The UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum announces the presentation of Nevada Landscape: The Painted Environment from Aug. 2 to Oct. 2, 2006. The exhibition celebrates the rich tradition of plein air landscape painting in the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin from the 1920s to the present. Curated by the Nevada Museum of Art, Nevada Landscape: The Painted Environment is part of the Nevada Arts Council Nevada Touring Initiative Program, which is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Nevada Landscape highlights work from the early 1920s through the Depression era and recognizes the modernist trends of the 1960s as well as today's varied approach to capturing the unique landscape of the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin regions. The works included in the exhibition emphasize the broad and ongoing interest in painting the regional landscapes.
Until the early 1920s, photography was the primary medium for documenting the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin landscape. San Francisco watercolorist Lorenzo Latimer began making annual painting trips to the region in 1916 and continued this tradition for 19 years to instruct local students on capturing the dramatic scenery. Eventually, landscape painters from around the nation were drawn to the Reno area in the 1920s and 30s. Among those artists are Paul Grimm, Peter Iliyin and Edward Langley. Also featured in this exhibition is the work of Arthur Meltzer whose landscapes highlighted the changing seasons with broad flat brushstrokes that emphasized the strong receding planes formed by mountains and sky.
A more modernist approach to capturing the region's surroundings is apparent in the works by Robert Cole Caples and J. Craig Sheppard. Caples' portraits of Native Americans and Sheppard's cowboy paintings demonstrate an expressionistic quality through their dramatic washes of color and tone.
As plein air painting continues to be the dominant approach to landscape painting, the results vary considerably. The importance of light, color and form in depicting landscape is evident in works by contemporary artists such as Sidne Teske, Jim Zlokovich and Phyllis Shafer whose distinctly different techniques capture the light, texture, foliage and expansive horizon of the region.
The Nevada Landscape: The Painted Environment exhibition is presented as part of the Nevada Touring Initiative, a program made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Program, and through partnerships with the Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Museum of Art and Western Folklife Center. The Nevada Touring Initiative is designed to increase access to cultural events and experiences at the local level, particularly in communities that have typically been underserved, while supporting the work of artists.
