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Curator's Choice: American Artists of the Alfred Stieglitz Circle

DATES February 09, 1990 through June 18, 1990
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT American Art
COLLECTIONS American Art
  • January 1, 1990 The works of six American artists affiliated with Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and his New York Gallery 291 will open at The Brooklyn Museum on February 9 and remain on view in the Lobby Gallery, located on the first floor, through June 18, 1990. Entitled American Artists of the Alfred Stieglitz Circle, the exhibition features approximately 50 works, including oils, pastels, watercolors, prints[,] and drawings by an important group of American artists who received support and guidance from Stieglitz, primarily through the auspices of his historic Gallery 291, which operated from 1905 to 1917. The artists included are Arthur G. Dove (1880-1946), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), John Marin (1870-1953), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Abraham Walkowitz (1878-1965)[,] and Max Weber (1881-1961).

    An important photographer himself, Stieglitz was a primary force in introducing European avant-garde aesthetics to this country at the beginning of the 20th century, hosting America’s first exhibitions of such leading European modernists as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse[,] and Pablo Picasso. Viewing his gallery as a laboratory for artistic experimentation and the exchange of ideas, Stieglitz displayed the work of promising American artists, whom he encouraged to consider the aesthetic innovations emerging in Europe.

    The works in the exhibition, all drawn from the Museum’s own collection, demonstrate the variety of directions each of these six artists took as they reacted to the art and ideas to which they were exposed at Stieglitz’s gallery. Highlights include Arthur G. Dove’s oil painting Flat Surfaces (1946), Marsden Hartley’s oil painting Handsome Drinks (1916), John Marin’s etching and drypoint Brooklyn Bridge (Mosaic) (1913), Georgia O’Keeffe’s oil painting Pansy (1926), Abraham Walkowitz’s lithograph New York #1 (1927)[,] and Max Weber’s oil painting Portrait of Abraham Walkowitz (1907).

    This Curator’s Choice exhibition has been organized by Linda Konheim Kramer, Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Barbara Dayer Gallati, Associate Curator of American Painting and Sculpture.

    Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1989 - 1994. 01-03/1990, 023-24.
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