INFORMATION

Clementine Hunter: From Cotton Fields to Canvas
November 4, 2000-January 28, 2001

Clementine Hunter has been called a primitive artist, a folk artist, a naive painter, and a memory painter. She is considered one of the most important self-taught artists in the United States, although she was in her fifties before she rendered her first paintingÐÐon a window shade. Hunter was born in 1886 and lived most of her life on Melrose Plantation in the Cane River country of Louisiana. With a bold, vibrant style, she documented plantation life through colorful paintings of subjects such as cotton picking, wash day, and church scenes.

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota is pleased to present Clementine Hunter: From Cotton Fields to Canvas, November 4, 2000 through January 28, 2001. The exhibition features a selection of some 30 works recently donated to the museum by local collector Dr. Hugh Schoephoerster. A schoolteacher and professor of education, Schoephoerster first met Hunter in 1975 and was immediately charmed by her wit and energy. Through subsequent visits to Louisiana over the next 13 years, he developed a significant friendship with the artist and amassed a rich collection of her work. The exhibition is co-curated by Minneapolis artists Arlene Burke Morgan; Judi Petkau, youth programs coordinator at the Weisman; and Patricia McDonnell, the Weisman's curator.

Hunter was the granddaughter of a slave and her early years were little different from the pre-emancipation lives of her forebears. Through youth, two marriages, the raising of five children, and until well into middle age, she worked as a field hand. She arrived at Melrose Plantation as a teenager. Melrose was a large operation, and due to the interests of its owners, John and Cammie Henry it was home to many writers and artists.

In the 1920s Hunter was brought into the "big house" as a cook and a maid to Miss Cammie. Some years later she came upon discarded tubes of paint left behind by a visiting artist and decided that she could "mark" a picture if she "sat her mind to it." Encouraged by art critic and plantation library curator Francois Mignon, she painted with a relentless passion from that moment on. She used as her canvas virtually anything suitable that she could findÐÐcardboard boxes, soap cartons, brown paper bags, pieces of lumber, wine bottles, scraps of plywood.

HunterÕs work documented her life experience. Her imagery generally falls into five categoriesÐÐplantation work such as cotton picking and working in the fields; leisure time at fish fries and honky tonks; religious scenes of church, weddings, and baptisms; still lifes; and abstractions. Living in a culture richly influenced by African and African American traditions of storytelling, music, religion, dance, and visual art, her paintings reflect this context not only in her choice of subject matter, but also in her use of pattern, bold primary color, visual rhythm, and balance.

At a price of 25 cents a piece, Hunter would only sell paintings to people she liked. Her first regional recognition was at the New Orleans Arts and Crafts Show in 1949. In 1953 she was featured in LOOK magazine, bringing her unprecedented recognition for a southern African-American woman artist. In 1955 Northwestern State College in Natchitoches held its first-ever exhibition of a local artist and featured Hunter. Segregation practices did not allow her to view her own exhibition, but a friend who worked for the college brought her in when the gallery was closed to the public.

At her death in early 1988, Hunter was 101 years old and had created a celebrated body of work numbering over 5,000 pieces. Since her death, acknowledgment of her unique contribution to American art history continues to grow. Her artwork is in the collections of major museums across the country including The High Museum in Atlanta, The Dallas Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C.

Clementine Hunter: From Cotton Fields to Canvas is supported in part by The W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter of The Links, Inc. The Institute of Museum and Library Services supports the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. Additional operating support is provided by the General Mills Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Colleagues of the Weisman Art Museum, and the University of Minnesota.