Vance Kirkland
| Vance Kirkland | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 3, 1904 Convoy, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | May 24, 1981 (aged 76) Denver, Colorado, U.S. |
| Occupation | Painter |
Vance Hall Kirkland (November 3, 1904 – May 24, 1981) was a painter and educator in Denver, Colorado. His paintings, from 1926 to 1981, range from realist and impressionist watercolors, to surrealist deadwood worlds, to abstract expressionist mixtures of oil paint and water to richly-textured dot paintings in oil. Commenting on Kirkland’s works from 1954 to 1981, the Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, Lóránd Hegyi, stated, “...in his later work, he developed a visionary art which mystically empathized with the entire universe, gave cosmic universality visual form in explosive images and used panel painting to convey the perpetually changing state of the universe.” After his death Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art was founded in his name.
Vance Hall Kirkland was born in Convoy, Ohio on November 3, 1904. Hall was his mother’s maiden name, which he dropped after the first few years of painting. He attended the Cleveland School of Art, receiving a Diploma Degree of Painting (1927) and a Bachelor of Education in Art Degree (BEA, 1928), continuing a second year of studies in art history and art education at the Cleveland School of Education and Western Reserve University (1926–1928).
Kirkland moved to Denver in 1929, where he remained for the rest of his life. He and Anne Fox Oliphant were married in 1941, enjoyed traveling together and entertaining. They remained married until Anne died in 1970. In addition to painting and teaching (detailed in the “Educator” section below), Kirkland volunteered his time for many institutions. Kirkland died May 24, 1981 in Denver.
Dianne Perry Vanderlip, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, knew Kirkland during the last three years of his life and was co-curator of the Vance Kirkland FIFTY YEARS retrospective. She noted: “...each of these periods, of course, has been tied together with a primary interest of communicating the human spirit’s adventure through time. Obviously, though he titles these paintings with space age titles—Nebula Near Saturn and that kind of thing—these are not science fiction paintings; these are paintings about the adventure of the human spirit.”
Kirkland created about 1,200 paintings during his lifetime, spanning 5 painting periods and more than 30 series. In the catalog for his 1978 retrospective exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, Kirkland said, “It has been absolutely necessary for me to change directions in order to avoid repetition. Whenever a cycle of ideas seemed satisfactory, I knew I had done that and needed to move on and develop a greater challenge. Then the paintings remained fresh and were, I hoped, improved, and I avoided boredom.”
One of the most important observations about Kirkland’s career, made by museum scholars as documented below, is that he created something significant in each of his five painting periods. When his works were given exhibitions at 11 European museums and 2 exhibition halls, from 1997 to 2000, each of those 13 shows included all 5 of Kirkland's periods, ranging from the 1930s to the late 1970s.
...
Wikipedia