Time magazine’s decision in 1934 to make Thomas Hart Benton the first artist ever featured on its cover thrust regionalism into the forefront of the American consciousness.
The accompanying article championed Benton along with John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood as the leaders of this new homegrown movement, helping to secure their lasting places in art history.
Another regionalist painter from a very different part of the country was gaining considerable attention at the same time – Frank Mechau, who grew up in Glenwood Springs and lived much of his life in Colorado.
Instead of Midwestern cornfields and farmers, Mechau concentrated on the land and history of the American West, focusing in particular on the grace and beauty of horses.
But after his death in 1946 of a heart attack, his fame quickly cooled. Although there has been some resurgence of interest in his work in recent years, he remains little known even in Colorado.
That is why the title of a new survey of his work continuing through Aug. 30 in the Vida Ellison Gallery on the seventh floor of the Denver Central Library seems so appropriate – “Shooting Star: The Artwork of Frank Mechau (1904-1946).”
At the apex of his career in the 1930s, Mechau reached such impressive heights that his works were featured in many of the period’s major exhibitions of contemporary art at such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
In a 1935 New York Times review of the Corcoran show, an unnamed critic wrote, “By far the most spectacular and exhilarating work is to be found in two panels by Colorado’s famous Frank Mechau.”
In 1934, he won the first of three prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships – the only Colorado artist to that point to be so honored. Five years later, he was named head of the department of painting and sculpture at Columbia University in New York City.
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But perhaps most important were a string of mural commissions through such timely federal programs as the Public Works of Art Project. These included works for the Federal Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, Texas, and U.S. Post Office in Washington, D.C.
But almost as quickly as Mechau shot to the top of the art world, his works all but disappeared from view until the Denver Art Museum mounted a retrospective in 1972.
Although at least two other significant exhibitions of his work have been mounted elsewhere in Colorado, including a 2001 offering at the Art Center in Grand Junction, this is the most ambitious one in Denver since the offering at the art museum 33 years ago.
“Shooting Star” does contain some key works, such as “Dorik and His Colt” (1944) and two of Mechau’s three quite different takes on a similar composition, “Indian Fight No.1” (1931) and “Indian Fight No.2” (1934), with its strong cubist influences.
But other significant paintings are missing, such “The Last of the Wild Horses” (1937), a panoramic scene of a wild-horse round-up set against a mountain backdrop. The 40-by-100-inch canvas is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Offsetting such unfortunate absences are the inclusion of dozens of enlightening drawings and small paintings that Mechau painstakingly created as studies for his larger works, as well as a strong selection of his early output.
As part of the latter are “L’Acrobat” (1930), which he completed during his stay in France and exhibited in Paris in 1931, and “Football Abstraction” (1932) – both of which vividly show the artist’s absorption of the many vanguard styles and techniques he encountered in Europe.
In all, about 80 selections are on view, including a large body of work from Mechau’s widow, Paula, and other members of his family, and important loans from the Denver Art Museum and Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
Little about Mechau’s work can be called groundbreaking, but drawing on a host of sources, including the austere surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico, he did create a distinctive, compelling aesthetic. No piece better sums it up than what serves as the spectacular centerpiece of this exhibition – “Horses at Night” (1934), a 12-foot-long mural created for the library.
Using flattened perspective, largely unmodulated colors and little in the way of modeling, he de-emphasized realism to create a simplified, semi-abstract and wonderfully sinuous composition that celebrates line and movement.
But in a move that has hurt his long-term standing, Mechau turned away from this style in many of his other murals and large-scale works, choosing instead a more documentary and ultimately less distinctive approach, as exemplified in the Met painting and “Battle of the Alamo” (1938).
He often overloaded these works with compositional devices and worked too hard to create an impressive effect, producing pieces that seem forced and melodramatic.
If Mechau cannot be counted among the top tier of 20th-century American artists, he holds an important place in Colorado art history and deserves wider recognition.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Shooting Star: The Artwork of Frank Mechau (1904-1946)”
THROUGH AUG. 30|Survey of the noted Colorado painter’s output|Vida Ellison Gallery, seventh floor, Denver Central Library, 10 W. 14th Ave. Parkway|Free|10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays; 720-865-1111 or denverlibrary.org
