CASETA Members and Friends,

We are again sharing HETAG: The Houston Earlier Texas Art Group's monthly newsletter and we appreciate this organization letting us know what early Texas art events and other news is taking place in the Houston area.   Please click on the link below and enjoy!  Thanks HETAG!

Make sure you look too at the list of early Texas art exhibits that are showing now or will be opening soon.  A great time to plan a weekend trip.  Happy summer!     
                   
Lots of interesting early Texas art items for the Houston area and beyond!

      

ETA Exhibits Across Texas

Panhandle
 
2503 4th Avenue
Canyon, Texas 79015
 
April 9, 2016 - September 5, 2016
 
Jose Arpa, A Spanish Painter in Texas will be on exhibition April 9th, 2016 through September 5, 2016 at PPHM.  This will be the first major Jose Arpa exhibition since 1998 and it will showcase Arpa as one of the Texas artists who brought Impressionism to the Lone Star State.
          
Arpa's use of the color black reflects Spanish influences and he used this innovatively.  Another characteristic of Arpa's work is consistent off-balance compositions in landscapes.  In addition, with the mixture of many cultures and influences such as European, Mexican and American, Texas supplied Arpa with subjects found nowhere else making his work incredibly unique.

Born in Carmona, Spain,  Jose Arpa y Perea (1858-1952) began studying part-time at the Academia des Bellas Artes (Academy of Fine Arts) in Seville.  He became a full-time art student by 1876, studying with the history painter Edouardo Cano. Arpa sent paintings as part of the Spanish contingent to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where Impressionism was "all the rage."

He traveled to San Antonio, in 1899, and exhibited at the San Antonio International Fair in 1900.  Afterwards, he divided his time between Mexico, Spain, and San Antonio until 1923, when he founded his own painting school in San Antonio.  Assisted later by his nephew, the artist Xavier Gonzales, he began teaching classes en plein air in Bandera, Texas, in 1926.
 
Arpa's paintings and his teachings impacted "Texas Impressionism" more than any artist in south-central Texas. He continued to exhibit frequently at museums and galleries throughout Texas as well as in New York and Spain. Arpa returned to Spain in 1931 and remained there until his death in 1952. [from PPHM website]


NORTH TEXAS
 
3501 Camp Bowie Blvd.
Fort Worth, TX 76107
 
Texas Folk Art
October 16, 2015-September 19, 2016
 
Texas Folk Art features the spirited work of some of the state's most original painters and sculptors, including H. O. Kelly, Reverend Johnnie Swearingen, Velox Ward, and Clara McDonald Williamson, among others. Developing their own styles, these artists were unfettered by the conventions of academic training and traditional guidelines of art making. Lively storytelling was their primary focus, and they used any pictorial means necessary to create animated narratives about working, playing, and worshipping in Texas. Because their subject matter most often derives from personal experiences, these artists created scenes reminiscent of Texas's past. Kelley, Ward, and Williamson, for instance, depicted scenes of rural life, daily chores, and family and community rituals that they recalled from their youth. These paintings are more than autobiographical memories; they are historical reminders of the state's rural past and evolving identity.
[from ACM website]

5900 Bishop Blvd.
Dallas, TX 75205

This exhibition will present the work of two pioneering artists working and teaching in Texas in the 1940s and 1950s, Carlotta Corpron (1901-1988) and Janet Turner (1914-1988). Corpron, working in photography, and Turner, working in painting and printmaking, both taught art education at Texas universities and came into their own maturity of style during the middle of the twentieth century. Process and Innovation: Carlotta Corpron and Janet Turner explores the work of both artists made during this period of consummate experimentation. This exhibition draws entirely from holdings within the Dallas area, including Bywaters Special Collections of SMU, which holds an impressive collection of art by both Turner and Corpron.
[from MM website] 

SOUTH TEXAS
 
1100 Bagby Street
Houston, TX 77002
 
July 14, 2016 - October 15, 2016
 
The Heritage Society (THS) is organizing This WAS Contemporary Art: Fine and Decorative Arts in Houston 1945-1965 in partnership with Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art (CASETA). The inaugural exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum in 1948 was a show called This Is Contemporary Art. It was a concept, perhaps growing out of a Bauhaus approach brought to Houston by Robert Preusser, emphasizing that both fine and decorative arts should be appreciated and that art was something to bring into all aspects of life.

This was also the model for a look back at a time when Houston and the Houston art world were in transition from regional to national - era of Handmakers, a cooperative of Houston artists making things for the home.  The exhibition will use the 1948 show when Houston and the Houston art world were in transition from regional to national even international significance.  Though the art and decorative items in the earlier show were not Houston made, this time, we will be showcasing Houston art and decorative arts and furniture made and/or designed here.
[from THS website]

WEST TEXAS

1705 W. Missouri Ave.
Midland, TX 79701

July 8, 2016 - September 18, 2016

The renowned Southwestern painter Woody Gwyn was born in San Antonio and raised in Midland. His work can be found in private collections all over town, and in museums throughout the Southwest. Gwyn's realistic landscape paintings often play with ranges of scale, from tiny to huge. The artist lives and works in Galisteo, New Mexico, and has not had an exhibition at the Museum of the Southwest in over a decade. This exhibition features rarely seen works from the Museum's permanent collection as well as several local collectors.
[from MSW website]

One Arts Festival Plaza
El Paso, TX 79901

July 24, 2016 - June 11, 2017

In 1998 the El Paso Museum of Art inaugurated the Tom Lea gallery devoted to the work of Tom Lea and other artists of this region from the nineteenth century to the present. Born in El Paso in 1907, Tom Lea was one of the Southwest's most prolific and respected American scene artists. Today he is well known for his work as muralist, illustrator, war correspondent, portraitist, landscapist, novelist, and historian.  As a portraitist Tom Lea enjoyed capturing the portrait likenesses of those close to him.

Taking inspiration from Tom Lea's celebrated portrait of his wife Sarah, this upcoming exhibition focuses on the special and intimate connections found between artists and models.  The majority of the women represented in the artworks had a personal association with the artists, whether they were relatives, close friends, or acquaintances. A handful of the portrayals are by female painters, including a watercolor self-portrait of Wanda de Turczynowicz Hermann (illustrated above) in which she shows herself accompanied by the tools of her craft: pigments, brush, palette, and palette knife. Some of the artists included in the exhibition are Tom Lea, Manuel Acosta, Fremont Ellis, Peter Hurd, Helen Mithoff, and Leola Freeman. Female Portraits: A Connection between Artists and Models explores how women are depicted in portraits created by someone who knew them personally. It also highlights how each work was executed with a close attention to detail in order to capture the dignity, humble character, or beauty of each subject. The portraits present in this exhibition not only describe an individual but also evoke the artist's sentiments and embody Lea's words on painting portraits: "It gives me a good feeling about my relationship to [a person] when I put down what I feel about him [or her]." 
[from EPMA website]