Threads to Abstraction
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THREADS TO ABSTRACTION 6000 AD TO TODAY Feather Mantle. Circa 600 AD. Ex Collections: Andre Emmerich & Paul Hughes THREADS TO ABSTRACTION Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles are one of the seminal yet little known influences to an American prototype of abstraction in the pre and post-war era, art schools such as the Bauhaus and museums collections at the Natural History and the Museum of Primitive Art in NYC where also instrumental, dealers such as Betty Parsons and Andre Emmerich played a major role in these cross fertilizations of visual arts culture. Most of what follows below has verifiable documented evidence to support these findings. The extant to which African and Oceanic tribal art have nourished and influenced the Cubist and later schools of modern art is well known and documented. Less known or published is the impact and connections of Pre-Columbian art in the context of modern artistic developments apart from ancient Mexican architectural and sculptural influences on works of, Frank Lloyd Wright, Diego Rivera and Henry Moore. Threads to Abstraction will present visual comparative narratives illustrating the role that Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles textile arts that have played a significant and pivotal part in opening the windows to new developments of Abstraction in the 20th century. Challenging the notion that abstraction is a unique development of the modern West, this collection reveals its connections and deep roots in Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles arts, it further illustrates the threads that link and esthetic kinship in the work of twentieth-century artists such as Joaquín Torres García, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Josef Albers and other seminal artists related to the Abstract Expessionests, Color Field movement and later stylistic developments such as Minimalism. The Paul Hughes Andean textile collection comprises over 35 works collected over the last 35 years and has been exhibited and published widely. His focus in collecting is the relationships to be found in the ancient and the modern:” all art was once contemporary”. The textile arts of the ancient Andes are one of the most important contributions to the worlds artist legacy combined with a technical virtuosity that’s hardly surpassed, these artists were deeply aware of their reciprocal relationship with nature and there gods as cosmic forces, counting on the Upper World and Lower Interior World to heed there call. They believed that divine response to there invocations was contingent upon a display of respect and veneration by mortals. It is for this reason that such exquisite textiles, glowing with luminescent colors and vibrant designs, radiate a profound, ineffable faith and a transcendental sense of splendor. ANNI AND JOSEF ALBERS. Anni and Josef first encountered Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles circa 1922 at was then the Volkerkunde Museum in Berlin, the study of Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles was incorporated as part of the weaving curriculum at the Bauhaus school which Anni developed with her mentor Paul Klee. In 1933 they both accepted teaching positions at Black Mountain College (BMC). Later making frequent trip to Latin America, collecting ancient art from many regions and spending a year in Peru in 1953 where they further formed a museum quality collection of Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles that remain at the Albers Foundation. The influence of Central and South America on the work of this couple's work is tremendous, they have both expressed their gratitude that their art would not have been conceivable without their encounter with the southern continent. Anni Albers’s weavings, drawings, and painted studies demonstrate her in-depth knowledge of Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles. Similarly, the paintings and photographs by Josef Albers testify to the way he developed his special sense of color in Latin America, and how he continued to further inform his own independent concept of photography The list of student from BMC and there relationship to the Abstract Expressionists and Color Field movement is extensive, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Jacob Lawrence, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Franz Kline. Anni Albers, Textile 1933 Tunic, Circa 700 AD. PH Feather Tabard. Circa 600 AD. PH coll Josef Albers, 1947 JAOQUIN TORRES GARCIA Torres Garcia (TG) plays a pivotal role to assimilate APT into his work and teaching, his first exposure to APT is in 1922 in NYC and then in Paris at the 1928 exhibition Ancient Peru at the Trocedero museum. He was the founding member of the Paris artists led group “ Cercle et Carre” in 1929 where he gave talks on Andean Pre-Columbian art, other notable members are, Hans Arp, Wassily Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Sonia Delunay. Returning to Montevideo in 1932 he founded the Esculo Del Sur and later Talliers de Torres Garcia. The school went on frequent field trips to the Andean regions with his student Francisco Matto created an outstanding museum collection of Andean Pre-Columbian Textiles. The TG schools played a major role in the development of Geometric Abstraction in South America with many of his students returning to Argentina and then Brazil to develop there own schools and styles, Tomas Maldonado (Arg) and Lygia Clark (Brz) being the leading exponents. TG was also influential in New York, where a posthumous exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1950 was admired by Barnett Newman and left deep impressions on Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Louise Nevelson who all attended. Tunic, Circa 700 AD. PH Torres Garcia. 1932 Tomas Maldonado, 1951 Tunic, Circa 600 AD. PH Feather Tunic, Circa 600 AD Mark Rothko, 1956 BARNETT NEWMAN In their historic New York Times joint letter of June 7th 1943, Newman, Rothko and Gottlieb extolled their " spiritual kinship with primitives and archaic art". In 1944 to a preface he wrote to the Pre-Colombian Art exhibition catalog at the Betty Parsons Gallery he wrote " the growing aesthetic appreciation of Pre-Columbian art in one of the satisfying results of our inter American concouseness". At the first solo exhibition of Torres Garcia in 1950 at the Sidney Janis gallery in NYC, Newman came nearly every day to comment on the works to many of his artist friends. Tunic, Circa 600 AD. PH Barnett Newman , 1951 BETTY PARSON In 1947 she opened her own gallery and represented Newman, Pollock, Still, Rothko Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Tuttle, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jack Youngerman, Hans Hofmann, Ad Reinhardt and Agnes Martin. Parsons was an astute collector and promoter of Ancient arts of the Americas, often creating a dialog with Pre-Columbian art and her own gallery artists, Barnet Newman curated 2 of these exhibitions and is quoted above. Tunic, Circa 700 AD. PH Ad Rienhardt, 1937 Clyfford Still, 1951 Tunic, Circa 700 AD. PH Tunic, Circa 700 AD. PH Hans Hoffman, 1959 LOUIS NEVELSON In 1933 she was the assistant to Diego Rivera in Mexico City, whose collection of Pre-Columbian art is well documented. She traveled back to South and Central America on many occasions. She was familiar with and admired the works of Torres Garcia. Tunic, Circa 800 AD Louise Nevelson ADOLPH GOTTLIEB His interest in Pre-Columbian art and Native American art is well documented and evident in his works. Many writers have referenced his own personal collection; as yet I have not seen the actual works. He spent much time at the Brooklyn Museum, which houses one of the world’s great collections of APT. Tunic , Circa 700 AD . PH Adolph Gottlieb, 1948 ALFRED JENSEN. Jensen's wide interests in the esoteric, occult and friendship with many of the above artists, places him in the category of strong kinship to APT, after his 1973 exhibit in Sao Paolo he spent a month in Peru. Tunic , Circa 800 AD. PH Alfred Jensen, 1963 KENNETH NOLAND His links to Albers and BCM and his weaving projects should place him within direct exposure to APT. Tunic, Circa 600 AD. PH Kenneth Noland, 1963 ANDRE EMMERICH GALLERY NYC AND ZURICH. AM is the gallery most associated with the Color Field movement and juxtaposing exhibitions of ancient textiles with his gallery artists works. His interest, exhibiting and collecting of Pre- Columbian Andean art dates back to the early 1950's. So we see a clear line of exhibitions from the Sidney Janis gallery, to Betty Parsons and finally to Emmerich, these exhibitions begin from the early 1940's, all of the major AB-EX and Color Field artists had representation from one or another of these galleries. In addition to Color Field painters like Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Helen Frankenthaler, he represented, among others, David Hockney, Sam Francis, Anthony Caro, Al Held, Herbert Ferber, Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky and John Hoyland. Morris Louis, 1961 Brice Marden, 1974 Tunic, Circa 600 AD. KM Mantle, Circa 1000 AD Agnes Martin, 1963 Inca Tunic Paul Klee, 1936.