Balcomb Greene, Study for Abstraction Becoming a Figure, 1950, watercolor and ink on paper
Into the Void: Abstract Art, 1948 - 2008
Small works on paper inflected with subtle lines and muted tones, and large-scale paintings energized by gestural splashes of contrasting color. These are among the types of abstraction you’ll see in Into the Void: Abstract Art 1948-2008, a celebration of the diversity of non-objective artistic expression from the perspectives of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, geometric abstraction, lyrical abstraction, and Minimalism.
This exhibition from the Tucson Museum of Art’s permanent collection includes works on paper by Bauhaus members Herbert Bayer and Josef Albers; Surrealist artists Alexander Calder and Max Ernst; American Abstract Artists founding member Balcomb Greene; Abstract Expressionist Esteban Vicente; Spanish Art Informel artist Antoni Tapies; and Art Brut artist Jean Dubuffet. Paintings in this collection include Abstract Expressionists William Baziotes and Paul Jenkins, and Washington Color School painters Ralph Humphrey and Paul Reed.
Abstraction is alive and well in the Tucson region today. Nancy Tokar Miller, Jim Waid, Andy Polk, and Josh Goldberg delight in bold color and gesture in their exuberant, lyrical abstractions. Native American artists have also embraced abstraction in their work, represented here by Fritz Scholder, Mario Martinez, Dean Narcho, and Emmi Whitehorse. Into the Void also includes sculpture, including an early mobile from the late 1940s by noted American kinetic sculptor George Rickey, figurative abstractions in cast bronze from 1966 by utopian visionary Paoli Soleri, and a geometric configuration in metal from 1970s by Beverly Pepper. This exhibition provides a visual explosion of color, line, and form that expresses the vitality of artistic imagination in the search for a language of form.
Historically, abstraction in the Western world emerged from the Impressionist movement in the late 19th Century in Europe as an intellectual and optical exercise inspired by the theories and art of Cézanne and Seurat. Cubism and Constructivist movements also informed abstract principles, which lent structural, geometrical, and architectonic dimensions to the practice. Another aspect of abstraction has its roots in the art and theories of Gauguin, the Fauvist elements of Matisse, and the early Abstract Expressionist paintings of Kandinsky. Such modernist innovations ignited the explosion of artistic activity emanating from the New York School, which included the works of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Adolf Gottlieb, among others. Abstraction culminated in Minimalism’s concept of reductive, non-objective paintings and sculptures that rejected the notion of art as an imitation of nature to the art as an object in its own right. As an art form today, abstraction continues with a myriad of new techniques, materials, and conceptual approaches.
