SALT LAKE CITY, UT.- The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) presents Trevor Southey: Reconciliation, a retrospective exhibition of the most significant works from each period of former Utah-based artist Trevor Southey’s (b. 1940) career. Guest curated by Day Christensen, in collaboration with UMFA Associate Curator of Art of Utah and the West, Donna Poulton, the exhibition will be on view in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building at the University of Utah from October 21, 2010–February 13, 2011.

Two thousand square feet of gallery space on the UMFA’s first floor is devoted to Trevor Southey: Reconciliation. The exhibition comprises more than 60 works created over the last 50 years, including oil paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, which collectively create a profoundly biographical body of work.

The exhibition is designed to trace four distinct passages in Southey’s life that have defined the essential qualities of his character and art.

The first room in the gallery space explores his youth in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and early art education in England. The second passage focuses on his life as a married, practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his desire for a utopian lifestyle created around family, farmstead, and art.

Works in the third section reflect Southey’s decision to acknowledge his homosexuality in 1982, which was not a repudiation of his previous life, but rather an attempt to acknowledge his own identity. In the final two rooms, Southey’s reconciliation of his life decisions are explored through his evolving artistic approach to the human form.

“One of the most striking and endearing qualities of the artist Trevor Southey is his candor and honesty—traits that characterize not only his personality, but are richly reflected in the sculpture, etchings, and paintings in this evocative retrospective,” said Donna Poulton.

“The UMFA has been planning Trevor Southey’s retrospective exhibition for two years, and we are delighted to present the work of this talented and much-loved artist,” said Gretchen Dietrich, executive director of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. “Southey’s art—rooted so deeply in the human figure—is an amazingly rich and lyrical exploration of what it means to be a human being.”