3. 3
John Thompson, Allen True, and Frank Vavra. The Denver Artists Guild continues to operate today under
the name Colorado Artists Guild, to reflect its wide spread membership.
15 Colorado Artists
In 1948, the traditional Denver Artists Guild was fractured, but continued to operate, when some
of its more modern artists broke away. Others joined the renegade group and, calling themselves 15
Colorado Artists, they requested and received a rival exhibition at the Denver Art Museumāat the same
time and across the hall from the Guildās annual exhibition. This controversy recalls the earlier heated
debate touched off by the 1919 Denver Armory Show about the validity of modernism. Denver
exemplified the widespread disputes about abstraction superseding traditional painting that occured in
America during the 1920s, then regionalism holding sway over abstraction in the 1930s, and the
dominance of modern art forms that was established in the 1940s. The Denver Artists Guildās 1948
schism was a seminal moment in Colorado art history, when the moderns formally broke with the
traditionalists. Eleven articles about the break appeared in the newspapers. People came in droves to the
two dueling exhibitions. They chose sides. The Colorado art war was on.
The 15 Colorado Artists were Don Allen, John Billmyer, Marion Buchan, Jean Charlot, Mina Conant,
Angelo di Benedetto, Eo (Eva Lucille) Kirchner, Vance Kirkland, Moritz Krieg, Duard Marshall, Louise
Emerson Ronnebeck (recently widowed), William Sanderson, Paul K. Smith, J. Richard Sorby and Frank
Vavra, ten of whom taught at the University of Denver. At this time, Charlot was head of the Colorado
Springs Fine Arts Center art school (1947ā49) and Kirkland was director of the University of Denver
School of Art (1929ā32, 1946ā69).
Vance Kirkland and the University of Denver
The Chappell School of Art operated at Thirteenth Avenue and Logan Street in Denver from 1924
to 1928 with H. A. W. (Jack) Manard as its founding director. The University of Denver then purchased
the Chappell School with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation and hired Ohio painter Vance Kirkland
(1904ā81), who at age twenty-four became the founding director of the present University of Denver
School of Art, which opened on January 3, 1929. With the faculty that he both developed and inherited
from the former Chappell School, Kirkland encouraged modern art forms and effected a shift of the
stateās art center from Colorado Springs to Denver in the mid-1940s.
In 1932, as Kirklandās senior students approached graduation, the university refused to give credit
for art courses toward degrees. Kirkland resigned and began the Kirkland School of Art in Henry Readās
old art school building two blocks east of Chappell House (now Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative
Art). By 1933, Kirkland had an agreement with the University of Colorado āDenver extensionā (UCD) that
his students could get credit there toward graduation for their art courses. He thereby also founded the
UCD art department and initiated its art program. Kirkland was then 28 years old.
In 1946, when Kirkland had more than two hundred students, the University of Denver hired him
back with a salary equal to the chancellorās. Over the years Kirklandās faculty included three directors of
the Denver Art Museum who were also very fine artists: Arnold Rƶnnebeck (director 1926ā30), Donald
Bear (director 1934ā40), and Otto Bach (director 1944ā74). Many other important artists taught with
Kirkland including Julio de Diego, Roger Kotoske, Barbara Locketz, Robert Mangold, Frank Mechau, Anne
Van Briggle Ritter, Beverly Rosen, William Sanderson, Margaret Tee, John Thompson, Maynard Tischler,
and Frank Vavra.
Surrealism and Abstraction in Colorado
5. 5
Artistic Styles: This exhibition explores an evolution of Colorado art styles, particularly as one
moves clockwise around the smaller Exhibition Room II. Five principal stylesāEarly Traditionalism
(Realism and Impressionism), Modernist Regionalism, Surrealism, Referential Abstraction and Pure
Abstractionāare shown in groups. Further works in these styles can be seen throughout the rest of
Kirkland Museum.
Kirkland Museum does not show Contemporary style art because those works can be seen
in many other places around Denver including the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary
ArtāDenver, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and a majority of the galleries. At Kirkland
Museum, visitors can see, in depth, the history of Colorado art from traditional through modern, which
has provided the foundation for contemporary artists. As the modern era waned, Post-modern and
Contemporary art began to take its place from about 1970 to 1980.
The classification of paintings as Early Traditionalism (Realism and Impressionism) sets
them apart from the works of artists who continued to paint realistically in the later 20th
and 21st
centuries.
Regionalism, also known as American Scene Painting, portrayed American subjects with an
entirely American approach (mid 1920sāmid 1940s). Famous examples are paintings by Thomas Hart
Benton, Grant Wood and others, although Regionalism was not limited to the mid-west. Vintage
regionalist paintings are stylized to the extent that they are not Realism or Impressionism, but they are
still representational and not abstract. Since the term Regionalism can apply to any artwork done to
portray a particular region at any time, vintage regional paintings are additionally referred to here as
Modernist Regionalism, which is a more descriptive term than Regionalism. These paintings
represent an early style of modernism and they are not ārealistic Regionalismā or āimpressionistic
Regionalism.ā Starting in the 1940s, Regionalism became largely displaced by abstract art and, to a lesser
extent, surrealism.
Surrealism began in France and grew out of the atrocities of WW I. It spread through Europe,
then to America, resulting in the 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism given at New Yorkās
Museum of Modern Art. Surrealism portrays real, actual things and scenes, but then distorts, alters or
eerily transforms the images, or puts things together in unnatural ways so that scenes become surreal.
The surrealists felt that what appears to be real isnāt; how people portray themselves is often not
representative of their true nature; reality lies in our subconscious. Surrealist images are therefore like
dreams or frequently like nightmares, or sometimes whimsical and humorous.
Referential Abstraction denotes art that abstracts something but the viewer can still tell what
it is; the abstraction refers to something. Pure Abstraction, also called Non-objective Art, does not
seek to abstract identifiable things, but to create feelings and/or movement and/or optical effects, using
line, form, color, texture and other elements.