From 1920 to 1924, George Bellows (1882-1925) and his family spent a part of every year in Woodstock, New York, where he was inspired by the mountains, lakes, and fields surrounding the tiny village that was fast becoming a center for landscape artists. Bellows ventured out to regularly paint the local scenery, often doing sketches that he took back to New York with him in the winter to use as studies for finished paintings. Woodstock interiors appear as backdrops for well-known portraits of his family and friends. Photographs of the period show the Bellows family at the center of activities, including the annual bohemian Maverick Festivals. Here he found the perfect combination of nature and neighborhood that imbued his work with the maturity and vision that characterize his final five years.

While Bellow’s Woodstock paintings, drawings and prints are the focus of the exhibition, works by his contemporaries are also included to define more clearly the impact of recent trends on his work. Andrew Dasburg, Konrad Cramer and his wife, Florence Balhn Cramer, and Henry Lee McFee, for example, brought to Woodstock connections with European trends and avant-garde inspiration of Alfred Stieglitz. Also living in Woodstock at that time was his friend Bolton Brown, who printed several of Bellow’s best lithographs in his studio. Bellow’s proximity to these artists are their work clearly contributed to the rapid evolution of his own style.

WORKS
70

DIMENSIONS

16 x 20 to 57 x 66 (inches)
40,64 x 50,8 to 144,78 x 167,64 (cm)

SPACE REQUIREMENTS

4,000- 4,500 square feet

INQUIRIES

exhibitions@curatorial.org
626.577.0044