Joan Potter Loveless

Julie at Hyperallergic reviews Weaving at Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students (2023), by Michael Beggs and Julie J. Thomson. Many of these weavers were also covered in the Women of Bauhaus exhibit I saw and blogged about several years ago. Fiber arts are having a good year in 2024 as Julie points out. Other than a nice pic of a piece by Joan she is not the topic, you can look here and (literally) here at the Asheville Art Museum, one of NC’s many fine institutions.

#joanpotterloveless

Charles Green Shaw

A friend who likes to test my art history knowledge sent me the image below, which is at the de Young Museum. As a key figure in early American abstraction, Charles Green Shaw was a unique amalgamation of a multifaceted life, education and career that resulted in a significant and beautiful body of art. Shaw holds the special recognition of being the only American born artist to be awarded two solo exhibitions during his lifetime at Solomon Guggenheim’s Museum of Non-Objective Painting (which eventually became the Guggenheim).

#charlesgreenshaw

Josef Albers

It would be hard to overstate the influence Albers has had on me as a creative and an instructor. I’ve written recently about this coming to the forefront of my practice including how my feelings about the moral deficiency of so many white l, male Modernists is a part of holding contradiction for me.

There is a foundation of course dedicated to the careers of Josef & Anni Albers.

More (my Pinterest board)

#josefalbers

Johannes Itten

As often happens with canon artists (given their numbers), I discovered recently while writing about my own practice that I had yet to blog about Johannes, one of the greatest colorists of the Modern era (probably only slightly less well known than Josef Albers). He was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus school.

#johannesitten

Leon Polk Smith

I’m often surprised, though I shouldn’t be given how broad and deep the canon is, that pieces of that story are missing from a blog that covers 1,500 plus artists (this btw for those who are new). Leon Polk Smith was an American painter. His geometrically oriented abstractpaintings were influenced by Piet Mondrian and he is a follower of the Hard-edge school. His best-known paintings constitute maximally reduced forms, characterized by just two colors on a canvas meeting in a sharply delineated edge.

More (Leon Polk Smith Foundation)
#leonpolksmith