San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts

 

ART IN HARD TIMES
February 4 - March 28, 2010
"Wind and Rain"Cheek Litho
Art in Hard Times is an exhibit of 38 lithographs produced by a group of early Texas artists during the 1930s up to the early 1950s. The museum was recently given this collection as a gift by Bill and Mary Cheek of Dallas, Texas in honor of Gladys May Hoffman Cheek. It is an extraordinary addition to the museum’s Permanent Collection.

Strictly speaking, early Texas art can be defined as work in any medium done by artists active in the state before 1945 (the end of World War II), but in a more general sense it includes work done before the late 1960s or 1970s. During the years between the two world wars of the 20th century, regionalism flourished in the American art scene, that is, artworks that promoted essential American virtues. Texas art of this period was a part of this trend and Dallas in particular developed a style of regional expression that reflected the bust-and-boom cycle of the depression and recovery. But with the global changes that occurred at the end of the 2nd World War most regionally inspired art was relegated to the sidelines and by the 1980s Texas regional art and the artists who made it were all but forgotten.

Almost forgotten that is, but for a few individuals who started looking for and collecting early Texas art. Bill and Mary Cheek are among those who first actively and passionately began seeking out paintings and works on paper that encompassed the core values that they associate with Texas – hard work, integrity, the fortitude to overcome hardship and man’s relationship with the land. The Cheeks, who had been living in the Midwest, returned to Texas in the early 1980s. Bill Cheek attended an art seminar in Dallas and learned that no one was collecting Texas art from the first half of the 20th century. This piqued his interest and he began reading about early Texas artists and then began looking for this work. It is a passion that he and Mary still hold to this day and over the years they have assembled a remarkable collection. Part of their collection included a group of lithographs which they recently gave to the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts.

Lithography is a printing process using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface and simple chemical processes to create an image. In the 1930s when the country was in the midst of the Great Depression, many artists of the time began producing lithographs.  Original prints were a means to present art of quality to a broad public at low cost. The relatively simple and inexpensive medium of lithography was tailor-made for the needs of both artists and art collectors during the Depression. As the number of printmakes in Texas increased  a group of artists banded together in 1937 to form an orgnization called the Lone Star Printmakers. The group of artists produced and published editions of their own prints and circulated touring exhibits of the prints. Late in 1939 a separate group of women printmakers formed a group known as the Printmaker Guild because women were excluded from joining the Lone Star Printmakers.

The Bill and Mary Cheek collection of lithographs includes prints by such well known early Texas artists as Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, Alexandre Hogue, and Coreen Spellman among numerous others. As in the Cheek collection as  a whole, the lithographs include landscapes and still lifes, genre scenes and portraits, but always works that evoke those core values that are associated not only with Texas but America as a whole. The exhibit Art in Hard Times will remain on display through March 28th.

Opening Reception, Thursday, February 4, 2010, from 5:30 - 8 pm at the Museum