PHILADELPHIA — With a career spanning more than eight decades, Philadelphia abstract painter Quita Brodhead (1901-2002) was known for her vibrant style and signature bright color palette. Woodmere Art Museum’s new exhibition “Quita Brodhead: Bold Strokes” showcases the evolution of the artist’s oeuvre from early figurative work into bold, gestural abstraction. An accompanying show, “Women and Biography,” shares the personal and public expression of intimate relationships between female artists and their families, partners, children and peers.Both exhibitions are on view February 8 – June 1 (open house, Monday, Feb. 17, 1-4 p.m., Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave.).
As a sign of Brodhead’s far-reaching influence, this year’s PHS Philadelphia Flower Show (March 1–9, Pennsylvania Convention Center) has selected Woodmere as one of its 18 national museum partners; with this year’s “ARTiculture!” theme in mind, Flower Show landscapers will create a display inspired by the Museum’s Brodhead collection. This unprecedented collaboration of Flower Show designers and the nation’s great art museums will turn the Convention Center into a 10-acre living canvas of exquisite landscapes, gardens and floral arrangements. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit theflowershow.com.
After attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in the early 1920s, Brodhead became a devoted student of Philadelphia artist Arthur B. Carles, her work exemplifying his belief in the expressive qualities of color. In 1934, she had her first solo exhibition at the Bryn Mawr Art Center (now the Main Line Art Center) in Haverford; by the 1940s and ’50s, Brodhead had developed large-scale, abstract paintings that put her at the cutting-edge of artistic expression in the United States and Europe. Among her influences are Joan Miró, Wassily Kandisnky, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.
Despite her success abroad and her innovative style of abstraction, Brodhead’s career gained significant momentum in the U.S. only when she was in her 90s. “Bold Strokes,” composed of 56 paintings from every decade of the artist’s 80-year career, begins with Red-Haired Lady (c. 1922–25), a painting Brodhead completed while she was as a student at PAFA, and concludes with Whence and Where To (2000), a peaceful and delicately hued abstract composition that suggests a peaceful contemplation of the artist’s past and future.
“Woodmere is incredibly thrilled to present the work of Quita Brodhead,” says William R. Valerio, the Patricia Van Burgh Allison Director and CEO of Woodmere. “Brodhead exhibited in Europe and New York with artists such as Hans Arp and Wassily Kandinsky, but she is not well-known in Philadelphia. At the center of the exhibition are her large, colorful abstract paintings. Situating her work within the development of abstraction that occurred in Philadelphia and internationally in the 1940s and ’50s, it becomes clear that Brodhead was at the center of major artistic trends of the mid-20th century.”
In Woodmere’s adjacent galleries, the exhibition “Women and Biography” showcases the strength of the Museum’s collection of work by female Philadelphia artists, including Mary Cassatt, Helen Corson, Edith Emerson, Martha Erlebacher, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Betty Hubbard, Aubrey Levinthal, Mitzi Melnicoff, Catherine Mulligan, Edith Neff, Violet Oakley, Alice Kent Stoddard and more.
Woodmere Art Museum is located at 9201 Germantown Avenue. Admission to special exhibitions is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, and FREE for students, children and Museum members; exhibitions in the Founder’s Gallery and Helen Millard Children’s Gallery are FREE. (Woodmere offers free admission on Sundays, including all special exhibitions.)Museum hours are: Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m.–8:45 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; and Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. For more information, visit woodmereartmuseum.orgor call 215-247-0476.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
New exhibitions:
Quita Brodhead: Bold Strokes
February 8 – June 1, 2014
Kuch and del Bueno Galleries
OPEN HOUSE: Monday, February 17, 1-4 p.m.
Women and Biography: Selections from Woodmere’s Permanent Collection
February 8 – June 1, 2014
Special event:
PHS Pennsylvania Flower Show: ARTiculture!
March 1 – 9, 2014
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Lectures:
Quita Brodhead: An Artist’s Perspective
Sat., Feb. 22, 3-4 p.m.
FREE
Join artist Bill Scott for a gallery talk as he discusses the independent spirit and artwork of one of his artistic mentors, Quita Brodhead. Scott will explore her shift from expressionistic figurative paintings to a focus on abstraction. Scott is a much-loved teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts whose vibrant paintings and prints have been exhibited widely. He also contributes to Art in America and has written exhibition catalogues for the National Gallery of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Capturing the Vibes of the Twentieth Century
Sat., March 1, 3-4 p.m.
$15 ($10 for members)
Barbara Wolanin, Ph.D., curator for the Architect of the Capitol, will reflect on life and artistic career of Quita Brodhead, including her training with mentor and teacher Arthur B. Carles. She will provide a rich perspective on Brodhead’s work within the context of the 20th century and its enormous changes. Wolanin has authored catalogue essays for the Hollis Taggart Galleries exhibition “Quita Brodhead: Celebrating a Century” (2001) and the Woodmere exhibition “The Orchestration of Color: The Paintings of Arthur B. Carles” (2000).
Family Circle: Portraits by Women Artists
Sat., March 8, 3-4 p.m.
$15 ($10 for members)
This lecture will explore portraits of family members by some of Philadelphia’s best-known women artists at the turn of the 20th century, including Violet Oakley, Mary Cassatt, Helen Corson and others. These women forged careers in the visual arts, paving new paths for future artists. Lecturer Patricia Likos Ricci, Ph.D., is the director of the Fine Arts Division at Elizabethtown College, where she is also an associate professor of the history of art and a member of the Women and Gender Studies faculty.
Quita Brodhead and the Women of Abstract Expressionism
Sat., March 22, 3-4 p.m.
$15 ($10 for members)
Many of the standard accounts of Abstract Expressionism fail to properly acknowledge the work of women artists. Both art historians and critics have marginalized such artists as Elaine de Kooning, Perle Fine, Joan Mitchell, and others. This lecture reframes the received canon of Abstract Expressionism by presenting the critical reception of women artists from the 1950s to the present. Lecturer Joan Marter is the Board of Governors Professor of Art History at Rutgers University. She has been editor of Woman’s Art Journal for 10 years and was curator of the 1997 exhibition “Women and Abstract Expressionism: Painting and Sculpture,” 1945–1959, at Baruch College.
Also on view:
Just In: Martha Mayer Erlebacher
Through March 2
On Paper: The Gift of Ann and Don McPhail
Through March 2
ABOUT QUITA BRODHEAD
Quita Brodhead’s career stretched the entire length of the 20th century. Born Marie W. Berl in 1901 to well-to-do parents who encouraged her interests, Brodhead had financial independence that allowed her to pursue a career in a field open to relatively few women. As an adult, she took the name Quita from a childhood nickname, Mariequita or “Little Marie.”
Upon entering the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1919, Brodhead pursued her studies with the well-known artist Arthur B. Carles. Brodhead absorbed Carles’ ideas about “creating form with color” (as Carles scholar Barbara Wolanin puts it); his teachings and body of work had a lifelong impact on her work. He introduced her to modern artists like Picasso, Cezanne and Modigliani who were on display at the nearby Barnes Collection. Matisse, who visited Philadelphia in 1933 at Carles’ and Barnes’ invitation, also had a major influence on her work. By the early 1950s, Brodhead’s work still alive with color, had grown more abstract and, in the words of a critic, “induces physical sensations as though vision were a tactile sense, as though her play in color were to stroke the observer.” Art historian and critic Bill Scott said, “Quita’s painting is a continual act of balance and proportions in which she always leaves room for air.”
Beginning in 1938 and continuing for the rest of her life, Quita exhibited frequently in galleries and museums with solo and group shows in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Paris, Rome and elsewhere. Before her death in 2002 at 101, retrospective shows were held at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pa., which she had founded in 1930; PAFA; and The Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York, celebrating her 100th birthday. Grace Glueck, art critic for The New York Times, said in reviewing the Taggart show, “The gifts of long life and the talent to live it rewardingly do not go to many. Ms Brodhead is quite simply a phenomenon.” (via quitabrodhead.com)
ABOUT THE 2014 PHS PHILADELPHIA FLOWER SHOW
The fusion of art and horticulture will find expression in “ARTiculture,” an extraordinary presentation of the PHS Philadelphia Flower Show on March 1 to 9, 2014, when guests will be inspired to let their inner artist bloom in their own gardens. An unprecedented collaboration of Flower Show designers and the nation’s great art museums will turn the Pennsylvania Convention Center into a 10-acre living canvas of exquisite landscapes, gardens and floral arrangements. The entrance exhibit of “ARTiculture” will be inspired by the sculptures and style of Alexander Calder, a member of Philadelphia’s historic family of artists, and will feature all new attractions that include a remarkable aerial dance troupe that will perform above and within the multi-dimensional display. Tickets and information are available now at theflowershow.com.
ABOUT THE PENNSYLVANIA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY
The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1827, dedicated to creating beauty and building community through gardening, greening and learning. With more than 26,000 member-households nationwide, PHS offers programs and events for gardeners of all levels, and works with volunteers, organizations, agencies and businesses to create and maintain vibrant green spaces. Proceeds from the PHS Philadelphia Flower Show and donations from foundations, corporations, government and individuals support PHS programs, including Plant One Million and PHS City Harvest. For information, visit PHSonline.org.
