PROVINCETOWN
Selections from the Julie Heller Gallery
April 15 to June 14, 2011
Curated by Lydia Vivante
Milton Avery, Fritz Bultman, Oliver Chaffee, Carole Ann Danner, Nanno de Groot, Joseph De Martini, Miguel Deveze, Edwin Dickinson, Joseph Garlock, Ada Gilmore, V. Hansen, Hans Hofmann, Jones 1879, Karl Knaths, Betty Lane, Blanche Lazzell, Myron Lechay, Lucy L’Engle, Clare Leighton, Charles Logasa, Philip Malicoat, Leo Manso, Irving Marantz, Mudheads, Mary Mullineux, Ray Nolin, Heinrich Pfeiffer, Flora Schoenfeld, Ferol Sibley Warthen, Agnes Weinrich, Sol Wilson, Marguerite Zorach, William Zorach
Elisabeth Ivers Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition Provincetown: Selections from the Julie Heller Gallery, featuring painting, sculpture, and works on paper from this important and unique gallery, with a particular focus on early Provincetown painters such as Edwin Dickinson, Karl Knaths, and Marguerite Zorach. It will also have works by anonymous artists, objects from the gallery as well as the work of two contemporary painters Carole Ann Danner and Ray Nolin.
Provincetown has been an important American art colony since the late 19th century, having inspired works that capture this remote and picturesque seaside town at the tip of Cape Cod while also channeling many of the last century’s modern trends, upheavals and international art movements. The town began to attract artists after 1873, when the Old Colony Railroad made it easily accessible. The artistic atmosphere gained intensity with the influx of noted artists and teachers including Charles Hawthorne, who in 1899 founded the town’s first art school. Decades later Hans Hofmann started teaching over the summer months and made an equally significant contribution to the cultural legacy of this Massachusetts landmark.
The surge in interest in painting en plein air – following the French Impressionists’ lead – resulted in its significant use as a teaching tool in Provincetown, what with its miles of dunes and beaches, busy wharves and fishing piers. In this environment Charles Hawthorne developed and taught his students to paint what is called the ‘mudhead’ portrait, so called because individual facial features and details are represented by color rather than figurative drawing. The interaction of what Hawthorne called the “spots” of color – traditionally applied with a palette knife – somehow made for a very intense and immediate expressiveness. This show marks one of the few times that mudhead studies have appeared in an exhibition.
The Julie Heller Gallery was established in 1980 and is dedicated to the work of American artists affiliated with Provincetown. Housed in the former Box Office Museum of the Provincetown Playhouse, it is the oldest continually run gallery in Provincetown. A second space opened recently in the town’s East End. Both galleries are just steps away from the beach and piers where Hawthorne taught his classes.
Lydia Vivante has worked with Julie Heller since the summer of 2009. Before that she worked for more than ten years at the Fisher Landau Center for Art in New York City. Ms. Vivante was raised on the Cape and lives there all year round.
Elisabeth Ivers Gallery opened in January 2011 as a project oriented gallery. For further information please contact Lis Ivers at lis@elisabethivers.com or 212-206-7027.