The University of Tulsa’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives is proud to be a part of Corning, New York’s Rockwell Museum of Western Arts upcoming special exhibition titled An American Visionary: Alexandre Hogue, opening on Friday, September 27th, 2013 at 6:00 PM. This will be the first time that Hogue’s work will be presented in a New York venue. TU’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives is delighted and overjoyed to have contributed to this project by lending some of its own Hogue pieces for the exhibition.
Alexandre Hogue was one of the most acclaimed American artists of the 1930s and 1940s and helped define the artistic impression of the Dust Bowl era. The effects that the Dust Bowl had on the land that Hogue had grown to love had a profound effect on his works. The loss of the grasslands in the Texas Panhandle influenced his ecocentric views that are displayed in his paintings. He focused primarily on natural processes as well as the world of Native Americans and their relationship with the land. Hogue called himself an “abstract realist,” saying that naturalism is not possible because every artist recreates a realistic landscape and changes it to fit their own idea of what the view really looks like.
The University of Tulsa’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives has lent three of its Hogue pieces for the exhibition, specifically the works titled J. Frank Dobie, Lava-capped Mesa, and Zenigo-zee-zee. This exhibition is jointly curated by art writer Susie Kalil and James Peck, Curator of Collections at the Rockwell Museum. After its New York run, the exhibition will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.