Clyfford Still, master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. This characteristic is best illustrated by the fact that at the height of his acceptance, he pulled out of the New York art world and isolated himself in a rural part of…
For nearly three-quarters of the twentieth century, the heart of the art world in Colorado was in Colorado Springs. Artists were attracted to the then-charming town by its art-colony character, which was anchored by the Broadmoor Academy and its successor institution, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center School. Beginning in…
When I came to Denver in the 1980s, the Mile High City was a great place to be if you were a fan of architecture, as I am. At the time, the oil boom was transforming downtown into what it is today, with new high-rises popping up like mushrooms. The…
I’m sure that anyone who travels down the South Monaco Parkway as it skirts the fashionable Crestmoor neighborhood has noticed the dramatic — if a bit tumbledown — expressionist-style church (pictured) that occupies a two-acre site just north of the Ellsworth Avenue intersection. As long as I can remember, the…
Installation art, an aesthetic approach that uses space as one of its materials, dates back to the early twentieth century, but then it was a mere sidelight rather than the major art form it is today. Installation began to take off in the 1960s and 1970s, along with the rise…
Lawrence Argent, one of the four featured artists in Looking Up at Metro’s CVA (see review), has emerged over the last decade or so as the region’s premier conceptual artist. But unlike most of his fellow travelers in this brainiac pursuit, Argent has been successful in getting public commissions. Selection…
Curator Gwen Chanzit is the world’s foremost authority on the late artist Herbert Bayer, and she has put this knowledge to good use over the past couple of decades as the keeper of the Herbert Bayer Archive and Collection held by the Denver Art Museum. It was started while Bayer…
The contemporary art scene in Denver is made up of scores of galleries, but until thirty years ago, there were only a handful of exhibition spaces in town. It was in the 1970s that the foundations for what we have now were first laid. This was the time of the…
It’s hard not to notice all the public sculpture that’s come on line in the past few years. As I drive around, it seems like I’m always spotting something new. That’s what happened when I found myself out in Lakewood the other day. I was looking for an important mid-century…
Some very sad and shocking news came out of Boulder last week: Noted Colorado artist Jim Colbert was found dead in his Boulder home, an apparent suicide. Colbert, a contemporary realist painter with a political bent, had exhibited widely throughout the state since first coming to Colorado thirty years ago…
The new Frederic C. Hamilton Building may have created a lot of unanticipated problems for the Denver Art Museum, but its opening also kicked up much of the commercial art world a notch or two. I’ve said it several times before, but it’s still worth noting again: There’s never been…
For a while now, Bobbi Walker, owner of Walker Fine Art, has been pairing her main exhibits with selections by artists in her stable. With legendary Denver artist Roland Bernier being the featured attraction (see review), it was delightful to notice that Walker had also chosen to showcase another significant…
Last week I took in the recently unveiled permanent installation of the selections from the Herbert Bayer collection that are now displayed on the lower level of the Frederic C. Hamilton Building of the Denver Art Museum. The ad hoc exhibition spaces, which form the lobby of the conference room…
Next month the Clyfford Still Museum presents a sampling of its spectacular collection of work by the late abstract-expressionist giant, including “Self-Portrait,” from 1940 (detail pictured). The exhibit, being mounted at the Denver Art Museum, will be the first opportunity to see the CSM’s collection on display — and the…
Surely Homare Ikeda is on just about everyone’s list of the most interesting and important contemporary painters in the area. His work is in the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum, and he’s had pieces included in shows at any number of venues, particularly the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver…
The Singer Gallery of the Mizel Center (350 South Dahlia Street, 303-316-6360) is nominally a Jewish institution, although the programs are typically more secular than religious. However, the current exhibit, Fourteen Stations/Hey Yud Dalet, is thoroughly Jewish, and the subject is the Holocaust. On display are fourteen monumental charcoal drawings…
The Denver Art Museum’s still-new Frederic C. Hamilton Building has impacted the city — and the museum itself — in a wide range of ways, some good, some not so good. On the plus side is the unbelievable publicity the building has generated. The Daniel Libeskind-designed wing is estimated to…
The current Barbara Carpenter solo in the east room at Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200) is called Scapes, and considering the artist’s established track record, it’s something of a surprise. For nearly twenty years, Carpenter has been known for her abstract color photos, but for Scapes, she did…
The world-famous majestic scenery of the nearby Colorado Rockies — the gorgeous mountains, not the sorry baseball team — has attracted artists to our state for well over a century. In fact, Colorado, New Mexico and California all but cornered the market on Western landscape painting during the last part…
Modernist painter Janet Lippincott, who spent most of her career in Santa Fe, died on Wednesday, May 2. Born in New York City in 1918, Lippincott had a privileged childhood and lived for a time in Paris. Showing an early talent for art, she studied as a teenager at the…
In the late summer of 2002, Tyler Aiello and Monica Petty Aiello burst onto the Denver art scene as full-blown players. They pulled off this difficult feat by opening Studio Aiello in the nether reaches of what is now the River North Arts District, north of downtown. Studio Aiello was…
A month or so ago, I received a call from John Davenport, a noted local photographer and a boardmember of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center. He was annoyed because although CPAC had organized one show and co-organized another among the exhibits that had received Best of Denver awards in March,…
