BERTA WALKER GALLERY

Creative Couples: 1890-Present Seven Exhibitions, Two Galleries, 175 Creative Couples actors, artists, writers, filmmakers, photographers, musicians, dancers, curators

FOR RELEASE: UPON RECEIPT 6/18/19

Berta Walker Gallery is celebrating its 30th Anniversary by presenting in both the Wellfleet and Provincetown galleries, a summer-long rotating group of exhibitions by Creative Couples from 1890-Present.

A brief introduction to this group of Creative Couples Exhibitions

This exhibition is a very special celebration for Berta Walker Gallery. Not only is this the Gallery's 30th Anniversary, but it's auspicious on many other levels as well.

In 1989-1990, Berta Walker had wrapped up the winter in Provincetown as Acting Director of the Fine Arts Work Center, a seven-month residency program for emerging artists & writers in Provincetown. Then a chance opportunity to open a gallery presented itself, and suddenly, its 30 years later!

"Almost immediately I gave one-person exhibitions to Bob Henry & Selina Trieff. But the very first opening exhibition was a huge group show, "Going Fishing: A Tribute to our Industry", a benefit for the Portuguese Festival."

And to take this celebration one step further, Selina Trieff and Carmen Cicero were two of the first artists I represented at Graham Modern Gallery in NYC when I became Director in 1985.

Wellfleet June 29 - July 20 RECEPTION SATURDAY JULY 6, 4 - 6 PM

Three-person special: Karl Knaths (1891-1971) artist Helen Weinrich pianist (1876-1978) & (1873-1946) artist and Creative Couples: Fine Arts Work Center

Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown

In 2018, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown celebrated its 50th Anniversary with exhibitions in several galleries, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA.

For 50 years FAWC has juried into the Program ten

Janice Redman, Ritual (Two emerging writers and ten Cups), ceramic, wool, silk, sand, emerging artists from across Rob DuToit, Flowers in Studio, 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 5 1/2" the United States and 2017, Pastel and sumi ink on Courtesy of Clark Gallery, Boston paper, 22 x 18" Europe.

Many singletons became couples, and still live in the Provincetown Art Colony today, including Janice Redman from England, Paul Bowen from Wales, Jim Peters straight out of the Navy, native-born Conrad Malicoat.

I continue to salute the Fine Arts Work Center whose residency program brings in youth during the off-season, creating income for the Town and introducing artists to Provincetown who are living here fifty years later!

The Creative Couples of FAWC celebrates some twenty FAWC Fellowship couples and many other Creative Couples who have been instrumental in founding and keeping Marty Davis (above), Eddies 7, FAWC on steady footing. 2018, Acrylic and collage on board, 12 x 12" & The Focus Exhibition Alix Ritchie Poem (below) celebrates the collaborative relationship of artists Agnes Weinrich & Karl Knaths, and Karl's wife, Helen Weinrich, a

Collaboration Gail and Michael pianist. Since Karl Knaths was the first visiting artist Mazur, Young Apple Tree, December to the Fine Arts Work Center, nurturing the first year's 2003, Aquatint, etching, letterpress, ed artists throughout the season, it seemed poetic to 48/50, 22 1/2 x 12 1/2" Courtesy of Albert Merola Gallery feature him again with the Fine Arts Work Center Creative Couples Exhibition. "Creative Couples" A three-person Special Exhibition Karl Knaths (1891 - 1971) artist & Helen Weinrich 1876-1978 pianist & Agnes Weinrich (1873-1946) artist

"For over 30 years," notes Berta Walker, "I have had the privilege of learning about and showing the art of the amazing modernists of Provincetown who came to Provincetown in the early 1900's." Among them, I have become completely intrigued by the trio family of artists:Karl Knaths & Agnes Weinrich and musician Helen Weinrich.

This exhibition series is the perfect opportunity to present the work of Karl Knaths and Agnes Weinrich who shared a formative number of years working side by side together, becoming two of the best-known artists to have worked in Provincetown during the 20th century."

Karl Knaths (1891-1971), Rainbow Dunes Agnes Weinrich (1873-1947), Purple Dunes, Mixed media on paper, 16 x 21" Fall, Watercolor, 17 x 19" In the summer of 1914, as war was breaking out in Europe, many artists and musicians of the American colony in Paris left Europe and came to Provincetown, including the Weinrich sisters, Helen, a concert pianist, and Agnes. The sisters had traveled to Europe frequently as Agnes studied art independently and at the Louvre. They were most probably encouraged to visit Provincetown by artists Oliver Chaffee and Charles Hawthorne whom they had met in Paris.

In 1919, Karl Knaths left Wisconsin and settled in Provincetown, then a burgeoning art colony, which he recognized as the prefect place in which to settle and study art. Soon after his arrival, he met the Weinrich sisters, and in 1922, he married Helen, who was 15 years older than he, and Agnes was in fact 18 years older than he.

He moved into the home in which the

Weinrich sisters had been living, and the Agnes Weinrich (1873-1947), Untitled Landscape, n.d. three proceeded to live together, to travel Watercolor, 12 x 18" together, and to make art and music together. Karl & Agnes both integrated qualities of fresh vision and self-reliant invention. "Karl and Agnes each had their studios and (together with Helen) settled down to a quiet, retiring life of making art. Together they formed part of the 'modern' wing of the Provincetown artistic colony,(Paul Mocsanyi, Karl Knaths Exhibition, Phillips Gallery exhibition Washington D.C, 1957.)

Today, in light of current standards and taste and consciousness, this feels like a good time to exhibit the collaborative

Karl Knaths (1891-1971), House & Blue Hills, n.d. nature in which Weinrich and Knaths Watercolor, 13 x 17" created together in the early formative years of American Modernists.

Karl Knaths was a gentle and sensitive soul, completely committed to his art, spending hours alone in his studio. Agnes had an open and inquiring mind with a radical bent, and she too was committed to her art. She brought to this artistic trio her experience of having lived and studied in Europe. Karl loved music and would spend hours listening to his wife Helen playing on the piano. Both were committed to taking care of Helen, who was quiet and frail. In the home they shared, each had their own studio, and enjoyed talking about art. In fact, says Berta Walker, "It would appear that Agnes and Karl must have enjoyed working together en plein air on the dunes, by the bay and on the streets of Provincetown, as attested to by the similarities of many of the works in this exhibition."

Blanche Lazzell noted in a letter to a friend in 1926 Weinrich and Knaths "... are so congenial I would rather be with them than anyone else." (Lazzell Papers, Archives of American Art.)

AGNES WEINRICH , having spent many years of independent art study in Europe and many months at the Louvre, joined the Hawthorne School upon arrival in Provincetown in 1915. The next year she joined with Oliver Chaffee in his short-lived Modern School of Art, along with others she knew from Paris: (Oliver Chaffee's wife), , Maude Squires and Ethel Mars. This group was very involved with the writings and teachings of cubist artist Albert Gleizes, with whom Lucy L'Engle and Blanche Lazzell had studied, and by 1920, Weinrich was deeply committed to ; and Knaths was on the verge of his own form of , as seen in his 1922 painting "Geraniums", the first painting purchased for the Phillips Collection.

KARL KNATHS , who had never traveled anywhere except from the Midwest to Provincetown, was aware of the Modernist movement through vast reading and seeing the 1913 Armory show when it arrived in Chicago, but according to Knaths himself it was Weinrich who introduced him to modernism. During their winters in New York, Weinrich frequently joined Knaths in visiting museums, artists' exhibitions and studios.

"At first," Knaths recalled, "she was teacher, then our relationship became cooperative and we learned from each other." (Knaths letter to a friend, 1966, Archives of American Art.) He often said that Agnes was a better artist than he was, "which", says Walker, "I believe he felt, although some earlier writings like to indicate this was said with a mixture of condescension and genuine admiration." There's no question, Knaths and Weinrich found equality and artistic companionship in a unique way. By the time Karl moved to Provincetown, he was showing in New York, where in 1922, he was first purchased by Duncan Phillips. While Weinrich never received the acclaim she might have, had she not been a woman, she never seemed to dwell on that. Instead, starting in 1917, she showed with other women in group shows and in 1925 helped form the NY Society of Women Artists with other Provincetown associates Marguerite Zorach, Blanche Lazzell, and Lucy L'Engle, rebelling against the "too-conservative" National Association of Women Artists.

In 1926, she, Knaths, Lazzell, the Zorachs, and twenty-five other Provincetown modernists rebelled against the traditionalists who controlled the Provincetown Art

Agnes Weinrich (1873-1947), Untitled, n.d. Association, creating that year the first-ever Oil on board, 14 x 10" modernist exhibition in Provincetown. Intrepid Agnes died as modernism and abstraction was taking hold in America. But her life-long friend Karl Knaths, would continue for another 25 years, becoming one of the great masters of American art.

Agnes died in 1946 at the age of 73; Karl,18 years younger than Agnes, died in 1971 at the age of 80; and Helen, whom both Karl and Agnes had taken care of over the years, and who was supposedly so frail, died in 1979, at the age of 102.

Perhaps the appreciation of Karl Knaths, written by E. M. Benson for the 1957 Phillips Collection exhibition, sums up the efforts of both Karl Knaths and Agnes Weinrich: "...the artist's dream was not closed up in the completed work of art ...it will become alive in the heart of this whose sensitivity is set afire by the sight of the painting.

For this - and not fame alone - is the artist's Karl Knaths (1891-1971), King Cock real immortality; that his/her sovereign Oil on canvas, 36 x 31 1/2" dream, passion and faith, pent up in the (work of art) can resuscitate in the hearts of men, again and again...'" Both Agnes and Karl creatively dreamed, and willingly shared their passion & faith with each other, and now the world.

Provincetown June 29 - July 20 One Couple Exhibitions: Robert Henry artist & Selina Trieff artist Carmen Cicero artist & Mary Abell writer and art historian Grace Hopkins "Patterns of Portugal" abstract photography taken in Portugal

Grace Hopkins, Director David Henry Perry, Manager, Provincetown Berta Walker, Curator Cristina Hadzi, Manager, Wellfleet