June 10–October 8, 2012 at the
National Gallery of Art
When George Bellows died at the age of forty-two in 1925, he was hailed
as one of the greatest artists America had yet produced. In 2012, the
National Gallery of Art will present the first comprehensive exhibition
of Bellows' career in more than three decades.
George Bellows
will include some 130 paintings, drawings, and lithographs. Bellows is
arguably the most important figure in the generation of artists who
negotiated the transition from the Victorian to the modern era in
American culture. This exhibition will provide the most complete account
of his achievements to date and will introduce Bellows to new
generations. The accompanying catalogue will document and define
Bellows' unique place in the history of American art and in the annals
of modernism.
The exhibition will begin with Bellows' renowned paintings of
tenement children, boxers, and the urban landscape of New York. These
iconic images of the modern city were made during an extraordinary
period of creativity for the artist, from shortly after his arrival from
Columbus, Ohio, in 1904, up to the Armory Show in 1913, and remain his
best-known works. They include
Forty-Two Kids, 1907 (Corcoran Gallery of Art),
New York, 1911 (National Gallery of Art),
Stag at Sharkey's, 1909 (Cleveland Museum of Art), and
Snow Dumpers, 1911 (Columbus Museum of Art).
Complementing the earlier signature masterpieces will be groupings
that bring to light other crucial, yet less familiar aspects of Bellows'
prodigious achievement, including his Maine seascapes, sporting scenes
(polo and tennis), World War I subjects, family portraits, and
Woodstock, NY, subjects. Drawings and lithographs will illuminate
Bellows' working methods and the relationships between his various
media. The show will end with paintings from 1924, the year before his
sudden death from peritonitis. These last works, including
Dempsey and Firpo (Whitney Museum of American Art) and
The White Horse
(Worcester Art Museum), will prompt visitors to contemplate the artist
Bellows might have become had he lived into the 1960s like his great
contemporary, Edward Hopper.
Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of
Art, Washington, in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
