DALLAS, TX.- It is no small thing that a women’s college in the small town of Denton, Texas started the first studio art program in a Texas public university system. And it is not insignificant to know that most of the teachers for this early studio program at Texas State College for Women (TSCW) studied art at Columbia University in New York.

Art historians in our region discovered that the notable painter, educator, Arthur Wesley Dow, taught these future Denton educators. He also taught Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Sheeler. These future teachers also studied with the great Modernists such as Hans Hoffman and Laszlo Maholy-Nagy. The tendrils of Modernism spread from these women to their students at TSCW, later known as Texas Woman’s University (TWU).

Exhibition

This remarkable history of a small-town college in North Texas is a great story that PDNB Gallery will help illustrate with the opening exhibition of their Fall season, Denton Modernism: 1940 – 1980.

This exhibition will include both photographs and paintings.

As a gallery that specializes in photography and photo-based art, it has become very familiar with the important artist, Carlotta Corpron, who was one of the students of Modernism at Columbia University that taught at TWU. Carlotta’s photographs have long been documented in the history of photography.

Carlotta’s influence in abstraction is another important part of the school’s history when she studied under the esteemed Bauhaus artists Maholy-Nagy and György Kepes, who came to Denton as artists-in-residence. Corpron had a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1953, giving her the recognition she deserved for being one of a handful of women photographers working in abstraction.

For the past 20 years, PDNB has discovered and promoted students of Carlotta's that could have been forgotten.

PDNB’s latest discovery of work by a student of Carlotta Corpron will be included in this exhibition. Margaret Hicks, who received art degrees from both TWU and North Texas State University, later becoming the Director of the Art Department at Navarro College in Corsicana, where she retired. Her early photographs created under the tutelage of Carlotta are featured in this show, as well as paintings and color photographs made later in her career.

Paintings and photographs by various artists from this era in Denton will be included: Carlotta Corpron, Ida Lansky, Barbara Maples, TWU teacher Edith Brisac, Clarence Tripp and more. Institute of Design artist and teacher, György Kepes, will also be included. He was a friend and mentor of Carlotta's, and the work exhibited will show the thread of abstraction that Carlotta weaves into her own art and teaching.

PDNB
Denton Modernism: 1940 – 1980
August 26th, 2023 - Octoer 7th, 2023
Artist Reception: Saturday, August 26th from 5 – 8 pm