Published in conjunction with a major retrospective
exhibition (opening at National Gallery of Art,
Washington, in June 2012, then travelling to The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in November 2012,
before moving to Royal Academy of Arts, London, in March
2013), this book documents the artist's career from his
youthful meteoric rise to the largely unexplored period
preceding his death. Mentored by Robert Henri, leader of
the Ashcan school in New York in the early part of the
twentieth century, Bellows skilfully and audaciously
painted the world around him: street children,
tenements, boxers, urban and rural landscapes,
seascapes, war scenes, and family portraiture. He was
also an accomplished graphic artist whose illustrations
and lithographs addressed a wide array of social,
religious, and political subjects. Nearly 200
reproductions from every stage of Bellows' career are
accompanied by a series of essays that offer a
substantial reconsideration of the artist, drawing
comparisons to Manet, Goya, El Greco, and Picasso, and
tracing his rise to the emergence of other American
greats such as Edward Hopper. A chronology and two
appendices devoted to Bellows' personal record book and
his published illustrations for periodicals such as The
Masses and Harper's Weekly reveal the full range of his
remarkable artistic achievements. Authoritative and
exhaustive, this groundbreaking book firmly establishes
Bellows' unique place in the history of both American
art and Western art in general.
|
|