Euro American Artists in America
During World War Two, fourteen major European artists such as Chagall, Duchamp and Ernst left mortal danger behind and arrived in America, where their cultural tensions would shape their art.
Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo’s choice was daring in San Francisco’s Beat milieu: many postwar American painters sought to move away from traditional iconography and style, yet these two artists took an unusual path by engaging with European traditional painting techniques.
Durand
Durand rose to fame after learning engraving techniques. He worked as a banknote engraver, painted portraits, genre scenes, but ultimately preferred landscape painting as his field.
He was a revolutionary in the art world as his landscape paintings displayed his nationalism for America and encouraged individualism in artists who wanted to break from European art traditions.
After an Adirondacks trip with Thomas Cole, Durand decided to focus on landscape painting. He began making annual summer sketching trips and contributing landscape paintings to the National Academy of Design; Durand was greatly influenced by Claude Lorrain and John Constable.
Moran
Thomas Moran was originally from Bolton, England, but immigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1844 where he began an apprenticeship as a wood engraver. Over time he developed an interest in watercolors and sketches; these became widely published.
Moran embraced the traditions of English Romanticism but believed American artists should also depict native subjects. He took issue with contemporary French landscape painting which “rarely rises to the dignity of landscape.” Moran spent much of his life exploring and painting America’s natural treasures like Yellowstone National Park which he helped establish.
Remington
Remington offers many bronzes that have been recast. Technicians take an impression of an original sculpture and use this surface impression to form molds for copy castings.
Remington sent his cowboy sketches out to Western magazine editors for publication, where his fresh yet rough techniques earned instantaneous recognition as cowboy artists. This success only strengthened his faith in art as a profession.
His reception over time reveals powerful (yet often contradictory) forces at play in American culture. A Dash for the Timber’s provenance illustrates how an important work may simultaneously be celebrated, criticised, or forgotten by different generations, audiences, knowledge brokers and knowledge intermediaries; reflecting changing cultural values along the way.
Ufer
This exhibition at VMFA explores nineteenth-century Euro American landscape paintings as sites of celebration, nostalgia and exploitation. This analysis draws upon postcolonialism – a methodology which emphasizes both colonialism and its effects on colonized populations – for its insight.
Ufer was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and trained as a commercial lithographer before traveling to Dresden to attend the Royal Applied Art Schools and Royal Academy. Later he worked in Chicago before relocating to Taos where he painted Indians engaged in daily activities or traversing breathtaking landscapes – becoming highly successful until his financial collapse and alcoholism brought down his profile dramatically.
Rosales
Rosales Family are Shadowhunter clan. With deep connections to Fair Folk and objects protected from or charmed with Faerie magic, some members have objects charmed with or protected from Faerie magic owned by them. Furthermore, the Rosales clan works closely with Virgens – protectors of forest ecosystems – as part of their protection.
Abstract Expressionism was the dominant style in America after World War II; while in Europe artists gravitated toward art informel (informalism). This movement featured unconscious improvisations and spontaneity.
Rosales order comprises over 7,700 species divided among nine families and two clades, sister to Fagales and Cucurbitales orders. Some members bear spines to discourage herbivory.
Wiley
Wiley is best-known for his paintings that depict men of color posing like figures from European historical art. By depicting contemporary Black people in Renaissance-styled poses, he seeks to counteract historical Western art’s exclusion of Black subjects and subjects of color.
Wiley starts each painting by inviting his subject into his studio to pose wearing their everyday attire and photograph them, then using these images as reference during his painting process.
Wiley subverts stereotypes associated with powerful European noblemen while attributing them to black culture today; his work also amplifies homoeroticism through classical sculpture depictions of male figures holding silver rosaries as symbolic of these idealized men.
