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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2007

Harn Museum Modern Collection
American, European and Latin American art

GAINESVILLE, Fla . - The Harn Museum modern collection includes nearly 1,000 works spanning the mid-19th century through the first half of the 20th century. The collection is divided into three geographically defined sub-collections: American art, European art and Latin American art. American art is further divided into three genre categories: painting, sculpture and prints and drawings.

A major strength of the modern collection is its representation of American art from the 1910s through the 1940s. Areas of special importance include landscapes, urban themes, social realist themes and WPA prints. These works represent many significant movements in American art such as Impressionism, early Modernism, Geometric Abstraction, Regionalism and Urban and Social Realism.

The core of the collection was established in the early 1990s through a major gift from William H. and Eloise R. Chandler of more than 50 paintings by such well-known American artists as George Bellows, John Steuart Curry, Philip Evergood, Rockwell Kent, Leon Kroll, Jack Levine, John Marin and John Sloan. During the last decade, the Harn has added significantly to the quality and depth of these holdings through purchases and generous gifts. These important contributions have continued to shape the Museum’s representation of modern art in new and exciting directions.

American paintings from the 19th century include fine examples by William Morris Hunt, Herman Herzog, William Aiken Walker and J. Alden Weir. Major movements in American art of the first half of the 20th-century represented in the collection include Impressionism (Childe Hassam and Theodore Robinson), Post-Impressionism (Maurice Prendergast) and early Modernism and Abstraction (Milton Avery, Francis Criss, Preston Dickinson, Werner Drewes, Lyonel Feininger, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Albert Gallatin, Raymond Jonson, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ben Shahn and Joseph Stella). The collection also includes important examples of early American Realism (George Bellows, Arthur Davies, George Luks, Kenneth Hayes Miller and John Sloan), Urban and Social Realism (Isabel Bishop, Jonas Lie, Reginald Marsh, Everett Shinn and Raphael Soyer), and Regionalism (George Biddle, John Steuart Curry, Robert Gwathmey, Stuart Purser and Paul Sample).

In addition, several works address the importance of large-scale mural paintings in the 1930s and 1940s. The collection includes a group of mural studies by regionalist painters Hollis Holbrook, Bert Marvin and Frank Mechau, as well as by the African-American modernist Hale Woodruff.

The collection of modern American sculpture is small yet growing. These works represent the concerns of modernists who experimented with color, line and space and sought a balance between realism and abstraction. Artists represented include Alexander Archipenko, Jose de Creeft, John Flannagan, Gaston Lachaise, Elie Nadelman, Louise Nevelson, John Storrs and William Zorach, among others. Many of these works are dynamic studies of the human figure that challenge traditional concepts regarding the function and appearance of art.

A significant collection of prints from the 1930s and 1940s, known as the Carnell Collection, complements the Harn’s important holdings of American painting and sculpture. The Carnell Collection includes 175 prints representing more than 75 artists who were employed (c. 1935-1943) in the New York City Graphic Arts Division of the WPA/FAP. Examples include lithographs, engravings, woodcuts, wood engravings, etchings, aquatints and silkscreen prints by key figures in American printmaking such as Don Freeman, Jacob Kainen, Louis Lozowick, Nan Lurie, Ann Nooney, Leonard Pytlak, Joseph Vogel and Hyman Warsager.

Additional American printmakers who are represented in the Harn’s modern collection include Peggy Bacon, Leonard Baskin, Aaron Bohrod, Adolph Dehn, Emil Ganso, William Gropper, Rockwell Kent, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Beatrice Mandelman, John Marin and Andree Ruellan.

The modern collection also includes a small group of important drawings by American artists Oscar Bluemner, Preston Dickinson, Raymond Jonson, Willem de Kooning, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Everett Shinn, Joseph Stella and Abraham Walkowitz.

Highlights from the Harn’s holdings of European art include French Impressionist painter Claude Monet’s landscape, Champ d’avoine (1890), and French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s Standing Fauness, from his famed Gates of Hell Project (1880-1917).

The collection of European art also features drawings by Johann Heinrich Fussli and Max Pechstein as well as an extensive collection of prints dating c. 1500-1950 from England, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. These include prints in various media such as engravings, etchings, lithographs and woodcuts. Among the artists represented are Pierre Bonnard, Theodore de Bry, Salvador Dalí, Honoré Daumier, Anthony van Dyck, Albrecht Dürer, Theodore Gericault, Francisco Goya, William Hogarth, John Martin, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-August Renoir, Rembrandt van Rijn, Salvator Rosa and Georges Rouault.

Holdings in Latin American art include prints by such well-known artists as Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo and Guatemalan artist Carlos Mérida. The Harn’s collection of Latin American art continues to grow through important purchases and gifts. Recent acquisitions include paintings by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García and drawings by the Mexican modernist painter Diego Rivera.   

Media contact :
Tami Wroath, Director of Marketing and Public Relations
Harn Museum of Art
352.392.9826 x116
twroath@harn.ufl.edu