EASTON, MD.- The Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD has recently published two exhibition catalogues on its current exhibitions, Miró in New York, 1947: Miró, Hayter and Atelier 17 and Norma Morgan: Enchanted World.
Miró in New York, 1947: Miró, Hayter and Atelier 17 explores a group of little-known etchings Joan Miró made with influential British printmaker Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, the New York outpost of his seminal printmaking studio in Paris. Both Miró and Hayter were key participants in the community of artists in Paris who ultimately formed the core of international movements in contemporary art from the 1930s to 1945. The exhibition is open to the public through July 8, 2021 and viewable online through August 1, 2021.
Mehves Lelic, Curator at the Academy Art Museum comments, “The catalogue explores a transformative moment in the history of printmaking when Spanish artist Joan Miró visits New York and enters an exciting world of experimentation and collaboration at Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter’s famed printmaking studio. Together, the artists at the Atelier embrace the importance of process and discover new frontiers in the medium.”
“The rich color gradients, dynamic lines and overlapping textures in the prints in this exhibition may offer encouragement and respite as we recover from this past year’s pandemic. Many of the prints in the exhibition were created soon after the end of World War II, by artists who experienced its tumult and horrors first-hand. The historical and artistic underpinnings of the works in Miró in New York, 1947 are complex, and beckon the viewer to connect with them on multiple levels, from an understanding of the historical context of the convergence of so many great artists at Atelier 17, to what experimental methods such as cutting into a printing plate, using soldering wire, and achieving simultaneous color printing mean for the present moment of printmaking in contemporary art,” she adds.
Works are drawn from the Museum’s Permanent Collection and loans from Dolan/Maxwell Gallery, Philadelphia, and private collections. The exhibition catalogue includes the wide breadth of experimental and collaborative work done at Atelier 17, with pieces by Fred Becker, Terry Haass, Gabor Peterdi, Anne Ryan, Yves Tanguy, Helen Phillips, Alice Trumbull-Mason, and others, all of whom worked in Atelier 17 alongside Hayter and Miró.
Norma Morgan: Enchanted World is an exhibition of the late artist’s prints, watercolors, paintings and drawings. The exhibition highlights Morgan’s ability to convey a spiritual experience through her landscape and portraiture work and to effortlessly transition from formal observation to magical wonder. The exhibition will be open to the public through August 1, 2021.
Lelic explains, “The planning of Norma Morgan: Enchanted World started out with a simple aim: to do the artist’s profoundly compelling work justice. As a young artist and a student of Stanley William Hayter, whose printmaking legacy is explored in-depth in the concurrent exhibition Miró in New York, 1947, Norma Morgan was responsive to contemporary ideas and open to advancing her technical skills. She was also a pioneer as one of the two known African-American women to work at the studio.”
“This exhibition seeks to highlight the overall significance of Morgan’s prolific career of over 50 years, during which the artist conjured an entire magical realm, from homages to Civil Rights icons to haunting observations of the landscapes of Great Britain and the Catskills. The rich textures and subtle details in her work parallel the imposing yet quiet vistas she was fond of and which she depicted with remarkable technical skill and fluency across multiple mediums.”
The Academy Art Museum is presenting this exhibition with loans from the Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art, Mr. Donnell and Mrs. Dorothea Walker Collection of African American Art, Mr. Freddie Styles, Mr. Darryl Love, and Dolan/Maxwell. The exhibition catalog features essays by art historians Dr. Amalia Amaki and Dr. Christina Weyl.
