A Midcentury Montage: A r t Wo r k s b y T h r e e H o u s t o n F o u n d e r s
Henri Gadbois
August 28 - September 19, 2015 Wi l l i a m Re ave s F i n e A r t
Ten Years 2006
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A Midcentury Montage: A r t Wo r k s b y T h r e e H o u s t o n F o u n d e r s
August 28 - September 19, 2015
Exhibition Events Opening Reception: Saturday, August 29th, 6 - 8:30 p.m. Artist Talk - David Adickes: Saturday, September 12th, 2 - 4 p.m. Artist Talk - Henri Gadbois & Leila McConnell: Saturday, September 19th, 2 - 4 p.m.
Ten Years 2006
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William Reaves Fine Art | 2143 Westheimer Road | Houston, Texas 77098 | 713.521.7500 Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm and by appointment, please call 713.521.7500 or email info@reavesart.com.
A Midcentury Montage: Art Works by Three Houston Founders To inaugurate its 10th Year Anniversary Season, William Reaves Fine Art presents an alluring montage of local midcentury masters. In Midcentury Montage the gallery features an exquisite collection of period paintings by David Adickes, accompanied by finely sculpted foodstuffs by Henri Gadbois, and recent paintings and collages by Leila McConnell. The show offers a tribute to these three Houston greats, who all have been mainstays of the Bayou City arts scene since the fifties, and are still actively engaged in creative production well into their eighth decade. Like the artists, selections in Midcentury Montage are fun, inventive and timeless. With three such esteemed local masters, the show accentuates the signature attributes of grand Houston art. As the gallery’s “season opener”, Midcentury Montage offers viewers a delightful segue into yet another highly-anticipated season of high art from the Lone Star state, continuing the hearty track record of prime Texas material that locals have come to expect from Reaves and company! By now, we suspect that most Houstonians with even a scintilla of interest in the arts are familiar with David Adickes! Always-colorful and entertaining, Adickes represents perhaps the quintessential Texas “modernist”! While known by today’s generation as a sculptor of presidential heads and huge concrete statues, Adickes was actually one of the city’s most recognized and accomplished midcentury painters. Originally, from Huntsville, he bounded onto the Houston scene in 1950, after completion of a wartime stint in the U.S. Army Air Corp, a degree in physics at Sam Houston State Teachers College, and subsequent art training in Paris at the storied atelier of Cubist pioneer, Fernand Leger. Talented and engaging, Adickes, along with his friend Herb Mears, introduced a newly imported “School of Paris” style to Houston’s emergent art scene. The result was an immediate embrace and instant acclaim from an ever-admiring constituency, including many of the city’s leading art patrons (such as John DeMenil and Nina Cullinan). As a “new-comer”, Adickes notched a “sell-out” at his very first local show in 1950 at the fabled Shamrock Hotel. Ruth Uhler awarded him a small, yet highly noted, one-man exhibition at the MFAH the following year that further propelled his meteoric rise on the local scene. He joined Ben DuBose at Bute Gallery, and from there his sales and popularity
continued their rapid ascent; his paintings quickly becoming coveted appointments in the homes and offices of city elites. While maintaining Houston and Dubose gallery as his “home base”, Adickes launched a series of international forays in the latter 1950s, returning to Europe (France, Spain, Italy) and then on to Japan, where he was befriended, written about and collected by Pulitzer Prize writer, James A. Michener. He joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin for a while, leaving there after two years to travel to Tahiti to commune on the island with Gaugin’s son. Meanwhile, he expanded gallery affiliations on both coasts, attracting high-end collectors among the rich and famous of New York, Palm Beach and Los Angeles, the likes of which included Elvis Presley and other notables! An inexhaustible painter, Adickes perfected his cubist-inspired style and subject matter over a long and notable career. His oeuvre most often reflects the wiry figures for which he has especially become known (“Adickes-men”), as well as blocky still-lives replete with his classic elongated bottle forms. Many of the artist’s earliest and best examples of these subjects may be seen in this exhibition. Always a sculptor, Adickes began to “work large” in his later career, concentrating primarily on large-scale public installations over the last several decades. In this line, the artist has successfully created concrete monuments that have now become iconic Texas landmarks, such as “Big Sam” near his native Huntsville and the majestic Stephen F. Austin statue in the Brazosport area. Today, at eighty-eight, Adickes is at work on his tallest project yet, a memorial to NASA’s astronaut program, destined for a Clear Lake installation. In Midcentury Montage, we return to Adickes’ original work, displaying a definitive selection of the early paintings that brought him his first notoriety. These early works represent the artist’s original views and formative renditions of his most favored subjects and themes. With their distinctive style and superb workmanship, Adickes’ paintings were incredibly fresh and novel when he first introduced them to Houston in the early 1950s. Even today, they retain classic “modernist” qualities in their subject matter, style and composition. Looking at these works today, there is little wonder why Houston’s earliest midcentury collectors clamored for Adickes’ works back then, and given those auspicious
beginnings, there should be little surprise as well that over the halfcentury since, David Adickes has become a household name in the Houston community. Likewise, Henri Gadbois and Leila McConnell are also founders and longtime mainstays of the Houston art community. Like Adickes, this talented duo has contributed significantly to the quality and vibrancy of the Bayou City art scene since the 1950s. Gadbois, a native Houstonian and the son of a local painter and commercial artist, is a graduate of the University of Houston art department. McConnell is a product of the Rice University architectural program and the San Francisco School of Fine Art. The couple met and married in Houston in 1956, and have shared remarkable careers as artists and instructors ever since. Both held tenures at The Museum School at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Gadbois served over 30 years as a public school art teacher in the Houston Independent School District. They have been popular and prolific artists over a six-decade span, having their paintings avidly collected and shown by some of the city’s most prominent galleries over the years, including Cushman, DuBose, Marsters and Muth, (and now, of course, William Reaves Fine Art). Both artists remain vital and active well into their eighties, and in Midcentury Montage we show examples of their most recent output, in Gadbois’ case, focusing on his unique ceramic still-lives (faux foods) and for McConnell, concentrating on recent collages and paintings. While Gadbois worked in ceramics early in his career, it has only been in recent years that the artist perfected his imaginative line of “faux foods”—a sculpted selection of fresh foods and vegetables cast in ceramic. His ceramic food-forms are now proudly displayed as combination art works and exhibition artifacts on the tables of the nation’s most prominent residential museums, including Houston’s own Bayou Bend. We are proud to present these unique still-lives for the first time within a gallery context, as endearing additions to Texas art collections.
Leila McConnell is renowned as an important member of Houston’s abstract-expressionist school, her ethereal series of “sky paintings” and intimate collages rivaling those of Dorothy Hood, and ranking her among the city’s earliest women abstractionists. In this exhibition, we examine a selection of the artist’s most recent works in both realms. Certainly, there has been a resurgence of interest and scholarship in Midcentury Modernism in Texas. We now know that Houston artists such as Adickes, Gadbois and McConnell, as well as their colleagues within the city, were at the very forefront of the modern art revolution that transformed the city and state during that period. The artists of Midcentury Montage are truly among the Founders of our city’s dynamic art scene of today, and as a gallery devoted to Texas art, we are indebted to each of them for their creative efforts and accomplishments over the years. More importantly, however, and as can be seen in the selections included here, Houston art-goers are equally fortunate to be the continued beneficiaries of their creative energies and output, each still clearly producing strong and engaging work. We are proud to celebrate our Tenth Anniversary season with this distinguished trio! - William Reaves William Reaves Fine Art
Henri Gadbois • Faux Food • Aug 28 - Sept 19, 2015 No. Artist Title of Work Medium Dimensions (inches) 1
Henri Gadbois
Sunny Side Up
painted ceramic sculpture
12 x 9.5 x 2
2
Henri Gadbois
Pomegranates
painted ceramic sculpture
10.5 x 10.5 x 6
3
Henri Gadbois
Four Oysters
painted ceramic sculpture
8.5 x 8.5 x 2.5
4
Henri Gadbois
Watermelon
painted ceramic sculpture
13 x 10.5 x 5
5
Henri Gadbois
Have a Cookie
painted ceramic sculpture
11 x 10 x 1.5
6
Henri Gadbois
Chocolates
painted ceramic sculpture
7.5 x 7.5 x 1
7
Henri Gadbois
Nonpareils on a Doily
painted ceramic sculpture
7x7x1
8
Henri Gadbois
Sliced Bread
painted ceramic sculpture
15.5 x 11.5 x 4
9
Henri Gadbois
Arrangement of Vegetables
painted ceramic sculpture
9 x 9 x 22
10
Henri Gadbois
Apples and a Pineapple
painted ceramic sculpture
9 x 9 x 26
11
Henri Gadbois
Cactus Wreath
painted ceramic sculpture
27 x 26 x 1.5
12
Henri Gadbois
Oysters on the Half Shell
painted ceramic sculpture
10.5 x 10.5 x 2
13
Henri Gadbois
Dinner is Served
painted ceramic sculpture
18 x 11 x 2
1. Henri Gadbois, Sunny Side Up, painted ceramic sculpture, 12 x 9.5 x 2 inches.
2. Henri Gadbois, Pomegranates, painted ceramic sculpture, 10.5 x 10.5 x 6 inches.
3. Henri Gadbois, Four Oysters, painted ceramic sculpture, 8.5 x 8.5 x 2.5 inches.
4. Henri Gadbois, Watermelon, painted ceramic sculpture, 13 x 10.5 x 5 inches.
5. Henri Gadbois, Have a Cookie, painted ceramic sculpture, 11 x 10 x 1.5 inches.
6. Henri Gadbois, Chocolates, painted ceramic sculpture, 7.5 x 7.5 x 1 inches.
7. Henri Gadbois, Nonpareils on a Doily, painted ceramic sculpture, 7 x 7 x 1 inches.
8. Henri Gadbois, Sliced Bread, painted ceramic sculpture, 15.5 x 11.5 x 4 inches.
9. Henri Gadbois, Arrangement of Vegetables, painted ceramic sculpture, 9 x 9 x 22 inches.
10. Henri Gadbois, Apples and a Pineapple, painted ceramic sculpture, 9 x 9 x 26 inches.
11. Henri Gadbois, Cactus Wreath, painted ceramic sculpture, 27 x 26 x 1.5 inches.
12. Henri Gadbois, Oysters on the Half Shell, painted ceramic sculpture, 10.5 x 10.5 x 2 inches.
13. Henri Gadbois, Dinner is Served with a Glass of Wine, painted ceramic sculpture, 18 x 11 x 2 inches.
HENRI GADBOIS (b. 1930) Born in Houston, Texas to a father working as a commercial artist for Madison Southwest, Henri Gadbois was exposed to art all his life. His father was vehemently opposed to abstract art and, although arguments regarding the subject matter were frequent, Gadbois was greatly influenced by his father. Gadbois was also strongly influenced by Noma Henderson, his high school art teacher. She introduced Gadbois to ceramics, leading to his first exhibition which featured a small bowl he created while still in high school. Gadbois graduated from Lamar High School and earned his bachelor of fine arts and master of letters from the University of Houston in 1952 and 1953, respectively. Gadbois studied under Texas greats Robert Preusser and Lowell Collins, stating that his time at the University of Houston was one of great change. During his U.S. military service in Germany, he had studio space at the University of Georgia in Furth which allowed him to continue to paint. Shortly before retiring from public school teaching, Gadbois began making faux food for the Yuletide Celebration at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens. In 1995, he started Faux Foods, a company that makes earthenware foods in the 18th and 19th Century manner for museums. Selected Biographical and Career Highlights 1930 Born in Houston, Texas 1952 BFA, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 1952 Instructor, Museum School, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas 1953 Master of Letters, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 1953 Registrar, Business Manager, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas 1954-55 Served in U.S. Army 1956 Married artist, Leila McConnell 1956-90 Teacher, Houston Independent School District, Houston, Texas 1995-present Owner, Faux Foods© Resides in Houston, Texas Selected Prizes, Awards Houston Annual: Purchase Prize 1954, 1955; Cash Prize 1953, 1960; Materials Prize 1957; Honorable Mention 1958 1953 Cash Prize, Portrait, oil 1954 Purchase Prize/Allied Art, Red Tights, oil 1955 (December) Purchase Prize, Londschaft, Stuttgart, oil 1957 Materials Prize, Illogical Organism, oil 1958 Honorable Mention, Whiteout, oil 1960 Cash Prize, Three, oil Texas General/Annual: Purchase Prize 1961 1961 Purchase Prize/SA Art League, Katy Road, oil Selected Exhibitions ·1948 10th Texas General Exhibition 1948–1949, circulated: Witte Museum, San Antonio; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas ·1949–51 24th–26th Annual Exhibition of Works by Houston Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
·1951 Houston Post Easter Art Contest, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas ·1952 27th Annual Exhibition of Works by Houston Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas ·1952–65 16 Texas Painters, Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas ·1953 28th Annual Exhibition of Works by Houston Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (cash prize) ·1953 15th Annual Exhibition of Texas Painting and Sculpture 1953, circulated: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas ·1954 Texas Watercolor Society 5th Annual Exhibition, Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas ·1954 29th Annual Exhibition of Works by Houston Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (purchase prize) ·1954 16th Annual Exhibition of Texas Painting and Sculpture 1954, circulated: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Witte Museum, San Antonio; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Fort Worth Art Center, Fort Worth, Texas ·1955 (March) 30th Annual Exhibition of Works by Houston Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas ·1955 (December) 31st Annual Exhibition of Houston Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (purchase prize) ·1955 Solo, Herbert Institute, Augusta, Georgia ·1956 D. D. Feldman Collection of Contemporary Texas Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas ·1956 18th Annual Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition 1956–1957, circulated: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Witte Museum, San Antonio; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Texas Fine Arts Association, Austin; Museum, Texas Tech, Lubbock, Texas ·1957 Survey of Painting in Texas, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, circulated by American Federation of Arts (catalogue) ·1957 32nd Annual Houston Artists Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (materials prize) ·1958 Texas Oil ’58, A Salute to the Oil Industry of the State by Texas Painters, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, traveled to: Bank of the Southwest, Houston; Dallas Public Library, Dallas; Republic National Bank of Dallas, Texas (catalogue)
·1958 33rd Annual Houston Artists Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (honorable mention) ·1958 20th Annual Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition 1958–1959, circulated: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Witte Museum, San Antonio; TFAA, Laguna Gloria Gallery, Austin; Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont; San Angelo Art Club, San Angelo; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
·1999 Early American Homes Magazine Top 200 American Craftsmen ·2004 A Selection of Art Made in Houston 1950-1965, Brazos Projects, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, Texas ·2004–05 Rice Institute and the Visual Arts in Houston: 1900–1960, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, Texas
·1959 Made in Texas by Texans, Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art, SheratonDallas Hotel, Dallas, Texas (catalogue)
·2006 Houston Art in Houston Collections: Works from 1900 to 1965, Heritage Society Museum, Houston, Texas
·1959 34th Annual Houston Artists Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
·2007 Texas Modern: The Rediscovery of Early Texas Abstraction (1935-1965), Martin Museum of Art, Baylor University, Waco, Texas (catalogue)
·1960 22nd Annual Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition 1960-1961, circulated: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Witte Museum, San Antonio; Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
·2007–08 Urban Texas: Changing Images of an Evolving State, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas
·1960 35th Annual Houston Artists Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (cash prize)
·2008 Founders of Houston Art: Thirty Artists Who Led the Way, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas
·1961 23rd Annual Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition 1961–1962, circulated: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Witte Museum, San Antonio; Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont; Museum, Texas Tech, Lubbock, Texas (purchase prize)
·2009 Back to the Future: Elements of “Modern” in Mid-Century Texas Art, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas
·1962 24th Annual Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition 1962–1963, circulated: Witte Museum, San Antonio; Centennial Art Museum, Corpus Christi; Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas ·1962–63 Museum School Faculty Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas ·1963 25th Annual Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition 1963–1964, circulated: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Centennial Art Museum, Corpus Christi; Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso; Witte Museum, San Antonio; University of Texas at Austin, Texas ·1965 Longview Invitational, Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, Texas ·1965 Solo, Houston Baptist College, Houston, Texas
·2009 Leila McConnell and Henri Gadbois: Side by Side, O’Kane Gallery, University of Houston/Downtown, Houston, Texas ·2010 The Presence of Light: Sky and Light in the Texas Landscape, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas ·2010 Third Anniversary Show: A Tribute to Houston Artists, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas ·2011 Lone Star Modernism: A Celebration of Mid-Century Texas Art, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas ·2011 Southeast Texas Art: Cross-Currents and Influences, 1925–1965, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas
·1965 Painters and Partners, Jewish Community Center, Houston, Texas
·2011 Portrait of Houston: 1900–2011, Alliance Gallery, Houston Arts Alliance, Houston, Texas (catalogue)
·1966 Opening exhibition of DuBose Gallery, Houston, Texas
·2012 A Survey of Texas Modernists, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas
·1971–72 Texas Painting and Sculpture: The 20th Century, Pollack Galleries, Owen Arts Center, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, traveled to: Witte Confluence Museum, HemisFair Plaza, San Antonio; University Art Museum, University of Texas at Austin; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; The Museum, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas (catalogue)
·2012 Interpretations of the Texas Hill Country by Henri Gadbois, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas
·1984 Solo, Imagination Gallery, Kerrville, Texas
·2013 A Tribute to Texas Rivers, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas
·1998 Early American Life Magazine Top 200 American Craftsmen
·2013 Restless Heart: The Collectors’ Quest to Find Texas in Art, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, Texas
·2013 Rhythms of Modernism, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas ·2013 Summer Encore Exhibition, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas ·2013 Hill Country Love Affair: Interpretations of a Texas Heartland, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas ·2014 Houston Founders at City Hall Art Exhibition, City Hall, Houston, Texas ·2014 A New Visual Vocabulary: Developments in Texas Modernism 1935-1965, One Allen Center, Lobby Gallery, Houston, Texas ·2014 Lone Star Masters of Modernism, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas ·2015 Bayou City Chic: Progressive Streams of Modern Art in Houston, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas (catalogue) ·2015 The Texas Aesthetic, Annual Exhibition, William Reaves Fine Art, Houston, Texas Selected Public Collections University of Texas at Austin, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, Texas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas San Antonio Fine Arts Association, San Antonio, Texas Texas Heart Institute, Houston, Texas (1970 A Pleasant Place)
About William Reaves Fine Art
H OUSTON’S T EXAS- C ENTERED G ALLERY William Reaves Fine Art, established 2006 in Houston, Texas, is dedicated to the promotion of premier Texas artists of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing particularly on historically significant artists active in the state during the period of 1900-1975. Now beginning its ninth year, the gallery showcases many of the region’s most accomplished and recognized talents, all of whom have significant connection to the state of Texas and have evidenced the highest standards of quality in their work, training, and professionalism in the field. The gallery exhibits artists working in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, and photography. In addition to its general focus on Early Texas Art, the gallery places special emphasis on the rediscovery and presentation of early and mid-century works by Houston and South Texas artists. William Reaves Fine Art is the foremost provider of Texas Modern Art, which includes mid-century masters and pioneering expressionists working in the state. In order to promote interest and broaden knowledge of earlier Texas art, the gallery supports related gallery talks, community events, scholarly research, and publication related to its subject, artist, and period. William Reaves Fine Art also represents a dynamic group of contemporary artists, known as the Contemporary Texas Regionalists, actively showing their works in annual gallery exhibitions as well as traveling exhibitions throughout the state. Most recently, The Houston Press voted William Reaves Fine Art Houston’s Best Art Gallery for 2013. Additionally, William Reaves Fine Art is a comprehensive gallery offering fine art appraisals, consultation, brokerage, and sales services. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm and other times by appointment. Gallery Contact: Sarah Foltz, Director sarah@reavesart.com
Ten Years 2006
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William Reaves Fine Art 2143 Westheimer Road • Houston, Texas • 77098 • www.reavesart.com Tel : 713.521.7500 • Contact : INFO@reavesart.com