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abstraction

Curator's Corner

Pointillism! Sally Hazelet Drummond

Monday, April 14, 2025 | Karl Cole

It may not be something that you have thought about art historically, but believe me, Pointillism—the brilliant Neo-Impressionist painting technique of the late 1800s—did not die with Paul ...

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Curator's Corner

National Gardening Day: Arshile Gorky

Monday, April 14, 2025 | Karl Cole

In 1986, President Reagan established National Garden Week, which was first celebrated in 1987 from 12 through 16 April. In 2002 the National Gardening Association insisted that the entire month of Ap ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Kenneth Noland

Thursday, April 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

Kenneth Noland was part of the Post Painterly Abstraction group of Color Field artists who sought to distance themselves from the gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism. His epiphany moment came, ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Victor Vasarely

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | Karl Cole

The study of the optical effects possible in the manipulation of color and shape that began with the Neo-Impressionists Georges Seurat (1895–1891) and Paul Signac (1863–1935) in the late 1 ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Gino Severini

Monday, April 7, 2025 | Karl Cole

Gino Severini was a Futurist painter, writer, mosaicist and set designer. Severini took the Cubism-offshoot movement of Futurism into total abstraction. He exhausted his commitment to Futurism by the ...

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Curator's Corner

Women's History Month: Janet Sobel

Monday, March 31, 2025 | Karl Cole

It is not often that we discover an artist whose work may have had a major impact on the direction of American art. But Janet Sobel is one such artist. You think Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) was ...

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Curator's Corner

Women's History Month: Gertrude Greene

Monday, March 3, 2025 | Karl Cole

Among the many women artists who deserve recognition in the history of art, Gertrude Greene is certainly toward the top of my list. She was a standup, persistent modernist during the difficult economi ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Eduardo MacEntyre

Thursday, February 20, 2025 | Karl Cole

The complex linear patterns in MacEntyre's Generative Paintings were reminiscent of the nautilus designs of Leonardo Fibonacci (1175–1250), an Italian mathematician, whose designs were based on ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Carlo Carrà

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 | Karl Cole

Carlo Carrà's work reflects the use of the Impressionist palette of pure colors by the Pointillists, while his segmenting of the subject to indicate movement reflects a similar aesthetic concer ...

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Curator's Corner

Black History Month: Woodruff, Lewis, Jennings

Monday, February 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

My celebration of Black History Month continues with three more artists who are very important in the history of art—Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and Wilmer Jennings. They represent the divergen ...

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Curator's Corner

Black History Month: Herring, Tolliver, Middleton

Monday, February 3, 2025 | Karl Cole

I’m kicking off National Black History Month with artists I find fascinating. Their styles are extraordinary, and their names are probably not on the tips of every art historian’s tongue&m ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Barnett Newman

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 | Karl Cole

Barnett Newman’s earliest paintings share the organic/biomorphic abstract forms of Mark Rothko’s early works from the 1940s. By 1946, however, his forms began to be more abstract and shed ...

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Curator's Corner

Visualizing Cold in Works of Art

Monday, January 27, 2025 | Karl Cole

It probably does not need saying by now, but the last week has been quite cold in New England. I thought it might be interesting to see how artists visually interpret the idea of “cold.”&n ...

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Curator's Corner

Jackson Pollock Month

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 | Karl Cole

The birthday of New York School painter Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) is January 28th, so I’m going to call January 2025 "Curator's Corner Jackson Pollock Month." I often feel that ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Carlos Mérida

Monday, December 2, 2024 | Karl Cole

In 1941 Mérida was invited to teach frescoes at the University of Austin in Texas. He remained there two years. Tempo in Red Major dates from that visit. It certainly reflects, in its title the ...

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Curator's Corner

Election Year Antidote: Robert Delaunay

Monday, November 4, 2024 | Karl Cole

There is seriously no better distraction from a nerve-wracking election year than to look at beautiful art. By now you know my idea of “beautiful” is FULL OF VIBRANT COLOR. Robert Delaunay ...

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