DENVER—It may only seem like yesterday but it’s been more than 60 years since Clyfford Still and other painters jettisoned their European heritage to create the first truly independent school in American painting: abstract expressionism.
With three years to go before a museum dedicated to the prairie-born artist opens, the Denver Art Museum will display 13 of his works, paintings and paper works.
Although larger numbers of his work have been presented, no curator has ever had to choose from so many pieces. Still’s widow has given his private collection, 2,400 pieces, to the city on condition it build a museum only for his work. Still didn’t like to part with paintings he didn’t think most people understood.
Where to begin? Where to end? That was the question Still Museum Director Dean Sobel faced.
“A visitor can see an attempt to tell a story, from where Still began, to what he had to work through, to where he got,” Sobel told the Rocky Mountain News. “To say this is the tip of the iceberg isn’t really right.”
One piece, a large, predominantly black canvas shot through with two streaks of dark red, titled 1944-N No. 1, arguably is the first real work of Abstract Impressionism, said Sobel. In later years Still often numbered his paintings.
By the late 1940s and 1950s, visceral and dynamic works by artists such as Still, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning dominated the art world in New York. Jagged, virtual explosions of color that occasionally included blank spaces. Preceded by surrealism, it treated the whole canvas as art, often making suggestion of a them or even a title difficult.
Pollock was famous for dripping his paint on the canvas.
Even among abstract expressionists, Still made his own mark, using impasto that left brush strokes visible.
The Denver exhibition will cover the period between 1935 and 1957. Still died in 1980.
Sobel, a former director of the Milwaukee and Aspen museums, admits he is still getting acquainted with Still.
“I’d like to think I’m getting smarter about these paintings,” he said. “I like to think we’re all starting to connect things.”
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Information from: Rocky Mountain News,
