Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA
February 11-March 26
Eric Bowman, Morning Broken, oil, 36 x 36.
Among the major annual western art exhibitions and sales, none may be more closely intertwined with the identity of its home institution than Masters of the American West at the Autry Museum of the American West. Dedicated to telling the stories of all peoples of the American West, the Autry itself first opened to the public on the eastern edge of L.A.’s vast Griffith Park in November 1988. Its signature fundraiser, which debuted a decade later, now celebrates its 26th anniversary.
“The show’s success,” notes Amy Scott, the museum’s vice president of research and interpretation and curator of visual arts, “has long been due to the continued relevance and evolution of contemporary representational and narrative western American art” in the stories the Autry tells.
- Terri Kelly Moyers, Silent Forest, oil, 24 x 36.
- Brenda Kingery, The Woodland Ten, acrylic, 40 x 40.
- Len Chmiel, Row Upon Row in Paso, oil, 24 x 35.
Such qualities are seen abundantly among this year’s 150-plus artworks by more than 55 artists. The works go on view to the general public, free with museum admission, on Saturday, February 11, and remain on view through Sunday, March 26.
The sale weekend, with events separately ticketed and most artists in attendance, begins on Friday, February 24, with a preview cocktail party in the gallery and museum lobby, complete with live music. On Saturday, morning and afternoon artists’ panel discussions focus respectively on the roots of western art and on its present and future. In the evening sale event, also accessible online, buyers are selected by live drawing from intent-to-purchase slips. Festivities follow in a tent on the museum plaza.
In subject matter, style, medium, and artist background, this year’s show presents a dazzlingly diversity of today’s western art. Masters stalwarts include Terri Kelly Moyers, whose SILENT FOREST depicts a young brave and his horse in an autumnal aspen grove; Len Chmiel, represented by the sunlit California vineyard scene ROW UPON ROW IN PASO; and George Carlson, deploying near-sculptural brushwork for visceral impact in the bleak warning offered by his painting, MAYDAY!
- Ezra Tucker, Breaking a Maverick, acrylic, 40 x 30.
- Brett Allen Johnson, The Edge of Bonneville, oil, 28 x 44.
- Grant Redden, Feeling Fresh, oil, 28 x 36.
New to the show, and epitomizing the diversity of western creativity, are artists including Ezra Tucker, whose rollicking BREAKING A MAVERICK portrays an intensely focused Black cowboy atop a bucking steed; Brenda Kingery, who abstracts colorful imagery from her Chickasaw heritage in THE WOODLAND TEN; and Preston Singletary, expressing his own northwest Native cultural pride in contemporary works of glass like TLINGIT-SHELF-BASKET. Says Scott, “Bringing their perspectives into Masters is an important part of the conversation about what western art looks like today.”
Still other works, of course, while very much of the present, hark back to past greats who first inspired western art lovers. Brett Allen Johnson’s landscape, THE EDGE OF BONNEVILLE, for example, brings to mind the big skies and sensuous landforms depicted a century ago by Maynard Dixon, while Eric Bowman’s MORNING BROKEN evokes the moody, tonal Native scenes of the Taos School.
Viewed in its entirety, this year’s Masters of the American West demonstrates how far western art has come in reflecting not only the region’s rich historical past but also its hopeful future. “I am in awe,” Scott concludes, “to see the way in which this genre continues to thrive.” —Norman Kolpas
contact information
323.667.2000
www.masters.theautry.org
This story appeared in the February/March 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine.