Exhibition Status: Past

Sculpture Transformed

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Sculpture Transformed: The Work of Marjorie Schick

“Part sculpture and part jewelry, her grand-scale fantastical creations are like body armor for fashion warriors. Colors explode, biomorphic shapes undulate, and constructions startle.”

– Tina Sutton, Boston Globe

“The eye-popping colors and inventive forms should delight those with a taste for the individual, the ingenious and the hip.”

– John Andrew Watson, The Muskegon Chronicle

For four decades Marjorie Schick has influenced the worlds of craft and jewelry both in the US and abroad. Though trained as a metalsmith and jeweler, Schick quickly acquired an international reputation for her sculptural experiments—made largely from alternative materials—that transcend traditional categories. Always conceived with the human form in mind, her challenging body sculptures are brilliantly colored mixed-media works that are simultaneously ornamental, performative, visual, and tactile.

Currently a professor at Pittsburgh State University in Kansas, Schick has pieces in many of the world’s major museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Applied Art Museum, Oslo; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to name just a few.  She has also been featured in Metalsmith, American Craft magazine, and International Crafts, and is the winner of several important awards, such as the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award and the NEW fellowship award in crafts.

Sculpture Transformed presented 67 objects that traced the 40 years of Schick’s experimentation with the body’s relation to form, texture, and color. The exhibition was curated by Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD, a former Smithsonian Institution Fellow at the Renwick Gallery and an award-winning essayist and lecturer.

Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens

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Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens

“The core of this show is the presence of these real-life, so to speak, African sculptures, artifacts, masks, and other items, which recreate the buzz and shock that must have occurred when they were first exhibited in Europe and New York."

– Gary Tischler, The Washington Diplomat

“The exhibition not only explores how the work of Man Ray and his contemporaries changed Western ideas of African art, it also critically looks at what photographic representation itself means.”

– Kevin Griffin, The Vancouver Sun

This groundbreaking exhibition featured the photographs of American artist Man Ray (1890-1976), whose work translated the vogue for African art into a modernist aesthetic and disseminated this idea to a popular audience. The exhibition highlighted a little-examined chapter in the development of modernist artistic practice; namely, the significant role photography played in the process by which African objects—formerly considered ethnographic curiosities—came to be seen as the stuff of modern art in the first decades of the 20th century. Images such as Noire et blanche (Ray’s iconic juxtaposition of alabaster-skinned model Alice Prin with an African mask of darkest ebony) united primitivism and surrealism in a seductive embrace that found its way into fashion magazines as well as avant-garde journals and ethnographic guides.

The exhibition juxtaposed both seminal and recently discovered photographs with a number of the actual African masks and figures they depict, illustrating the complex nature of photographic representation. By use of dramatic lighting, cropping, and camera angles, these masterpieces of ceremonial sculpture were repurposed into highly stylized, two-dimensional works of modern art that sometimes appear markedly different from the objects themselves. The exhibition included photographs by contemporaries such as Charles Sheeler, Walker Evans, Clara Sipprell, Cecil Beaton, and Raoul Ubac.

Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens was organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC, and curated by Wendy A. Grossman. The exhibition was made possible by grants from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the National Endowment for the Arts as a part of “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius,” and the Dedalus Foundation, Inc. Research for this project was supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Magnum Photos

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Magnum Photos: Cinema

“[A] cine-voyager’s dream, a collection of more than 200 photos of stars, directors and sets from the 1940s through the 1990s.”

— Molly Woulfe, NWI Times

“One stunning image after another will confound film aficionados, revealing a seldom seen side of Hollywood.”

— Mary Tutwiler, Independent Weekly 

For over 50 years, the renowned photographers of Magnum—Robert Capa, Bruce Davidson, Eve Arnold, and many others—have been chronicling the world of film. For this exhibition, the photo artists sorted through their private archives and pulled out more than 5,000 photographs, many of them previously unpublished. The final selection of 206 color and black-and-white photographs bears the inimitable Magnum stamp and explores the fascinating symbiosis shared by the intimate world of photographers and the star-powered realms of cinema.

Elaborately posed or shockingly candid, these stunning large-scale photographs cover an enormous range of style and content, from puckishly staged portraits of Alfred Hitchcock and Brigitte Bardot to extraordinary—and often haunting—behind-the-scenes shots of Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Clark Gable, Cate Blanchett, James Dean, and many more.

This exhibition was organized by Magnum Photos—a photographic co-operative of great diversity and distinction that is owned by its photographer-members—in cooperation with International Arts & Artists.

Life as a Legend

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Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe

“Marilyn Monroe’s spectacular beauty and sexuality stoked America’s collective imagination, captivating and defining her era. Half a century later, her legend continues to captivate, and you can see the ongoing radiation of her mystique for yourself in the ‘Marilyn Monroe: Life as a Legend’ exhibition.”

– Barry Paris, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“‘Life as a Legend’ includes virtually every famous picture of Marilyn Monroe.”

– Jud Yalkut, Dayton City Paper

Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe captured the spark, sex appeal and sensation that was Marilyn Monroe. This vivid and diverse exhibition tracked Marilyn’s rise to stardom through the eyes of more than 80 artists—Andy Warhol, Allen Jones, Peter Blake, Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and many others—with more than 300 images ranging in style from fashion photography to Pop Art.

Every aspect of Monroe’s legendary charm, vulnerability, and ambition were on display in this fascinating look at the entertainment industry’s commodification of feminine beauty and sex appeal. Though a self-described “artificial product,” Monroe’s warmth and soulfulness transcended the industry’s attempts to package her voluptuous sensuality. Documenting the iconic life of America’s favorite sex symbol, Life as a Legend showcased one of the world’s most famous and intriguing women.

This hugely successful tour, which broke attendance records at most venues, was organized by Artoma (Hamburg, Germany) and circulated by International Arts & Artists.

Lynn Chadwick

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Lynn Chadwick: Sculptural Revelations

“The Chadwick Collection is a source of pride to us and in sharing this accomplished artist’s work with a larger audience we hope to further establish his place in the historical context of 20th century sculpture and to provide an introduction of this contemporary artform to a new generation of museum visitors.”

– Lisa Tremper Barnes, Director, Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College

“The exhibition fully illustrates Chadwick’s sculptural progression, beginning with his earlier, more stoic and monolithic figures of the ’50s and ’60s to later pieces which explore the dynamic possibilities of motion.”

– Tim Higgins, The Morning Call

Winner of the International Sculpture Prize at the 1956 Venice Biennale, Lynn Chadwick achieved international fame for his dynamic sculptural visions, which combine monumental steel and bronze with finely textured surfaces of Stolit or chased metal. Chadwick’s abstract human figures, which eerily evoke brutalist architecture made flesh, are at once imposing and approachable, fantastical yet tactile. Visitors enjoy interacting with them, stroking their curves and angular folds and caressing their elaborate textures.

A self-trained artist whose only formal instruction was in architectural drawing, Chadwick transferred his skills as a draftsman to his sculptural method, infusing his monumental works with a unique plasticity and power. His discovery of the medium of Stolit (an industrial compound of gypsum and iron filings whose surface can be chased after setting) was an artistic breakthrough that allowed him to sculpt on a massive scale while combining abstraction with the tactile properties and shapes of organic forms.

A tireless innovator who constantly expanded his repertoire of materials, styles, and techniques, Lynn Chadwick was still receiving commissions well into his eighties, in both the United States and Europe. This successful outdoor exhibition of larger-than-life-size bronzes traveled to museum gardens and college campuses in Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, before returning to the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum.

Loïs Mailou Jones

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Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color

“Mailou Jones’s great gift was transporting the viewer into the daily lives of her subjects… When she did a mask, the eyes moved with you. When she showed an African American girl cleaning fish, the strokes were rhythmic.”

– Jacqueline Trescott, The Washington Post

“There are seventy paintings in this show. It’s a tour de force—as was she.”

– Kent Boyer, Dallas Art News

Born in Boston in 1905 and trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Loïs Mailou Jones began her career at a time when racial prejudices and gender discrimination were strong in American culture. She achieved early success as a designer of drapery fabric, but when a decorator told her that a “colored girl” could not possibly have produced her sophisticated designs, her response was to quit fabric design and focus instead on the fine arts, so she could sign her name to her work. In 1937 she studied for a year at the Academie Julian in Paris, a city whose cosmopolitan laissez-faire toward race and gender was a revelation for her: she made many friends in the Parisian art world, produced dozens of paintings (many bearing the influence of Cezanne and Cassatt), and was able at last to exhibit under her own name and “purely on merit.” After her return to the United States, and throughout her prolonged travels to Haiti and Africa, she never ceased to innovate, infusing her mastery of American and European painting styles with the exuberance and color of African and Caribbean imagery and motifs—particularly African masks, which were a lifelong muse for her.

This exhibition surveyed the vast sweep of Jones’s seventy-five years as a painter, stretching from late Post-Impressionism to a contemporary mixture of African, Caribbean, American, and African-American iconography, design, and thematic elements. Developed by the Mint Museum of Art and the Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust, this exhibition featured 62 works from both public and private collections, as well as from the artist’s estate.

Edward Koren

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Edward Koren: The Capricious Line

“Mr. Koren can be funny, psychologically acute and philosophically provocative. He has a pitch-perfect feel for gag lines, and with his scribbly draftsmanship has forged one of the most distinctive styles in cartooning.”

– Ken Johnson, New York Times

“The New Yorker‘s finest social critic of his generation and milieu.”

– Richard Gehr, The Comics Journal

This exhibition celebrates the career of Edward Koren, renowned cartoonist, graphic satirist, and long-standing contributor to The New Yorker. Through approximately 50 original pen and ink as well as watercolor cartoons, Koren’s “capricious line” deftly articulates the neurosis of contemporary society with a distinctive drawing style, relatable characters, and wry criticism.

Edward Koren presents works spanning five decades drawn from his more than 1,000 published cartoons and covers in The New Yorker. Also featuring many never-before-seen independent drawings that highlight his savvy intellect and innovative technique, Koren delights in portraying man’s relationship to society and nature through imaginary beasts, comedic societal interactions, and humorous commentaries on art. This exhibition not only honors the accomplishments of Koren as a beloved cartoonist but also demonstrates his skill as an artist. The full-scale, heavyweight ink drawings—which until now have only been experienced as postcard-sized images in the pages of The New Yorker—showcase his mastery of illustration and his command of comedic understatement.

Koren’s satiric art addresses diverse social, cultural, and environmental issues. Straddling a world of imaginative beasts and the brutal, but often hilarious, banality of everyday life allows Koren to flourish in his role as society’s keen observer and sharp critic. Through this impressive collection of works, Koren shares the sheer fun and joy of drawing with his audiences. These innovative illustrations demonstrate the psychological, philosophical, and comical talents of Koren’s pen.

Artist’s Bio

Edward Koren has long been associated with the The New Yorker magazine, where he has published over 1000 cartoons, as well as numerous covers and illustrations. He has also contributed to many other publications, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, G.Q., Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, Fortune, Vanity Fair, The Nation and The Boston Globe.

Born in New York City, Koren attended the Horace Mann School and Columbia University. He did graduate work in etching and engraving with S. W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris, and received an MFA degree from Pratt Institute. He was on the faculty of Brown University for many years. He lives in Vermont with his family.

The Art of John Dos Passos

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The Art of John Dos Passos

“John Dos Passos not only was one of the most important writers of the post-World War I ‘lost generation,’ but a talented painter whose work was hung alongside paintings by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.”

– Newsday

“His visual art shows us another aspect of his open and inquiring mind.”

– Jay Williams, curator of the Morris Museum of Art

Noted author of such prized works of American fiction as Manhattan Transfer (1925) and The USA Trilogy (1930-1936), John Dos Passos also enthusiastically pursued a career as a visual artist for over 50 years. Dos Passos began sketching in earnest while still in his teens, and in 1913 attended the fabled Armory Show in New York City, which introduced Americans to the groundbreaking work of Van Gogh, Picasso, Duchamp, Munch, and other artists of the European avant-garde. Dos Passos soon developed a unique and wide-ranging style of his own, incorporating ideas from Matisse and Picasso as well as traits of Impressionism and Expressionism. In 1923—years before he wrote the novels that would make him famous—Dos Passos had his first public exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club, mainly watercolors of his travels in Spain and Western Europe, where he had served as an ambulance driver in the First World War.  Over the next five decades, as his political views moved to the right and his literary career waned, his vivid paintings, sketches, book illustrations, and set designs won him a highly respected parallel career as a visual chronicler of 20th century daily life.

This exhibition of 66 watercolor paintings and six illustrated dust jackets vividly chronicled his travels as a social revolutionary, with colorful landscapes and portraits that provide a rare commentary on an exciting era.

Inner Light

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Inner Light: Photographs by Flor Garduño

“The visions in ‘Inner Light’ have always been with [Garduño] in embryonic form—the project is a self-portrait, a fairytale told through bodies and objects.”

— Phyllis Thompson Reid, Aperture

“Garduño evokes ancient myths and indigenous rituals with a surrealist touch. She celebrates all her subjects….with the sensuous play of light and shadow, but it is the female body, its planes and curves, that Garduño consecrates with sumptuous luminosity.”

— Publishers Weekly, September 1, 2002

Enigmatic black-and-white photography characterizes the work of Flor Garduño, a veteran woman photographer who trained under the Mexican master photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. In her surreal juxtapositions of body and object, human and animal—the supernatural and the tangible—Garduño’s deeply personal work evokes myths, fables, and the dream logic of magic realism, in which the fanciful and inexplicable illuminate the everyday.

Inner Light showcased 62 photographs representing still-life objects, nudes, and elements of the natural world. Garduño’s visionary work—emotional, psychological explorations of femininity—achieve a dreamlike communion of subject and lens. Inner Light is the apotheosis of her ten-year quest to blend the genres of the nude and the still life (“nature morte”) to create hybrids that she refers to as “natures silencieuses.”

Garduño’s work is in the collections of prominent public institutions, such as New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, and her numerous photographic books include Testigos del tiempo (Witnesses of Time), 1992; Bestiarium, 1987; and Magia del juego eterno (Magic of the Eternal Game), 1985.

Andrew Wyeth

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Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures

“Working primarily in watercolor and egg tempera, Wyeth specializes in transforming simple rural settings into dramatic evocations of isolation and longing… The Helga Series may be his finest achievement."

– Dorothy Shinn, Beacon Journal

“This is Wyeth at his best.”

– Bob Keefer, The Register-Guard

From 1971 to 1985, Andrew Wyeth undertook a long, intensive study of one model, Helga Testorf. Testorf was one of the artist’s neighbors in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and for some 14 years she served as Wyeth’s private project. The approximately 240 works that resulted from their friendship were investigatory, diverse, and extraordinarily intimate. Wyeth conducted his series of drawings and paintings in almost total secrecy, revealing to no one the existence of the series, the identity of the model, or the extent of the project. Testorf provided a means for Wyeth to explore the complexity of the human figure. She was presented in almost every human aspect: clothed, nude, indoors, outdoors, in recognizable settings and against neutral backgrounds. With the Helga series, Wyeth tested the limits of his imagination using a single model.

When The Helga Pictures premiered at Washington’s National Gallery of Art in May of 1987, it was viewed by well over a half-million people. On its initial 1987 to 1989 tour, the exhibition traveled under the National Gallery’s auspices to a selection of notable American museums. Since then, portions of the Helga suite have been shown throughout the United States and abroad on special occasions—never more than twice a year, and not every year.

International Arts & Artists was honored to organize a limited tour of more than 70 works from the Helga series, which included finished paintings in tempera and dry brush as well as drawings and works in watercolor.