Due to their fragile nature, the works on paper in the collection (paintings on paper, drawings, prints, etc.) can only be exhibited on a limited basis. As a result, the works in the Flug/Freed Galleries change regularly. This week, we have installed an entirely new suite of works on paper. Here are some of the highlights:
PW-2 and PW-3 both 1930 (below, top to bottom): These works are from a group of small watercolors executed in 1930. Closely related to oil paintings from this same time, these splendid, sensitively rendered works reveal a lighter, more ethereal rendition of the Alberta landscape.
PP-486, 1936 (below): While we have shown similar portrait studies made on the reservations of the Colville Confederated Tribes near Nespelem, Washington, this particular example perhaps demonstrates most clearly Still’s fascination with the color relationships of his subjects’ native clothing. Curiously, several pair hues that will form the color syntax of later abstract expressionist works, like blue and brown and blue, brown, and red.
PH-93, 1944 (below): This “tour de force” is perhaps the most complex and densely-worked example from the nearly 100 oils on paper Still made in Richmond, Virginia between 1943-45. This drawing relates to the masterwork PH-751, also from 1944, in which humanoid figuration, skeletal and bone-like forms, and machinery seem to congeal into the dark, ominous landscape background.
