As curators and historians continue to piece together the fascinating, still-incomplete story of 20th-century Colorado art, two unsung, multitalented contributors deserve a prominent place: Edward and Donna Marecak.
A combined retrospective, continuing through Dec. 16 at the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, shows the sometimes surprising reach of their accomplishments and conclusively establishes their significance regionally and potentially beyond.
This show, the most comprehensive look ever at the couple, is drawn from the Kirkland’s extensive holdings and about 20 private collections. It runs from the 1930s through the early ’90s and contains more than 180 works, including paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics and a range of decorative objects.
The two native Midwesterners, who met as students at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and married in 1947, were certainly respected by their peers but received puzzlingly little acclaim during their lifetimes.
Rather than any deficiencies in the creativity or execution of their work, this shortfall in attention can probably be attributed to their focus on teaching at the expense of promoting their careers.
The best known of the two is Edward, 1919-1993, who like many artists of his generation flirted with surrealism before arriving at a highly original style, which can first be glimpsed in a still-rudimentary stage in “Lines of Life On Blue” (circa 1940s).
This approach, a kind of stylized cubism that becomes progressively less cubistic and more stylized over the decades, is defined in part by emphatically flattened perspective and bright, non-objective colors with an accent on vibrant pinks and oranges.
A wonderfully playful example of his mature style is “Trick or Treat” (circa mid- 1950s), a 2-by-3-foot oil on board offering a kind of almost cartoony aerial view of trick-or-treaters arriving at a classic Victorian house with an oversized, comically costumed figure standing next to it.
As his imaginative assortment of titles suggest, Marecak’s paintings draw on a wide range of metaphysical, supernatural, historical and mythological sources. A good example is the complex, multifaceted “Persephone in the Underworld” (1965), which, for him, is unusually dark in look and mood.
Unlike most regional painters whose work tends to relate to some national movement or major artist, it is hard to identify Marecak with anyone else. The notable exception is noted Swiss expressionist Paul Klee, who also did not fit neatly into the art continuum.
The resonance between the two artists is most readily apparent in “Cat and Bird” (1958), a whimsical, semi-abstract composition in which the two animals merge together in such a way that their eyes are on top of each other.
The oil on board bears an unavoidable resemblance in feel and spirit, if nothing else, to Klee’s famous 1928 work of the identical title (hardly a coincidence) at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Besides certain similarities in palette, sensibility and subject matter, Marecak shares Klee’s penchant for patterns and, perhaps most important, delineated, mosaic-like compositions. Examples of the latter include “Untitled” (circa late 1940s-early ’50s) to “Winter Witches Sing” (1969).
As inventive and appealing as Marecak’s paintings are, the extraordinary ceramic vessels and, to a lesser degree, the associated decorative objects by Donna (1922-1998) might ultimately prove to have more national significance.
It is hard to define her particular look or style. As evidenced by the 57 examples on view, she created vessels in a staggering variety of shapes and exterior decoration, using a combination of slips, glazes, enamels and lusters.
Examples range from a round jar (circa late 1960s) with a clean black-on-white geometric pattern to an oval bowl (circa 1974) with a mod woodgrain look to ornate, textured works, such as a patterned vase (circa 1991), using a rare sugar-water process.
What ties them together is amazingly consistent technical intricacy and complexity always combined with inspired artistry.
Two noteworthy Colorado artists. One engaging exhibition.
“marecak diptych”
Art. Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, 1311 Pearl St. Exhibition chronicling the careers of longtime Denver artists Edward and Donna Marecak. Through Dec. 16 (recently extended). 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. $6, $5 seniors, students and teachers. No one under 13 admitted. 303-832-8576 or .
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
