Skip to main content
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Access O'Keeffe
Exhibition
Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism
Touring Exhibition 2008 - 2009
Organized by
View full schedule with 3 venues
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Santa Fe/New Mexico
January 25, 2008 - May 11, 2008
Curator
None
Between 1918 and 1924, Hartley painted the New Mexico landscape again and again, while living first in Taos and Santa Fe, then in New York, and finally in Europe. He traveled to New Mexico with the hope that painting directly from nature would purify him and his work, allowing him to develop an original, uniquely American style. Instead, his work evolved into a complex meditation on distance, loss, and the aftermath of World War I. As Hartley moved farther from New Mexico itself, his paintings of the place became more personal, more melancholy, and more desolate. This exhibition examines Marsden Hartley's search for a new modern American art in New Mexico, repositioning the period as an important part of his career, and bringing together many of the New Mexico paintings and pastels for the first time.
Between 1918 and 1924, Hartley painted the New Mexico landscape again and again, while living first in Taos and Santa Fe, then in New York, and finally in Europe. He traveled to New Mexico with the hope that painting directly from nature would purify him and his work, allowing him to develop an original, uniquely American style. Instead, his work evolved into a complex meditation on distance, loss, and the aftermath of World War I. As Hartley moved farther from New Mexico itself, his paintings of the place became more personal, more melancholy, and more desolate. This exhibition examines Marsden Hartley's search for a new modern American art in New Mexico, repositioning the period as an important part of his career, and bringing together many of the New Mexico paintings and pastels for the first time.
Courtesy of Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Photo: Tim Nighswander/IMAGING4ART
Image: Image Name.jpg