GLENS FALLS, NY.- Two iconic American artists, Andy Warhol and Winslow Homer, are being featured in major exhibitions at The Hyde Collection this summer.

The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol: 1973-1987 features 50 drawings, some of which are on view to the public for the very first time. This exhibition has been organized by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Homer’s America: Selections from the Permanent Collection present approximately two dozen works, including engravings, etchings and paintings that chronicle American life. Both exhibits open on June 21.

Drawing was central to Warhol’s creative output. Throughout his lifetime, Warhol created thousands of drawings as he observed and documented the world around him. As a youth in Pittsburgh, Warhol drew people and landmarks in his neighborhood. Working as a commercial artist in New York in the 1950s, Warhol produced playful and delicate ballpoint pen portraits and still lifes. In the early 1960s, Warhol created his trademark drawings of newspaper headlines, product advertisements, celebrities, and dollar bills that made him a major figure in pop art.

“Andy Warhol loved to draw, perhaps more than any of the countless other ways he created works of art,” said Eric Shiner, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. “Starting as a child under the watchful eye of his mother, Julia, who also happened to be a skilled drawer, Warhol first came to fame in the world of commercial illustration through his unique blotted line drawing style. Throughout his career, drawing remained a key aspect of his studio practice, and in the 1970s and 1980s, it became a form of therapy for him, in that he would go to the Factory, alone, for several hours each Sunday simply to draw and relax. This exhibition shows all of the many facets of Warhol’s drawing style over the decades, and in so many ways establishes his drawing skills in the upper echelons of art and art history.”

Warhol’s late drawings, from 1974 through 1987, employ a confident and fluid contour line to depict many of the same motifs of his iconic paintings: celebrity portraits, flowers, and ads. Warhol often used an overhead projector to trace the source image onto heavy drawing paper. This technique, used throughout his lifetime, allowed Warhol to produce “machine-made” lines that are equally automatic and expressive, impersonal and intimate.

The Warhol exhibit runs through September 27 in the Wood Gallery.

Homer’s America: Selections from the Permanent Collection, includes Winslow Homer works drawn from The Hyde’s permanent collection. Homer was one of the foremost painters in nineteenth-century America, renowned for landscapes and authentic representations of everyday life, particularly in his illustrations. Homer’s insightful treatment of his subjects, his point of view, and style captured life’s fleeting moments and were designed to engage a specific audience – the American people. 

In 1857, at age 21, Homer began his artistic career working as a freelance illustrator. As the printing process using cylinder presses was refined in the 1850s, demand increased for content and illustrations for mass-produced publications. Many of Homer’s images were developed into wood engravings for popular newspapers and magazines such as Ballou's Pictorial, Every Saturday, and Harper’s Weekly.

More than 200 of Homer’s images were published between 1857 and 1875. He earned acclaim as an artist-reporter covering the Civil War, providing sketches of battlefield views and soldiers and affording Americans access to stories of the tragic conflict. Five works on this subject are included in the exhibition. Homer’s America also includes many of the artist’s better-known prints of children at play, such as Snap the Whip, and Winter, A Skating Scene, among others.

As a naturalist, Homer painted what he observed, the details of the landscapes he created providing a visceral impression of a locale, whether it be the summers he spent in the Adirondacks or winters in Florida. The artist appreciated elements of nature – the ocean, forests, and mountains – and when man appeared in Homer’s work, the subject assumed an energy and heroic quality that were vital to the impact of the work.

Homer’s America: Selections from the Permanent Collection will be on exhibit in the Hoopes Gallery through September 16.