Eugene, OR.- The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is proud to present the “Early Works of David McCosh”. This is the first exhibition to focus on the early works of this prominent Northwest artist, the exhibition opens with a free, preview reception on Friday, July 22nd, at 6 p.m. and runs through September 4th in the Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery. Curated by Danielle Knapp, JSMA McCosh fellow curator and a recent University of Oregon graduate with a Masters in Art History, the exhibition focuses specifically on works from 1923 to 1934 and includes works in several media from the beginning of McCosh’s career. The UO InfoGraphics Lab has created custom programming on iPad stations which will allow visitors to access digital versions of McCosh’s sketchbooks.
“In reviewing his earliest artwork, it is possible to see the ways in which McCosh’s observational skills developed and how his experiences in the Midwest, amidst the cultural forces of the 1930s, influenced his growth as an artist,” says Knapp. The exhibition is primarily drawn from the JSMA’s permanent collection and the UO Foundation’s David John McCosh Memorial Collection, with additional important loans coming from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Wayne State University Art Collection, and private collectors. David McCosh (1903-1981) is perhaps best known for his post-1934 paintings, which reflected his close observations of nature and became increasingly abstract in his later years, and his WPA-era murals in Kelso, Washington; Beresford, South Dakota; and the Department of the Interior, Washington, DC. He was a highly respected and popular instructor at the University of Oregon from 1934-1970. Thirty years after his death, he continues to be recognized as one of Oregon’s most significant painters of the twentieth century.
McCosh left his hometown of Cedar Rapids, IA in 1923 to study at the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) where he took formal classes in cast and figure drawing, painting, etching, and lithography. In 1927, he received the AIC’s John Quincy Adams Award for his painting “The Prodigal Son” and was able to spend eight months traveling in Europe, sketching and painting with his close friend, fellow AIC student Francis Chapin. “The Prodigal Son,” a work which had never before been shown in Eugene, is on loan from the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and will be featured alongside McCosh’s preparatory drawings.
“McCosh excelled at capturing the quotidian charms of his immediate environment,” says Knapp. “Whether it was a busy street in Chicago, quaint harbors on the coast of France, or Iowan farmlands, he delighted in this visual exploration of the people, places, and things around him.” Throughout the late 1920s and early ’30s, McCosh kept busy with commissions and gallery shows in Chicago and New York, participation in various artist residencies, and teaching opportunities at the AIC. Many of the artists with whom he worked in Iowa and Illinois were major players in early Chicago modernism and Midwest regionalism. In 1930, he met his future wife, New York-based painter Anne Kutka, when both were participating in the Tiffany Foundation’s Artist Fellowship Program at Oyster Bay, Long Island. The following summer McCosh was hired to work in the lithography studio at the Woodstock Artist Colony, and in 1932 and ’33 he taught at Grant Wood’s Stone City summer residency. When the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a public work relief program under President Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, employed manual laborers by the thousands for conservation projects, McCosh was assigned to document workers at the CCC camp in Willow Springs, IL, for the Public Works of Art Project (a precursor to the Works Progress Administration). In the years leading up to their marriage in 1934, McCosh and Kutka kept up a rich correspondence that frequently discussed their struggles as emerging artists, their thoughts on contemporary exhibitions, and updates on mutual friends in the art world.
“Delving into the personal letters, sketchbooks, and other primary documents contained in the David John McCosh Memorial Archive has been especially rewarding, because they provide insight into the historical backdrop for McCosh’s artwork,” says Knapp. “His extraordinary output of oil paintings, watercolors, lithographs, and sketches from between 1923 and 1934 illustrate his transition from student to teacher and his dual development as a painter and a lithographer.” In 1934, McCosh accepted a teaching job at the University of Oregon, where his surroundings—the natural scenery, the evocative quality of the light, and the day-to-day life in Eugene—along with later sabbaticals in such diverse locations as the Washington coast and Mexico stimulated an important shift in his painting practices. Line and color ultimately replaced literal representation as the predominant compositional force in his work. After his retirement as professor emeritus in 1970, McCosh continued to live and paint in Eugene. He died in 1981. Also on view at the time of exhibition will be four oil paintings that represent the later developments in the McCosh’s painting style, which were selected for exhibition in consultation with one of McCosh’s former students and a member of the McCosh Advisory Committee, Portland artist Craig Cheshire.
The University of Oregon’s art museum opened its doors to the public on June 10, 1933. Designed by Ellis F. Lawrence, UO dean of the School of Architecture & Allied Arts (1914-1946), the museum was built to house the Murray Warner Collection of Oriental Art—more than 3,000 objects given to the University by Gertrude Bass Warner in 1921 as a memorial to her late husband. The original collection primarily represented the cultures of China and Japan. Also included were works from Korea, Mongolia, Cambodia and Russia, as well as American and British pieces influenced by Asian art and culture. Prince Lucien Campbell, president of the university from 1902 to 1925, and Lawrence, championed the building of an art museum on the University of Oregon campus. President Campbell believed that a university should be a center for culture for the region it serves. With its elegant exterior brickwork, decorative moldings and iron grillwork, as well as the peaceful Prince Lucien Campbell Memorial Courtyard, the original museum building is one of the most distinctive architectural structures in Oregon. The museum is listed on the National Register for Historic Places. In the 1990s university leaders and museum board members launched the Museum Campaign. The UO’s art museum broke ground for its long awaited and much anticipated project in October 2002. With its new name – Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art – in recognition of its major donor, the museum reopened in 2005. The design of the Chicago firm Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge reinvigorated the revered structure while respecting its historically important architectural elements and spaces. Today, significantly expanded gallery space allows the museum to host concurrent collections installations as well as changing exhibitions. Educational facilities now include a hands-on interactive discovery gallery and art-making studio. The museum also includes a café, museum store, as well as a lecture hall and reception hall that open onto outdoor courtyards. Visit the museum’s website at … http://jsma.uoregon.edu