A day in National Gallery of Art with my Lovely Drawing Group

 

7 March 2024 from 1:30 to 3:30 was the week time for the meeting drawing gruop to be in the National Gallery of Art with the guidance of Miss Barbara Wright, it was a good chance to seet the gallery temprory exhibitions. They were The Anxious Eyes:German Expressionisiom and Its Legacy and Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper. 

Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper. 

"A PICTURE LIVES by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer.

It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world."

Writing in 1947, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) addressed one of his greatest concerns:

the vital relationship between a work of art and its beholder.

So which works did he think were worth the risk?

The exhibition is organized around four periods in Rothko's career when painting on paper was his primary focus.

 Watercolors from the 1930s reveal his early artistic aspirations and influences. 

Symbolic paintings of the 1940s show Rothko searching for "timeless and tragic" subjects relevant to the turmoil

of contemporary global events. 

In the late 1950s and late 196os, Rothko created hundreds of paintings on paper in his signature abstract style.

Just like their canvas counterparts, these works attempt to convey, in Rothko's words,

"the basic human emotions -tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on."

I love the exhibtion and paintings, I felt exactly as the painter him self said, "You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral?"

My photos in Mark Rothko Exhibition

The Anxious Eyes:German Expressionisiom and Its Legacy 

The devastation of war, social unrest, political clashes, economic instability, and pandemic: the world events of today parallel those experienced in Europe during the early 19005.

Numerous artists and collectives working in Germany and

Austria during those decades responded by developing new ways to meaningfully portray their apprehension about an uncertain world. Known as the German expressionists, these inventive artists - who worked in printmaking, drawing, sculpture, as well as painting - strived to convey the immediacy and intensity of their complex responses to the transformations of modern life.

The painting that I am captivated with that shows global issues of displacement, migration, and the ravages of war and climate change on the land.

All paintings in the exhibition grapple with anxieties and fears - social injustice, political strife, armed conflict, and pandemic but the God's safe and mercy is the only thing makes all right.

Our meeting session was in National Gallery, East Building Ground Level, Gallery 103E to sketch: Paintings by Matisse and Bonnard.