|
|
|
|
|
|
March 22, 2002 - PRESS RELEASE
BUFFALO, NY --- The Albright-Knox Art Gallery will premier the first retrospective of the works of Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978) in 20 years, Saturday, April 27, 2002. Edwin Dickinson: Dreams and Realities consists of 68 paintings and 26 works on paper -- many of Dickinson’s major symbolical paintings, numerous "premier coups" landscapes, as well as self-portraits, nudes, and still lifes -- from throughout his career. The artist fluctuated between working on the monumental symbolical paintings that took years to complete and the landscapes executed on the spot in fewer than three hours. In addition, a broad selection of graphite drawings reveals another side of Dickinson's creativity. The exhibition will be on view through July 14.
Dickinson described himself as "a general painter in oil," and his large-scale, symbolical paintings, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits comprise a formidable, though still under-appreciated career. Although grounded in representational subject matter, the history of art and old masters, his work could veer toward abstraction, an enigmatic and fantastic content.
Among his American forebears, John LaFarge, Elihu Vedder, and Albert Pinkham Ryder were most like him in their tendency to combine representation with subjective vision. Later in life, Dickinson's originality was acknowledged by a younger generation of abstract expressionists, who included his work in their juried exhibitions at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in New York City. Steadfast in his vision regardless of changes in style and taste, Dickinson remains a distinctive figure in the annals of American art.
Buffalo and Sheldrake in Western New York State were central to the artist's life and work. In Buffalo, where his family moved when he was six years old, he learned to draw and first studied painting. Here too, some of the friends he made became lifelong patrons and the environs of both locations had a lasting impact on his work. All his life his spiritual homes were the end of Cape Cod, from Wellfleet to Provincetown, and the Finger Lakes of his birth, especially Sheldrake, where he spent boyhood summers at his father's cottage on Lake Cayuga.
Year after year he returned to Sheldrake and Buffalo, where he did his first teaching in 1916 at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy and had his first solo exhibition at the then Albright Art Gallery in 1927. That same year his large composition, An Anniversary of 1920-21, donated to the Gallery by the Sawyer family, marked the first major work to enter a public collection. Dickinson's close association with the Albright-Knox and the city of Buffalo is the catalyst for this retrospective, organized by Gallery Curator Douglas Dreishpoon.
In the lecture Edwin Dickinson: Dreams and Realities to be presented
Sunday, April 28 at
2 p.m., Dreishpoon will discuss Dickinson’s life, work, and career from
his years as a student in Provincetown, Massachusetts, during the 1920s to his
later years in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
An illustrated publication documents the exhibition, with a text by Dreishpoon that addresses Dickinson's career in general, its ebb and flow over the course of 50 years. An essay by Mary Abell focuses on his teaching career and educational methods, a discussion of which has been noticeably absent from the literature. A third essay by Francis O’Connor dovetails a discussion of Dickinson’s many self-portraits with an analysis of some of his major symbolical paintings. The book, published by Hudson Hills Press in association with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, also includes contributions by John Ashbery, Elaine de Kooning, Norman Geske, and Michael Mazur – insiders who write in appreciation of Dickinson's work and distinguished place in the history of American Art.
At the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, an informative audio tour of the exhibition is available free of charge.
The exhibition and its accompanying publication are supported by a major grant from The Henry Luce Foundation, with additional support from The Judith Rothschild Foundation. In Buffalo, the exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Ferguson Electric Construction Co., Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase, and Walsh Duffield & M Insurance, Inc. The audio tour is made possible, in part, through the generous support of The John R. Oishei Foundation and The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation.
After its premier at the Albright-Knox, the exhibition will be hosted by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (September 14 – November 24, 2002); National Academy of Design, New York (January 29 – April 13, 2003); Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock (May 9 – July 20, 2003); and the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska (August 29 – November 9, 2003).