The University Museum of Contemporary Art will present an exhibition of recent additions to the University Collection donated or acquired during the last three years. The exhibition highlights a selection of twenty-two prints, drawings, photographs, and works on paper in other media by artists Stephen Ellis, Oriole Farb Feshbach, Richard Hamilton, Alex Katz, Louise LaPlante, Sol LeWitt, Cyrilla Mozenter, Miklos Pogany, Liz Rideal, Sheron Rupp, Cary Smith, Joan Snyder, William Tillyer, Joe Tilson, and Douglas Wada. This exhibit runs March 23rd through May 14th.
Alex Katz’s The Orange Band, a screen print from 1979 is a masterful example of the artist’s signature style in which he combines a bright palette with an evenness of tone that verges on flatness. His portraits are distinguished by an absence of narrative and a lack of expression, combined with the particularity of a given sitter’s features and expression to produce the sense of a ‘real presence’. This dichotomy between
artifice and reality locates the artist’s interest in the space between abstraction and representation. The Orange Band is a promised gift to the University Museum of Contemporary Art by UMass alumna Lois Beurman Torf. Torf, an internationally regarded print collector, has donated works from her collection since the late 1970s selecting images to complement the Gallery’s existing holdings. Among Torf’s other promised gifts included in the exhibition are Sol LeWitt’s Black and White Lines Vertical not Touching, two prints by British artist Richard Hamilton, and works by Miklos Pogany and British artists William Tillyer and Joe Tilson.
The Gallery has also received a gift of seven drawings from Werner H. Kramarsky whose distinguished collection of contemporary drawings is highly regarded, as is his generosity to artists and academic institutions. Five of the seven drawings are on view in the present exhibition, among them two untitled drawings from 1999 by artist Cyrilla Mozenter. Made of pencil, toothpick, silk thread, and paper, the drawings’ simplicity and delicacy pay homage to the beauty of commonplace materials. Other works in the exhibit, also donated by Kramarsky, are by Cary Smith and Douglas Wada. Works by Stephen Ellis, Oriole Farb Feshbach, Louise LaPlante, Liz Rideal, Sheron Rupp, and Joan Snyder are also featured in the exhibition.
The University Museum of Contemporary Art is open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. The Gallery is also open during evening performances held in the Concert Hall of the Fine Arts Center.
Photo credit
Alex Katz,The Orange Band,
screenprint 65/80, 40 x 28 inches.
Promised gift of Lois Beurman ('46) Torf.
Photo credit: Paul Carew, Creative Services Imaging