In the 1960s, artists began exploring the possibilities of pure abstraction with renewed energy. Their approach to art-making was radically experimental, rigorously objective and akin to visual research.
Some of America聮s best-known "pure abstractionists" will be featured in a unique exhibit, "Geometric Abstraction: Selections From the Colorado Collection," on display at the Montrose Public Library from Nov. 12 through Feb. 12, 1999. Organized and circulated by the CU Art Galleries at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the exhibit is being made possible by the CU in Residence program.
Included in the 27-piece exhibit are works by Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Daniel Buren, Ilya Bolotowsky, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella and others. Their work underscored the process and the pleasures of vision 聳 of optics as well as aesthetics -- and they reflected the dynamic energy and the expansiveness of their era.
"The artists represented in this exhibition highlight the act of seeing," said Susan Krane, director of the CU Art Galleries. "They explore the sensual and sometimes sensational impact of visual elements. The real focus is on enjoyment, as the 1960s and 70s exhibited."
In many ways, these artists reflected the mid-20th century聮s corporate, scientific and technological bent, Krane said. They were interested in making art a less subjective endeavor, in part in reaction against the personal, emotional heroics of the Abstract Expressionist painters who were their artistic elders.
"These works 聳 with vibrant color and exuberant, dizzying design 聳 parallel popular culture of the 1960s and '70s," said Krane. "They let the eye function without check."
Among the featured works will be:
o Frank Stella聮s Purple Series of prints, related to a series of eight paintings from 1963 in which he experimented with new metallic paints and used shaped canvases, such as a triangle, square and trapezoid that made Stella聮s art so radical and so influential at the time. "All I want anyone to get out of my paintings . . . is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see," Stella was quoted as saying.
o Rubber Stamp Prints is an unusual portfolio of prints that gained popularity with the Pop artists of the late 1960s. Use of commercial stamps (often of Disney cartoons) in drawings and collages that played with consumer imagery was common.
o Sol LeWitt聮s Double Composite. LeWitt uses a vocabulary of basic forms, such as geometric shapes, to explore variations on a theme, similar to that of a composer or an architect. By reducing the image to simple, modular components, he focuses attention on the overall process and composition. LeWitt said, "A simple form narrows the field of the work and concentrates intensity on the arrangement."
o Josef Alber's ongoing series, "Homage to the Square," begun in the 1950s, includes thousands of images each consisting of three or four squares of various colors nested within each other. He explored the effects of color on perception and probed how the eye creates the illusion of depth and space.
The Geometric Abstraction exhibit can be viewed at the Montrose Public Library during its normal library hours, 10 a.m.- 8 p.m., Monday-Thursday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday, and 1-5 p.m., Sunday.