Robert Motherwell was featured in the University Gallery in 1965, in a traveling exhibition from the Museum of Modern Art. Motherwell was part of the New York School (which included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning) and his work is likewise in the Abstract Expressionist vein. His distinctive style of painting with rich black blobs and swaths is on display in this poster for the show, and in the photographs from the opening.

The press release from the Gallery describes Motherwell and his style:

Robert Motherwell, one of the foremost contemporary painters, has developed along with his painting a unique eloquence and profundity in the use of collage. Subtleties of feeling and a spirit of tempered freedom are richly stated through the combination of papers and painting. This extraordinary sensitivity and cultivation of style are also shown in his drawings.

The Weisman Art Museum still has in its collection an important piece from Motherwell, called Mural Fragment. This piece caused some controversy when it first came to the University in 1965, to be displayed in the Duluth student center. Some students and faculty petitioned for its removal, stating “We feel a better example of modern art could have been selected, rather than this crude daub that looks like a deformed octopus alongside of two decayed dinosaur eggs.” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. The gallery director kept the painting up.
Read more about Motherwell and Mural Fragment here.

The Motherwell opening at the U Gallery

Press release and news clipping from The Daily

In the Ivory Tower literary magazine, student Roger Horrocks wrote of his visit to the Frank Pearson exhibit in 1965:

Entering the University Gallery (that claustrophobic white corridor which reminds me of a ship’s passageway), I was overwhelmed by the blaze of color pouring out from a series of diamond-shaped, T-shaped, and upside-down-L-shaped canvases. At first, I approved of the disciplined geometrical forms, but felt very irritated by the color. There appeared to be not the slightest attempt to blend or harmonize different tints, not one painting on which the eye could rest peacefully.

Horrocks did warm up to the paintings eventually, appreciating their optical illusion qualities.
The painter Frank Pearson was a faculty in the University of Minnesota Art Department at the time of his show. Pearson resigned suddenly after only one and a half years on the faculty, and if you’d like to know why, take a look at the Peter Busa entry on this blog and venture a guess…

 
Frank Pearson talking with Sidney Simon (director of the U Gallery), and student Roger Horrocks. On the right, a photograph from the opening.

Color images of Pearson’s paintings from 1965. The color images have cracked, while the black and white images of the show have held up.

Upon reading the news of the recent passing of Jerome Liebling, photographer and former U of M art faculty member, I looked back through the WAM Files to see if his work had been featured in an exhibit at the University Gallery.

A folder, titled, “Photography – Jerry Liebling, Feb. 27 – Mar. 21, 1951” was found in Box 3. The folder contents included a catalogue, titled, “A Photographic Document of the Minnesota Scene” and a typed statement from the artist, which includes insights on his art form:

The WAM permanent collection contains some of Liebling’s photography, noteably of other U of M art faculty.

The lead-up to Peter Busa’s exhibition at the University Gallery in 1966 held some dramatic twists and turns. Busa was a professor of art at the University of Minnesota at the time. Just 3 months before his show was to be installed in the University Gallary, a vandal broke into his studio and slashed, burned, and otherwise damaged or destroyed many of Busa’s paintings.

Busa worked quickly to repair and repaint the canvases that could be salvaged, and created new works to fill in for destroyed ones. His solo show went forward as planned, somewhat miraculously.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of this story is that the “prime suspect” was another member of the University Art Department faculty… my, what a tangled web we weave.

Photos from the Peter Busa opening at the University Gallery

Newspaper clippings from the file about the exhibition and vandalism

Thanks to the keen eyes and wits of the University Archives staff, we found a trove of posters for University Gallery exhibitions throughout its history. They are beautiful remembrances of the shows, particularly many of the colorful posters from the 1960s. We’ll be featuring some of these posters throughout the next few months, along with images from the gallery and openings.

Ernst Josephson‘s drawings and paintings were exhibited in the University Gallery in 1965. The poster features a stylized image of Josephson himself. He was born in 1851 in Sweden, and in 1887 was diagnosed with schizophrenia—the poster design above seems to hint at his state of mind. During this time his style altered, becoming more abstract (his work was later seen as a pre-cursor to the styles of Matisse and Picasso). One reviewer of the U Gallery show in the Minneapolis Tribune says:

Josephson’s art is full of idiosyncrasy, of drawing things the “wrong” way that turn out to be right…. The drawings are a strange world in themselves. Josephson’s line is quixotic, kinetic, yet sustains an airy delicacy and a fine judgment in filling the rectangle with wiry strength.

Opening for Ernst Josephson in 1965. Sidney Simon, the director of the U Gallery, can be seen in the image on the left.

Minnesota is home to a large number of descendants of Scandinavian and Finnish immigrants. Folks here love their pickled herring and carved Swedish horses. I’m sure this popular interest in the heritage and history served as an impetus behind the University Gallery’s 1979 exhibition Scandinavian Wood. The exhibition, which also toured to other locations in the Midwest, showcased the ornate woodworking crafts of the Scandinavian and Finnish tradition. The catalogue states:

“Wood is to Scandinavia as marble was to Greece. It is the building material par excellence. It could be dug out, steamed and bent, splintered, carved, gouged, hammered, and made into a myriad of useful things. In an effort to define the importance of wood in Scandinavia, the exhibition has been grouped according to six different aspects of daily life requiring the use of wooden objects.”

The six categories the curators chose are displayed nicely in these charming exhibition photos I found in the files: Storage, Clothes, Music, Tools, Food, and Whimsy. Storage includes items such as bentwood boxes, baskets, canteens. Clothes shows looms and tools for washing clothes. Food shows spoons and bowls and the like. Tools displays augers, knives and of course, ski poles, while Music includes violins, a horn, and a flute. Whimsy (my favorite category) includes the toy horse, ornaments, a fan, and Värmland trolls.

Scandinavian Wood exhibition