The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art presents The Artists’ Eye: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection an exhibition on view NOVEMBER 9, 2013 – FEBRUARY 3, 2014.
A temporary exhibition featuring 101 art works by American and European Modernists, as well as African art, opens Nov. 9 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The exhibition, titled The Artists’ Eye: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, includes works from the collection of photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, and features the artists Stieglitz most favored, including O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin, alongside some of the early European Modernists who inspired them, including Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
This exhibition showcases the rise of American Modernism, a cause Stieglitz championed throughout his career as a fine-arts photographer, gallery owner and impresario. He began his career as one of the first gallery owners in the United States to exhibit European Modernists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Cézanne. Over time, however, Stieglitz became completely committed to supporting and encouraging artists he felt were creating a uniquely American style of Modernism. He supported artists by showing their work, purchasing artworks from them, and even occasionally providing money for food or supplies, or studio space in which they could produce their work.
Six artists comprised Stieglitz’s core circle: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Demuth, plus the photographer Paul Strand. Most of these artists, each with his or her own particular trademark style, are well represented in The Artists’ Eye with works that trace their artistic development over their careers. The exhibition also features several of Stieglitz’s own photographs, many of them familiar and iconic images demonstrating Stieglitz’s passion for a modern approach to fine-art photography.
In addition to works by artists of Stieglitz’s circle, there are several works by influential European artists Stieglitz exhibited in his galleries, as well as other American artists, including Wanda Gâg, Alfred Henry Maurer, Charles Sheeler, and Abraham Walkowitz. The exhibition also includes four works by 19th-century African artists. European modern art was highly influenced by the stylized forms and geometrical shapes of African art. Recognizing this, Stieglitz was among the first in the U.S. to mount an exhibition of African works as fine art, rather than as ethnographic objects.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is located in Bentonville, Ark. For more information, including a full listing of upcoming public programs associated with The Artists’ Eye, visit the museum’s website: CRYSTALBRIDGES.ORG.