This ambitious showing of Cleveland Art is staged in partnership with the Department of Art History and Art, College of Arts and Sciences, CWRU, and Cleveland Arts Prize which is engaged in a year-long celebration of Cleveland’s “Past Masters” in the years before 1961, when Cleveland Arts Prize began giving its annual awards.
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In the period of enormous civic growth, from 1900 to 1945, Cleveland supported a community of some 6,000 artists, many of whom produced work of national significance, such as Margaret Bourke-White, the famed journalist-photographer, and Viktor Schreckengost, creator of the Jazz Bowl–widely regarded as the single greatest masterwork of American Art Deco.
In this period Cleveland was a powerhouse of painting, sculpture, ceramics, poster design, fashion design, and industrial design; established a major art school and art museum; held an annual May Show of regional art; held a free-spirited annual arts festival, the Kokoon Club ball; and was the home base of Henry Luce’s publishing empire, and the home of Fortune, Life, and Time Magazine.
The exhibition will spotlight the achievement of Cleveland’s most remarkable artists from this period, some internationally famous, some still relatively little known, including August Biehle, Margaret Bourke-White, Charles Burchfield, Clarence Carter, Clara Deike, Carl Frederick Gaertner, Raphael Gleitsman, Joseph Jicha, Max Kalish, Henry Keller, William Lescaze (artist and architect), Roy Lichtenstein, James Harley Minter, Elmer Ladislaw Novotny, Hugo Robus, Charles Sallee, Don Schreckengost, Viktor Schreckengost, Huey Lee Smith, William Sommer, Rolf Stoll, Paul Travis, Abel Warshawsky, and Frank Wilcox.
More than simply an art exhibition, this project provides an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the cultural achievements of Cleveland, and to reflect on the best course for the city’s future.
Honoring Our Past Masters: The Golden Age of Cleveland Art, 1900-1945 opens at the Cleveland History Center, headquarters of the Western Reserve Historical Society, with an opening event on December 4, 2021.
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