This exhibition was curated by eight undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the Curatorial Practicum class at the University of Denver School of Art & Art History during Winter Quarter 2014.
While the large numbers of pencil drawings, watercolors, pastels, and other works on paper by Clyfford Still provide ample evidence that his style underwent a dramatic evolution, this exhibition reveals how Still’s interests and the content of his art appear remarkably stable.
Although Clyfford Still later rejected academic and art institutions, his early educational experiences provided him with ideas and methods that he used persistently throughout his artistic career. Through the decades, working on both plain and colored paper, he explored minute variations of concepts—expressive qualities of line, the potential for depth sensation through contrasting colors, the tension between center and the edges of a composition, and so on. Works from these early years often demonstrate exactly the same concerns as later, abstract works.
Curated by Stephanie Cashman, Zamir Hall, Olivia Lubeck, Jonas Pojdl, Natalie Roche, Camille Rose Shortridge, Courtney Smith, and Kate Woestemeyer