"Kindred Spirits" celebrates two mavericks of the American avant-garde: Louise Nevelson and Dorothy Hood. Born a generation apart, Nevelson (1899–1988) and Hood (1918–2000) came of age as artists in the 1940s - Nevelson in New York, and Hood in Mexico and Texas. Both women frequently drew inspiration from common sources, balancing abstraction and content as they synthesized the lessons of Cubism and Surrealism into the bold new language of mid-century Modernism.
Although no documentation exists of the two artists meeting, Nevelson and Hood celebrated career milestones in Houston within a year of each other. In 1969 the MFAH mounted a major survey of Nevelson’s work, including the magisterial Mirror Image I, in the soaring space of Cullinan Hall. At that same time, Hood was on the faculty of the MFAH Museum School housed in the same building. In 1970, Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum mounted an exhibition of Hood’s work, featuring her most monumental paintings to date, at the University of St. Thomas.
In the decades that followed, Nevelson and Hood found common ground in their dramatic layering of shallow space, in their evocations of the physical and psychological landscapes of the era, and in the freedom of their late works. The two artists have been featured in group surveys in the past, but this exhibition is the first to focus on their kindred spirits and mutual achievements.
The exhibit will be on display through February 3, 2019.
"Kindred Spirits" celebrates two mavericks of the American avant-garde: Louise Nevelson and Dorothy Hood. Born a generation apart, Nevelson (1899–1988) and Hood (1918–2000) came of age as artists in the 1940s - Nevelson in New York, and Hood in Mexico and Texas. Both women frequently drew inspiration from common sources, balancing abstraction and content as they synthesized the lessons of Cubism and Surrealism into the bold new language of mid-century Modernism.
Although no documentation exists of the two artists meeting, Nevelson and Hood celebrated career milestones in Houston within a year of each other. In 1969 the MFAH mounted a major survey of Nevelson’s work, including the magisterial Mirror Image I, in the soaring space of Cullinan Hall. At that same time, Hood was on the faculty of the MFAH Museum School housed in the same building. In 1970, Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum mounted an exhibition of Hood’s work, featuring her most monumental paintings to date, at the University of St. Thomas.
In the decades that followed, Nevelson and Hood found common ground in their dramatic layering of shallow space, in their evocations of the physical and psychological landscapes of the era, and in the freedom of their late works. The two artists have been featured in group surveys in the past, but this exhibition is the first to focus on their kindred spirits and mutual achievements.
The exhibit will be on display through February 3, 2019.
"Kindred Spirits" celebrates two mavericks of the American avant-garde: Louise Nevelson and Dorothy Hood. Born a generation apart, Nevelson (1899–1988) and Hood (1918–2000) came of age as artists in the 1940s - Nevelson in New York, and Hood in Mexico and Texas. Both women frequently drew inspiration from common sources, balancing abstraction and content as they synthesized the lessons of Cubism and Surrealism into the bold new language of mid-century Modernism.
Although no documentation exists of the two artists meeting, Nevelson and Hood celebrated career milestones in Houston within a year of each other. In 1969 the MFAH mounted a major survey of Nevelson’s work, including the magisterial Mirror Image I, in the soaring space of Cullinan Hall. At that same time, Hood was on the faculty of the MFAH Museum School housed in the same building. In 1970, Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum mounted an exhibition of Hood’s work, featuring her most monumental paintings to date, at the University of St. Thomas.
In the decades that followed, Nevelson and Hood found common ground in their dramatic layering of shallow space, in their evocations of the physical and psychological landscapes of the era, and in the freedom of their late works. The two artists have been featured in group surveys in the past, but this exhibition is the first to focus on their kindred spirits and mutual achievements.
The exhibit will be on display through February 3, 2019.