Kirkland Museum Collection: 100 Years of Colorado Art, - Drawings and Prints

KIRKLAND MUSEUM COLLECTION: 100 Years of Colorado Art
Drawings and Prints
Upper Gallery

For the first time ever the Arvada Center is partnering with Denver’s Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art to present a wide-ranging survey of Colorado art from the Kirkland’s extensive collection. Hugh Grant, Kirkland Director and Curator, comments: “It has been my longtime aim to organize a major presentation of Colorado art. Conversations with national and regional scholars have supported the judgment that Colorado ranks quite high for its art history among the 50 states. This extensive exhibition will demonstrate the sweep of artistic innovation that occurred in Colorado over 100 years and beyond. With this goal in mind, over the years I have gathered more than 350 Colorado artists in the Kirkland Collection.”

100 Years of Colorado Art begins in 1875, one year before Colorado became a state, with the early traditional work by Hamilton Hamilton, Helen Chain, Henry Elkins and Richard "Judge" Tallant initially presenting the story of the rich artistic history in the Centennial State. The diversity, breadth and power of our state's art history continues with such works as the impressionist paintings of John Thompson, Charles Partridge Adams, Elisabeth Spalding and Frank Vavra; Herbert Bayer, Julio de Diego and Mina Conant working in surrealism; Charles Bunnell, Edgar Britton and Edward Marecak developing referential abstraction; and finally the pure abstractions of Vance Kirkland, Al Wynne, Dorothea Dunlop and others. As a tribute to the continuing contribution of artists to Colorado history, the last section of the exhibition is devoted to works after 1975, many furthering these historic styles.

The exhibition is separated into the Center’s two largest galleries, painting and sculpture in the main gallery on the ground level and works on paper—that is drawings, lithographs, etchings, engravings, woodcuts and aquatints—in the upper gallery on the second-floor.

Hugh Grant apprises: “Visitors to the Arvada Center should be impressed with the legacy that Colorado artists have bequeathed to America.”

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 21, 6:00 – 9:00 pm, Free