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Frank Stella, who started in the early 1960s with works that denied any illusion of space, later devoted to
relationships of color, form and pattern in monumental scale and contrasting color juxtapositions.
Elsworth Kelly maintained a persistent focus on the dynamic relationships between shape, form and
color. He influenced the development of Minimalism, Hard-edge painting, and Color-field.
Hamilton’s Kent State brings back memories of a tumultuous social and political climate.
Like many of Hamilton's images, Kent State is derived from a TV image packaged for consumption. The
TV screen was re-shot by the artist who recontextulized it and provided a repackaging. The artwork
becomes an interpretation of an interpretation, a way Hamilton scrutinized the world second-hand.
Like Richard Hamilton, Ed Paschke recontextulizes images from the media and presents them in his
highly recognizable style. The social dissent in his work is more subtle.
Kienholz's works are at times vulgar, brutal, gruesome, and confrontional. Dissent oozes out of his work.
Volkssempfanger depicts a radio receiver whose great popularity was the result of the political intention
of the German government who realized its great propaganda potential.
Andy Warhol began painting commissioned portraits in the early 1960s. They became an important part
of his career and were his main source of income in the 1970s. His subjects were not only well known in
international social circles, the art world and the entertainment industry of the time, but also individuals
who wanted their portrait painted by Warhol.