Human Forms in the Abstract On View at Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Press Room

Monday, October 18, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Sharyn Turner
336.758.5580
sturner@reynoldahouse.org
or Sarah R. Smith
336.758.5524
smithsr@reynoldahouse.org

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (October 12, 2010) "Figuring Abstraction," a new exhibition of 20th-century works from the Reynolda House collection, will be on view in the West Bedroom Gallery of the museum from Oct. 30, 2010 through Aug. 28, 2011. This small, focused exhibition of 9 works of art will include paintings, prints, and sculpture dating from 1938 to 1974.

During the mid-20th century, artists became increasingly interested in exploring the relationship between abstract painting and the human form. Sculptures by David Smith and Alexander Calder and paintings by Lee Krasner and Stuart Davis, among others, each differently contend with the incorporation and negation of the figure in an abstract composition. Modernism is predicated on this tension; the "birth"—to use Lee Krasner's title—of abstraction can be located in the use of representational subject matter to non-representational effect. These works all use the language of the body as the basis for a new language of art.

"Figuring Abstraction" is included in the cost of admission to the museum. For information about this and other exhibitions on view at Reynolda House, please call 336.758.5150 or visit reynoldahouse.org.

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation's premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its permanent collection. Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features traveling and original exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and other events. The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150.

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