Winter 1982: Gene Davis: Thirty Years of Drawing, the first retrospective exhibition of the drawings of the famous color interval painter, opened at The Brooklyn Museum on December 4, 1982 and will run through February 6, 1983.
Gene Davis’ paintings are among the most instantly recognizable in contemporary American art. One cannot think of Davis without thinking of stripes. He is one of this country’s greatest colorists, with a palette ranging from the most subtle to the most brilliant tones. For over twenty years his paintings have been an exploration of color relationships, but he has other areas of artistic concern, unknown to the public.
This will be the first retrospective exhibition of Davis’s drawings, a microcosm of his career. It presents a unique opportunity to observe the artist’s development, from the earliest figurative pencil drawings of 1952 through collages and crayon and pencil drawings of 1982. Throughout these thirty years, Davis worked out his ideas in a variety of drawing techniques, both in black and white and in color. A selection of drawings from the artist’s notebook of 1965 will provide a particularly intimate glimpse into conception and growth of these ideas as sketches and notations. The exhibition will also contain fully realized drawings and collages. For those who know Davis only through his paintings, this exhibition will prove a revelation. Besides showing a very deliberate artist in the development of his painting vocabulary, “Thirty Years of Drawings” will show a whole new aspect of Davis as a draftsman. It is a private side of the artist which he has never previously displayed publicly.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1982, 013.
