Graphic Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Joann Moser PDF

Traditionally a more intimate form of expression than painting or sculpture, works on paper—watercolors, pastels, and drawings—often reveal greater spontaneity and experimentation, and this catalog celebrates the extraordinary variety and accomplishment of American artists through 51 such works produced from the 1860s to the 1990s. Ranging from Thomas Moran’s impression of Tower Falls in Yellowstone, and an Appledore Island garden by Childe Hassam, to Edward Hopper’s river landscape and Charles Burchfield’s intense abstractions, the watercolors express a breadth of experience from observation to hallucinatory imagination. records not only physical appearance but gives insight into the sitter’s personality as well. And vivid images in glowing color by Stuart Davis and William H. Johnson, compared to confident black and white sketches by Willem De Kooning and Mel Bochner, reveal the diversity of approaches among such accomplished artists.