Elaine DeKooning

Richard Diebenkorn


Vera Klement

Nicholas Marsicano

Paul Wonner

Nathan Oliviera

EMOTIONAL IMPACT:
FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONISM
AMERICAN STYLE

In America, starting in the 1950s--the heyday of Abstract Expressionism and New York’s takeover of the center of the artworld – a number of artists, in New York, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and around the country, decided to return to the figure. But as they were profoundly committed to the energetic Abstract Expressionist way of painting that had been formative of their styles, they would not give it up, choosing instead to adapt it to their equally profound need to paint recognizable imagery. Artists like Grace Hartigan, Elaine De Kooning, and Lester Johnson in the east, Nathan Oliviera, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Parks in the west, and Vera Clement in Chicago had only this dual allegiance in common. The paintings of twenty-seven major American Figurative Expressionists have been organized by Kresge Art Museum Curator April Kingsley into an exhibition which will open at the Kresge Art Museum in fall/winter 2010 and then be available to travel to other venues starting in 2011. The catalogue, published by the Michigan State University Press, will have approximately 200 pages and 50 color reproductions. 

The 50 marvelously expressive large paintings, works on paper and graphics in the exhibition date from different periods in the artists' careers demonstrating how they came into this way of painting, how it evolved over the years, and continued to be an effective and satisfying method to use. Most of the paintings have been acquired by the Kresge Art Museum since 2000 as part of a collecting initiative to enlarge this underrepresented aspect of the holdings. This is the first exhibition that surveys this exciting work nationwide. The complex history of its on again/off again reception over the years by the art establishment and its role in artworld developments of the last half century will also be explored, and the artists given the focused attention they have long deserved.

Artists include: Robert Beauchamp, Miriam Beerman, Nell Blaine, Nanno de Groot, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Robert de Niro, Sr., Richard Diebenkorn, Sherman Drexler, Louis Finkelstein, Sideo Fromboluti, Philip Guston, Grace Hartigan, Robert Henry, Oliver Jackson, Lester Johnson, Wolf Kahn, Vera Klement, Irving Kriesberg, Nicholas Marsicano, George McNeil, Jay Milder, Nathan Oliviera, David Park, Joan Savo, Nora Speyer, Bob Thompson, Selina Trieff, Hiram Williams, Paul Wonner.

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Exhibition Facts

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Links:

Images of the works

List of Works

Essay