The James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown will present the exhibition, “Form Radiating Life: The Paintings of Charles Rosen” on view October 13–January 28. Rosen was one of the most distinguished Pennsylvania Impressionist artists; he began his career as a successful landscape painter and later changed his work dramatically to a more modernist style.
“Form Radiating Life: The Paintings of Charles Rosen” is sponsored by Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville, N.J.
Rosen’s work is in more than 20 museum collections, and the exhibition features nearly 50 works, including major examples of both his landscape and modernist styles, as well as works on paper. “Form Radiating Life: The Paintings of Charles Rosen” is curated by the Michener’s Senior Curator Brian H. Peterson. The exhibition will travel to the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Platz, where it will be on view February 21–May 13.
For some painters a single way of working can last a lifetime. This was not Rosen’s story. He began his creative career as a successful landscape painter, prominently associated with the impressionist art colony centered in New Hope, Penn., in the early Twentieth Century. His best-known New Hope canvases are large-scale snow scenes and spring scenes, utilizing a simple but elegant compositional style sometimes reminiscent of Japanese prints. These landscapes explore many different techniques and often exhibit a stylistic restlessness.
The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication that provides an in-depth examination of the life and work of Charles Rosen.
In conjunction with the exhibition the museum will present a number of programs including two curator’s gallery talks on Rosen by Brian H. Peterson on Friday, October 20, from 2 to 3 pm, and on Wednesday, January 10, from 2 to 3 pm at Michener Art Museum in New Hope.
Peterson will also conduct a special exhibition lecture, “Form Radiating Life: The Paintings of Charles Rosen,” on Wednesday, November 1, from 2 to 3 pm at the Michener in New Hope in the Community Gallery at Occasions on the Courtyard Level adjacent to the Museum.
Tom Wolf, professor of Art history at Bard College will give a lecture, “A Tale of Two Colonies: Charles Rosen’s Woodstock Years” on Sunday, October 15, from 2 to 3 pm at the Michener in New Hope in the Community Gallery at Occasions on the Courtyard Level adjacent to the museum. Wolf has written extensively about Twentieth Century American art and artists, and the history of the art colony in Woodstock.
The fee for all three programs is $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers and includes museum admission. Advance registration is required at 215-340-9800 or www.michenerartmuseum.org/events. The museum is at 500 Union Square Drive in New Hope and 138 South Pine Street, Doylestown.
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