What could be the largest celebration ever of Colorado abstraction is continuing with a look at Colorado Springs’ contributions to the still-vibrant artistic current.
After the closing earlier this month of “Colorado Abstract” — an ambitious survey divided between two Denver art spaces — the spotlight has shifted to a similarly large-scale exhibition at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
Titled “Colorado Springs Abstract,” it focuses on 19 artists who have lived or worked in that city from the 1940s to the present, encompassing more than 100 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures.
Curator Blake Milteer was already contemplating a show that would examine some of the city’s top abstractionists last year when he heard about plans for Denver’s exhibition.
Spurred by that offering (to which the Fine Arts Center lent two pieces), he decided to expand the scope of the Colorado Springs overview and move up the dates so that it would serve as a kind of ancillary follow-up to what was shown in Denver.
This ambitious, smartly assembled show will interest fans of abstraction and devotees of the state’s art history, but how much it will appeal to the general museum-goer is open to question.
Some obvious names, such as Floyd Tunson and Pard Morrison, are missing, because the Fine Arts Center hopes to feature those artists in separate exhibitions later on. Others were deliberately deemphasized, such as Al Wynne, who was the subject of a recent retrospective at the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art.
The bulk of the show focuses on contemporary practitioners. Some have shown sporadically in Denver, but most are little known in the state outside of Colorado Springs.
Among the pleasant surprises are nine intimate paintings on wood panels by Corey Drieth, a native of northern Colorado who joined the art faculty at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in August 2007.
The structure of these loosely geometric compositions follows the grain of the wood, with such media as gouache, watercolor and ink used essentially to stain the wood, creating sensuous if subtle gradations of color.
Drieth’s “Saint No. 2” (2008), with its two sets of slightly slanted, slightly irregular stripes in gradations of pink and berry and a black swath down the middle, brings to mind the early, often simple watercolors of Georgia O’Keeffe.
Dawn Wilde seems to take up where Claude Monet left off with his late, semi-abstract paintings of water lilies. In her loosely impressionistic “Surface and Deep II” (1991), one of eight oils on canvas, aquatic reflections and what is being reflected blur in a disorienting yet striking whole.
A smaller section of the exhibition examines the 1940s-1960s, offering, in some cases, unexpected abstractions by artists who are better known for more representational work.
Charles Bunnell, for example, studied in 1927 and 1928 under American impressionist Ernest Lawson at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs, and is more recognized for his Western landscapes.
But he is represented here by six small abstractions, all intricately rendered pure abstractions, except for “Indian Dancers” (1954), in which deconstructed American Indian figures are woven into a lively, fractured composition.
Also highlighted is the little-known work of Ellen O’Brien — including a three-part series titled “Bone Construction” (late 1949) which echoes similar imagery by British artist Henry Moore — and a series of prints that Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer created in Colorado Springs, “seven convolutions” (1948).
The other artists represented are Eric Bransby, Bill Burgess, Mary Chenoweth, Don and Maxine Green, Bill Hyer, Robert Motherwell, Holly Parker, Herman Raymond, Betty Ross, Lew Tilley, James Trissel and Emerson Woeffler.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Colorado Springs Abstract”
Art. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St. An exhibition spotlighting 19 abstract artists who have lived or worked in Colorado Springs from the 1940s through the present. More than 100 paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures are on view. Through April 19. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. $10, $8.50 seniors and students and free for members and children 4 and younger. 719-634-5583 or
