Denver Post: Special art in our midst

Special art in our midst
Springs show whets the appetite for big Impressionists exhibit
By Kyle MacMillan, Denver Post (Jan. 31)

• “Lovers of impressionism should not overlook a notable group of such works that are part of a broader exhibition continuing through March 9 at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.”
• “it is a solid, engaging show with enough strong selections to make the drive worthwhile. Perhaps best of all, there are examples by artists rarely seen in Colorado”
• “this exhibition shows off the wonderfully accommodating special-exhibition galleries”
• “the old-master works are exquisitely showcased. One of the most successful aspects of the addition, this huge room — about 38 by 100 feet with a 19-foot ceiling — allows for sweeping vistas and ample dialogue among the selections.”
• "Impressionist and Old Masters" is a perfect excuse for a road trip and a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.”

Denver news features Impressionist show

Watch the video featuring Impressionist and Modern Masters as a 'Colorado Getaway' by Denver's CBS 4 ... click here.

Impressionist and Modern Masters tour

Learn more about the Impressionist and Modern Masters as Springs Culture Cast tours the exhibition with FAC Curator Blake Milteer...

John Updike on Georges Seurat

Celebrated writer John Updike reviewed the Georges Seurat MOMA exhibition in The New York Review for Books (Jan. 17), writing, "Impressionism, our impression is, proceeded by instinct, its stabs of high color pursuing what the eyes of Monet and Renoir and Pissarro and Sisley found in the open air, as sunlight's spectrum flitted across the sight of haystacks, poppy-dotted fields, and rippled water. Analysis was left to Post-Impressionism, whose varied masters, with a greater or lesser degree of programmatic determination, put forward terms for their own art and the art of the future. Neither Cezanne nor Van Gogh was more resolutely theoretical than Georges Seurat."

• Impressionist and Modern Masters
• Sunday in the Park with George

Bon Vivant: "The mastery of light, color and line"

In the January edition of Bon Vivant magazine, writer Noel Black reviews the Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition, saying it "satisfies like a weekend trip to New York."

"Using colored walls to denote the three separate eras in the chronology, Blake Milteer and the FAC curatorial staff hone done an excellent job of creating visual moods around the periods they define: regal burgundy for the pre-impressionist era, a brooding green for the impressionists and a sunny yellow for the modernists. The works themselves are, without hyperbole, some of the finest examples of their times."

Impressionist and Modern Masters wallpapers

Have you seen the Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition at the FAC? If you have, you know that it includes one masterpiece after another. Almost too many. You need to take your time and study each work of art. Until your next visit to the FAC, download a free wallpaper to load on your computer ... Degas, Monet and LeBrun ... for your viewing enjoyment.

Cheyenne Edition: 'Exhibit ... will make your heart swell'

On Dec. 14, Cheyenne/Woodmen Editon columnist Lisa Matthews wrote of the Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition:

"The newest exhibit at the Fine Arts Center will make your heart swell with pride. In a word, it is simply, “Wow!” Even the FAC security guards concur, “This is our finest exhibition bar none.” And they should know, it is their job to keep these million-dollar masterpieces safe.

"A painting by Claude Monet first greets you at the entrance. From there, you’ll find works by many of the major artists from the past 300 years including Picasso, Degas, Renoir, Gauguin, Matisse, Pollock and even Georgia O’Keeffe and Wassily Kandinsky. An oversized painting of Marie Antoinette – in its original frame and once hung in the Palace of Versailles – will virtually blow you away.

“I’d expect to be in Paris or New York, okay even Denver to see such works of art,” said one proud attendee. Truly something Colorado Springs has worked hard to achieve. “We’ve transitioned from a place with dust in the corners to something as elegant as this,” said Ann Winslow, a past FAC board of trustee member.

Gazette: New FAC exhibition is 'jaw-dropping'

Fine Arts Center masters the masters
Gazette // Mark Arnest (Dec. 6)

If the sheer size of the Fine Arts Center expansion and its first post-expansion exhibit made a good impression, get ready to be really impressed.

Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Claude Lorrain: With its jaw-dropping, masterpiece-packed new exhibit “Impressionist and Modern Masters,” the Fine Arts Center solidifies its new position as a major player in the state’s art scene.

Words of wisdom from Impressionist and Modern Masters

In preparation for this Friday's Opening Celebration of Impressionist and Modern Masters, the FAC Blog has gathered quotes -- words of wisdom, if you will -- from some of the artists featured in the exhibition.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
Auguste Rodin

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
Edgar Degas

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.
Paul Gauguin

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
Claude Monet

I do not judge, I only chronicle.
John Singer Sargent

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
Camille Pissarro

I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.
Mary Cassatt

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.
Pierre Auguste Renoir

Everything starts from a dot.
Wassily Kandinsky

All good ideas arrive by chance.
Max Ernst

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.
Georgia O'Keeffe

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
Henri Matisse

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.
Jackson Pollock

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Pablo Picasso

When I see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss.
Alberto Giacometti

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
Joan Miro