Weisman Art Museum Touring Exhibits

Alfred Maurer: The First American Modern, an exhibition and catalogue, examines this underappreciated artist through the single largest public collection of his work, the Hudson and Ione Walker bequest at the University of Minnesota's Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum.

Alfred H. Maurer (1868-1932) was an active member of the American avant-garde in the early years of the twentieth century. His work before the turn of the century was shaped by academic training in New York and Paris. But it also reveals a debt to progressive painting trends of that day by echoing the styles of his contemporaries James McNeill Whistler and Robert Henri. About 1905 Maurer met Gertrude and Leo Stein, the American author and her brother, who were then sharing an apartment in Paris and building a daring collection of contemporary art. Many Americans were first exposed to modern painting through the Steins' collection of works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. Maurer-Alfy, as the Steins called him-changed direction in his own work through the impact of his friendship with the Steins and with other artists he met through them in the avant-garde expatriate community in Paris. By 1906, Maurer had abandoned this popular early work and turned to more radical, modern painting. He adopted the brilliant colors and broken forms of modern art, particularly of Matisse, whom he knew through the Stein circle. And, in turn, Maurer introduced legions of visiting American artists and collectors to the Steins.

Alfred Stieglitz, the impresario/photographer at the center of America's first avant-garde, gave Maurer a show at his New York gallery in 1909. There, Maurer was shown in the company of other Stieglitz regulars, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. As a Stieglitz circle member during the early decades of the twentieth century, Maurer was involved in the leading group of daring modernists in the United States.

Upon Maurer's return to New York in 1914, forced by the advent of the First World War, he lessened the radicalism of his painting. Like many artists, writers, and philosophers of the age, Maurer reacted to the experience of the brutal Great War with newfound restraint. New literature on the 1920s and 1930s places Maurer's art from 1915 until his death in 1932 (and that of the majority of his cohorts) within the broad cultural climate of a growing conservatism after World War I. Maurer's later still lifes and art deco-inspired women participate in this international shift toward representational subjects and more traditional themes after the harrowing experiences of the First World War.

Much new scholarship on early modernism has appeared since the last Maurer retrospective organized by the Smithsonian Institution in 1973. Alfred Maurer: The First American Modern, the first touring exhibition devoted to this artist since then, will reevaluate Maurer in the light of this new scholarship. Daphne Deeds, early American modernism scholar, contributed the scholarly essay for the ninety-page catalogue that includes generous color illustrations.

Works in the Exhibition: 21 oil or casein paintings on canvas; 10 large gouache, tempera, or watercolors on paper or board; 21 pen and ink, conté crayon, graphite or pastel drawings on paper.

Gallery Space: Requires approximately 350-400 lineal feet of gallery space.

Fee: The fee for 10-week bookings is $20,000. Venues are responsible for round trip shipping costs.