Category: Paintings Page 12 of 48

Castagnacci: Quarry Echoes & Wanderings @ BBAC

On April 2, 2022

Vincent Castagnacci: Quarry Echoes & Wanderings at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center

An installation view of Vincent Castagnacci: Quarry Echoes & Wanderings, which will be at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center until April 21.

Vincent Castagnacci: Quarry Echoes & Wanderings (1984-2021) is an intriguing tour through abstraction with a distinctly geometric cast, and will be up at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center through April 21. Castagnacci, the University of Michigan’s Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Fine Art Emeritus, takes rationalism’s standard forms – squares, semi-circles, triangles and parallel lines – and twists them to his liking, confounding conventional expectations.

Take, for example, the large, black and white VII.06 – 19.VIII.06. This series of interconnected squares, some scored in dull red, has an undeniable momentum, and appears to be in the process of levitating from left to right. The piece is spare, and looks like it was sketched rather quickly — doubtless an illusion. In some respects, you could say it resembles a series of matchbooks or, more intriguingly, the sort of early renderings architects jot down to see how different building volumes will interact with one another.

Vincent Castagnacci, VII.06 – 19.VIII.06, Charcoal pencil, Dry pigment, Gesso, 2007.

But Castagnacci, who maintains a studio locally in Pinckney and one in Gloucester, Massachusetts, attributes the genesis of his work to the geometry of natural landscapes, not man-made forms. In his artist’s statement Castagnacci cites the “coastal topography of Cape Ann” around Gloucester, with its boulder-tossed beaches and craggy granite bluffs, as both inspiration and defining aesthetic undergirding his point of view. So perhaps VII.06 – 19.VIII.06 is less architectural and more a tectonic rendering of rock and hillside.

Castagnacci, who arrived at the University of Michigan in 1973, studied at the Boston Museum School at Tufts University, then followed that with both a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Yale. He was most recently a Mellon Fellow at Kalamazoo College, and has also been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. His artistic interests range widely. Encouraged by the dean of the U-M School of Art & Design to reach across academic boundaries, Castagnacci collaborated with percussionist and composer Michael Gould in a five-year project that in 2005 yielded Into the Quarry, an installation celebrating the convergence of art and music in space and time.

Annie VanGelderen, BBAC president and CEO, praised Castagnacci’s “incredible body of work, one that demonstrates both restraint and a thread connecting through the years.” The pieces on display, she added, “unfold in geometric presentation, whether with painting, drawing or printmaking.”

Vincent Castagnacci, Rome: III.25.80-20.VII.12, Oil and chalk, 2012

The contrast between Castagnacci’s spare black-and-white drawings and his colorful, texture-rich paintings, which pop like exclamation points, is part of what gives this exhibition its juice. The oil-and-chalk Rome: III.25.80-20.VII.12 offers a pleasing contrast to the “simpler” works, an essay in repetitive verticals that progress in color from dull, mottled shades of powder blue to nightingale brown. It’s a remarkably textured exercise. The effect, one viewer suggested, reminded her of the raw material for blue jeans, though for this visitor, it read more like a satisfyingly weathered, corrugated metal wall in tones of grayish-blue.

There are a number of absorbing essays in squares and rectangles here, including the austere, geometric 23.II-5.III.11#1, comprised of three or four superimposed frames. Two are squarish, while a third contained within the others tilts and lists into its fellows, like an unsteady parallelogram. Rendered in surprisingly rich tones of charcoal and ash, 23.II-5 almost amounts to a monochromatic color study, animated by a densely textured black rectangle that anchors the work and gives it its mesmerizing depth.

Vincent Castagnacci, 23.II-5.III.11#1, Oil, 1997

23.II-5.III.11#1, is a warm, color-saturated canvas in distressed shades of barn red, scored here and there with verticals and horizontals that almost suggest inset panels in a door. In some ways this lush, resonant piece feels thousands of miles from the Massachusetts coast and Cape Ann. In its warmth and seemingly ancient appearance, it calls up the Mediterranean more readily than the North Atlantic.

Finally, 7-11.X.19, one of the handsomest pieces on display, is a highly formalistic, acrylic-and-ash color study in green, periwinkle, lavender and shades of gray edging into black. Part of the charm of this composition is that while the strong colors all seem to occupy the same plane, the dark gray they frame looks downright three-dimensional, as if that quadrant of the canvas were receding several inches from the rest of the work. It’s an absorbing design that tiptoes to the edge of trompe l’oeil.

Vincent Castagnacci, 7-11.X.19, Acrylic, Ash, 2019.

Get ready for something completely different when you pass from Castagnacci to the adjacent gallery housing Christine Welch’s Nature of Things, also up through April 21. The first work that greets you is a “wasp comb,” very much like a honeycomb, framed in a box atop a bed of greenish-yellow leaves. Wasp nests figure large in this unusual exhibition. Indeed, perhaps the most-striking elements are the several large paper-wasp nests hanging from the ceiling like so many cocoons of prodigious size.

Welch says she’s dazzled by our connection to nature, and in particular with the structural similarities beneath the surface of any number of natural forms, the human body included. With Nature’s Seamstress, she constructs a mannequin out of a clothing designer’s dress form, in a skirt made from large sheets of wasp paper, and a round wasp comb for a head. Completing the ensemble are two strands of large, brown seed pods strung together into a necklace.

The combination of oddball elements at first sounds like it might be amusing, a bit of a visual joke, but the actual assemblage is far more sobering than humorous, with suggestions of a totemic form constructed by a people far more intimate with the natural sphere than those of us in the “civilized” world.

An installation view of Nature of Things: Christine Welch, at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center through April 21.

Christine Welch, Hive, at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center

Both Vincent Castagnacci: Quarry Echoes & Wanderings (1984-2021) and Nature of Things: Christine Welch will be up at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center through April 21.

Betty Brownlee @ The Annex Gallery at 333 Midland

By Ron Scott

On March 24, 2022

In Book Making, Paintings

Betty Browlee, Into the Woods, Installation image, Annex Gallery, All images Courtesy of DAR

The Annex Gallery at 333 Midland opened an exhibition, Into the Woods, of new work by the longtime Detroit painter Betty Brownlee. The artist, who transitioned from Landscape paintings in the 1990s, is now a well-known figurative painter (which includes self-portraits) where this body of work focuses on women and the female body.

Betty Brownlee, Briar Rose, Oil Paint on Paper, 51 x 90 inches, 2022

One of the most powerful paintings in this exhibition is Briar Rose where scale and composition make a difference. The choice of composition reminds this writer of 18th century neoclassic work by Jaques-Louis David. The contemporary attributes of Brownlee’s dripping paint provide a coeval effect that brings the artwork into the present. The six figures, most asleep, spread out horizontally against lush green surroundings, making the painting romantically inviting. It does what every painter wants: It brings the viewer back… again, and again.

Betty Brownlee, The Audience, 19 X 25 Inches, Penetrating Ink on Paper, 2022

The other elements present in these works on paper are the pencil grid, the dripping of paint, and the setting found in commercial illustration from the 1950s, maybe the 60s. The grid that Brownlee uses and leaves behind could be used with small illustrations and then enlarged to support the drawing process. Brownlee is not hiding this penciled grid from these works. It is as if she finds an attractive section from an illustration in the past and captures a moment in time in The Audience. Is the female character looking back at something that startles her? The artist remains very conscious of her use of color, relying on the interaction of primary and secondary color using a variety of penetrating inks.

Betty Brownlee, The Cook’s Revenge, 19 X 25 Inches, Penetrating Ink on Paper, 2022

Much of the show’s subject matter is contemporary, but the painting, The Cook’s Revenge, could skillfully go back to an earlier time when the artist successfully combines the figure with still life. This work is different from the smiles and cheery figures in most of the paintings. Instead, we find a sober expression surrounded by earth tones, Brownlee maintains her grid and the two-thirds/one-third composition formula that always works. Is there a throwback to Vermeer in there somewhere?

Betty Brownlee, Bouffant, 51 X 36 Inches, Oil on Paper,

Who doesn’t like a self-portrait included in a solo show? Brownlee sets herself, head and shoulders, left of center, dominates the composition in terms of scale, and includes a painting in the background (perhaps one of her own). She stares the viewer down with a smile and continues with what has become a signature: A penciled grid, and drips of paint. After observing these subjects in most compositions, the figures are not drawn from life but instead captured from photo compositions. And fair to say, this writer likes these consistent elements appearing in every piece. After all, it is a contemporary tool that separates her work from other similar work, something that one does not forget.

Betty Brownlee, You never have any ideas, Only Feelings, Penetrating Oil on Paper, 2019

I recall seeing this work at MOCAD, the Double Vision exhibition, where artists were asked to work in couples (Betty Brownlee and Cristin Richard), and I liked this painting then. Again, it feels like a throwback to commercial imagery from the 1960s via the clothing and hairstyle. The pigmented ink captures the moment as the transparency of the light is casually illustrative. This painting is based on a film still from a Jean-Luc Godard film.

Betty Brownlee is a longtime artist residing in Detroit. Having received her MFA at Wayne State University, she has been included in many local exhibitions (30 plus) and remains a steadfast participant in the Detroit arts community. Her work is distinctive and deserves wider exposure.

Betty Brownlee, Installation image, South Wall, Penetrating Oils on Paper

Betty Brownlee earned her BFA and MFA from Wayne State University. Her work has been exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, the Kresge Art Museum in East Lansing, the legendary Willis Gallery in Detroit, and most recently at the Annex Gallery in Highland Park.

Located in a large, industrial site in Highland Park (a city within the borders of Detroit), 333 Midland is a historic factory, formerly the Lewis Stamping Plant, that provides extensive space to artists and sculptors, especially those who wish to create large-scale works. The owner, developer and sculptor Robert Onnes came to Detroit in 2013 from Whangaparaoa, just outside of Aukland, New Zealand to invest in the Detroit art community. This solo exhibition by Ms. Brownlee is her second solo exhibition, part of fifty art exhibitions & events at 333 Midland spaces since 2014.

The exhibition Into the Woods at the Annex Gallery at 333 Midland is on display through April 5.

Romare Bearden: Abstractions @ UMMA

By Michael Hodges

On March 10, 2022

In Paintings

An installation view of “Romare Bearden: Abstractions,” at the University of Michigan Museum of Art through May 15.

“Romare Bearden: Abstractions” at the University of Michigan Museum of Art through May 15 tackles work the African-American artist produced between 1952 and 1964, what some scholars call Bearden’s “forgotten decade.” That characterization is intriguing since he exhibited and won commissions during those years. But the pieces he was showing at the time – abstract oils and watercolors, as well as highly stylized figurative works — have since been elbowed aside by the blistering originality of Bearden’s Cubist-inflected collages and photomontages depicting everyday Black life.

For contrast and context, a number of those are also on display in this exhibition. But there’s no disputing the collages are what won the Charlotte, North Carolina native his place in art history. Indeed, in its 1988 obituary, the New York Times called Bearden “the nation’s foremost collagist.”

“Abstractions,” organized by the American Federation of Arts and SUNY’s Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, considers the artist’s formative period in Paris and New York, one that ultimately led to an epiphany about what his art was supposed to do. Bottom line? In an era defined by the Civil Rights struggle, Bearden and many other Black artists felt abstraction was too pure, too apolitical, too far-removed from the demands of the age. So he put it down and turned his energy elsewhere.

“I felt,” Bearden said, “that the Negro was becoming too much of an abstraction, rather than the reality that art can give a subject.” He realized he had to “establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.” That led to the collages – and co-founding Harlem’s Spiral arts collective, whose members tried to work out the responsibility of the Black artist in an era of political and racial upheaval.

Romare Bearden, The Blues Has Got Me, 1944; Watercolor and ink on paper 29 x 35 ½ inches, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, Permanent Collection, Gift of Dr. Walter O. Evans and Mrs. Linda J. Evans©, Romare Bearden Foundation / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Courtesy American Federation of Arts

American culture is the richer for Bearden’s shift into collages, but there’s no denying much of his earlier work is gorgeous. Particularly striking are four or five small, stylized water colors, all painted in exquisite tones, that straddle the line between the literal and the abstract. “The Blues Has Got Me” from 1944, for example, is a portrait of two musicians jamming, though only one instrument, a fiddle or violin, is recognizable. The painting is a pleasing mash-up of competing colors and colliding triangles that form legs, chairs and a table. It’s bursting with energy, and frankly fun to examine.

In tone and feel, however, it could hardly be more different from 1962’s “River Mist,” one of Bearden’s later oil abstracts that’s a dreamy, almost geologic study in blue water tones and soft terra cotta. Long versed in watercolor, Bearden had struggled through much of the 1950s with oils. But when he and his wife Nanette moved from Harlem to a downtown loft on Canal Street, where Bearden spent the rest of his life, the artist began experimenting with much larger-scale works and developed his signature approach to abstract art.

Romare Bearden, River Mist, ca. 1962; Oil on unprimed linen, and oil, casein, and colored pencil on canvas, cut, torn, and mounted on painted board 54 ¼ x 40 7/8 inches, Romare Bearden Foundation, Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York© Romare Bearden Foundation / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Courtesy American Federation of Arts

During this period, he also started studying with a Chinese master, identified only as a Mr. Wu on Bayard Street, in the techniques of Chinese calligraphy and ink-wash painting. That influence is especially visible in “Eastern Gate” from 1961, a diaphanous exercise in shades of pinkish beige crisscrossed by what appear to be fragments of calligraphy.

Romare Bearden, Eastern Gate, ca. 1961; Oil on canvas 55 7/8 x 44 inches, Romare Bearden Foundation, Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York©, Romare Bearden Foundation / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Courtesy American Federation of Arts

Romare Howard Bearden was born in 1911 in Charlotte, North Carolina, but his parents moved to Harlem when he was very small. His father was a pianist, while his mother was a political activist, and the two created a rich, intellectually vibrant household for a young person to grow up in. The Bearden apartment became a favorite stopping-off point for poet Langston Hughes and other members of the Harlem Renaissance.

The teenaged Bearden ended up finishing high school in Pittsburgh while living with his grandparents, but after a stint at Boston University, he transferred to New York University, where he studied with the great satiric German artist George Grosz. After enlisting in the army during World War II, Bearden took advantage of the GI Bill and spent 1950 at the Sorbonne reading philosophy. While in the City of Lights he met writer Richard Wright as well Pablo Picasso, George Braque, and Constantin Brancusi – becoming good friends with the latter.

“Abstractions” is organized more or less chronologically, so you pass through galleries hung with large abstracts, and then round a corner and suddenly find yourself surrounded by the later collages. It’s a bracing, delightful shift in dynamism and excitement. Simply put, the collages – which often mix the beautiful and the bizarre – bristle with energy and veiled meaning.

Romare Bearden, Melon Season, 1967; Mixed media on canvas 56 ½ x 44 ½ inches, Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University New York, Gift of Roy R. Neuberger, 1976.26.45 ©, Romare Bearden Foundation / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Courtesy American Federation of Arts

One of the most striking is the 1967 “Melon Season,” a startling collage of two African-American women, in which the Cubist influence is undeniable. The woman at left is austere and rather beautiful, her profile comprised of contrasting black squares. For her part, the woman on the right has a deformed face patched together with three or four different graphic elements, one eye a good inch above the other, giving her a slightly daft look. It’s a little shocking, frankly, yet it’s precisely that tension between composure and disturbance that gives this grave work its magnetism

You’ll find “Abstractions” on UMMA’s second floor, in the A. Alfred Taubman Gallery 1. But before ascending the grand curved staircase, consider wandering the small exhibition, “You Are Here,” hung in the apse on the first floor of the original, neoclassical building. This show features pieces from the museum’s own collection that vault across centuries and genres. The superstar here is Kehinde Wiley’s 2008 “Saint Francis of Assisi,” based on Giovanni Bellini’s “St. Francis in the Desert” from 1480. But all the works selected by Jennifer M. Friess, UMMA associate curator of photography, are compelling. And as she encourages us, by all means, do play with Harry Bertoia’s small, elegant sound sculpture. You won’t regret it.

An installation view of “You Are Here” at the University of Michigan Museum of Art through May 7.

“Romare Bearden: Abstractions” is at the University of Michigan Museum of Art through May 15. “You Are Here” will be up through May 7.

Salon Redux @ David Klein Gallery

By Michael Hodges

On February 18, 2022

In Ceramic, Paintings, Photography, Sculpture

An installation view of “Salon Redux” at Detroit’s David Klein Gallery.

“Salon Redux” at Detroit’s David Klein Gallery is a handsomely staged 28-person group show that includes almost any medium you can hang on a wall (and a couple that sit on the floor), and manages to be a refreshing antidote to lousy weather and other contemporary ills. But you’ll have to move quickly; “Salon Redux” is up only till Feb. 26.

The exhibition was inspired in part, says Christine Schefman, Klein director of contemporary art, by the strong positive reaction to an earlier “Salon” in 2019. “That show had such great energy,” Schefman said, “so we decided to do it again — or ‘redux.’” She adds that it’s a spirited way to kick off the new year, and there’s no denying that.

Twenty-eight artists are represented in the salon-style group show.

Hanging works salon-style, of course, means creating a sort of wall collage, with pieces hung above and below one another in large groupings, rather than the standard approach with everything at eye level and in a single row. (The excellent wall arrangements in “Redux,” by the way, were done by preparator Craig Hejka.)

Three walls are taken up with these narrative groupings, and while they feature very different smallish works, there are a few commonalities linking them. In particular, each wall includes an irregularly-shaped color collage by Cranbrook grad Sylvain Malfroy-Camine, which in a couple cases almost resemble an artist’s old-fashioned wooden paint palette, with irregular splotches of color on a roughly circular background.

The most interesting of the three is “Diving Bell.” With its background of deep-sea blue, the work immediately calls up notions of water, while the spray of dark-blue, green, and yellow ovals covering it – all vertical — resemble nothing so much as bubbles rising to the surface. If you need a tranquil spot to rest your eyes for a minute, this would be a good choice.

Sylvain Malfroy-Camine, Diving Bell – 2021, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 23 1/2 x 26 1/2 inches.

Similarly balming in its way is Detroiter James Benjamin Franklin’s “Roam,” a gorgeous geometric color study of various shapes, with one large, off-balance dot – painted cerulean blue — that looks like it’s tiptoeing across the canvas toward escape. It’s a delightfully unstable element that defines the entire painting. Franklin’s use of colors is instructive as well. The tans, greens, and darker blues absorb light, while a silver streak and a semi-circle of lustrous black pop it right back at the viewer, compounding the visual texture.

Franklin, another Cranbrook MFA, is having a moment – in addition to “Salon Redux,” he’s got a solo show at Reyes Finn in Detroit with nine of his large-scale, abstract works, also up through Feb. 26, 2022.

As it happens, Cranbrook enjoys pride of place in this exhibition, claiming 11 of the 28 artists. In addition to Malfroy-Camine and Franklin, there’s Emmy Bright with her “NO, 4/4” – two black ceramic letters spelling out “NO” that hang from a hand-made brass chain. Bright, who co-heads the graduate school’s print media department, often plays with cryptic messaging that at its best toggles between the puckish and the almost-profound. Also well worth a look is Brooklyn artist Rosalind Tallmadge’s copper-hued “Cross Section X,” one of her remarkable layered constructions made of gold leaf and mica that read a bit like aerial views of scarred, metallic moonscapes.

Emmy Bright, NO, 4/4 – 2017, Ceramic, handmade brass chain, Letters 6 x 4 1/2 inches.

Among figurative paintings on display, Bakpak Durden’s “The Refrigerator” is a bit of an intriguing puzzler. Durden, whose website ID’s him as a “multi-disciplinary, queer, hyperrealistic artist based in Detroit,” has painted a fellow who’s facing away from us. He’s got long dreadlocks and is leaning on a refrigerator’s wide-open door, seemingly looking within for something good to eat. But there are possible clues to a more distressing narrative. Is the subject searching for last night’s leftover steak, or is his face, hidden from us, actually buried in the crook of his elbow that’s propped on the refrigerator door? Is he grabbing his dreads with one hand in an idle gesture, or is it a signal of despair? Adding mystery as well is the outline of a triangle, color orange and completely out of context, albeit fascinating, that’s got the young man within its snare. Meaning — who knows? The can of Café Bustelo coffee on the shelf to the right isn’t saying.

Bakpak Durden, The Refrigerator – 2020, Oil on wood panel, 24 x 24 inches.

On a lighter note, Ohioan Anthony Mastromatteo’s oil-on-gesso-board painting, “My & My & My & My & My & My & My Fight, Too” stars seven identical images of Wonder Woman, a repetition of the exact same cut-out cartoon panel “taped” in each case, one after the other, to a blank blue background. The DC comics super-heroine is sprinting towards us, her thoughts on Artemis, goddess of wild animals and the hunt. Given the me-too moment we’re living in, there seems little doubt some male abuser’s about to get his comeuppance, big-time and bruising. In any case, as a work of art, it’s an oddball, charming concept. (Mastromatteo has a nice touch for unsentimental whimsy. His online resume features a fly at the upper-left corner, casting a little shadow on the CV.)

Also lightening the mood are three stainless-steel, fanciful line sculptures by Los Angeles artist Brad Howe, each mounted five inches off the wall. Looking a bit like happy graphics or electronic circuitry, they’re painted in unlikely hues that, magically, all work splendidly together. In particular, “Bingo by the Sea”is a fizzy essay enlivened, like all three compositions in the show, by shadows on the wall beneath that echo the sculpture’s lines.

Brad Howe, Bingo by the Sea – 2021, Stainless steel and acrylic, 24 x 18 x 5 inches.

Worth seeking out as well are New Jersey artist Jessica Rohrer’s two photorealist aerial portraits of tidy, well-kept neighborhoods that look like they could be in Chicago or Detroit – engaging drone’s-eye portrayals of the American Dream that, along with an astringent color palette, feel remarkably fresh. There are also intriguing, minimalist sculptures with light by Detroiter Patrick Ethen and Toronto’s Matthew Hawtin, and in a show that otherwise eschews politics, Brooklynite Mary-Ann Monforton has crafted a sly put-down with “Mar-a-Lago.” It features a clunky dinner place-setting with concrete “silverware,” each piece plastered within an inch of its life in gold leaf — a puckish conceit with bite.

“Salon Redux” will be at the David Klein Gallery in Detroit through Feb. 26.

By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi @ DIA

By K.A. Letts

On February 12, 2022

In Paintings

By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800 at the Detroit Institute of the Arts

Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1523-1525, oil on canvas, photo DIA

If you are suffering from the cold gray February doldrums and you’re looking for a short vacation from wintry isolation, the Detroit Institute of Art has a solution for you. “By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800” offers a tightly focused survey of masterpieces by women artists, some famous and others less so, in a warm and inviting setting. The exhibition spotlights compelling stories and transcendent artworks of the anomalous female Italian art stars who managed to make remarkable art—and conduct successful careers–in an age when few women had access to the knowledge and tools to make art at all.

In a series of adjoining galleries, visitors are expertly guided by the organizers from the Detroit Institute of Art and the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art on a three century-long tour of women artists who were significant and highly successful in their time. Some of the most famous surviving examples of their work are on view, as well as some fascinating additions. The exhibition tells each artist’s surprisingly varied life story: how each managed to conduct a successful arts career in a cultural environment that did not welcome women.

The Artist’s Sister in the Garb of a Nun by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1551, Oil on canvas, photo DIA.

Sofonisba Anguissola, a singular international talent

The exhibition starts off with a bang. Sofonisba Anguissola’s striking portrait of her sister Elena dressed as a nun hangs in solitary splendor on its own wall at the exhibition’s entrance. Painted when Anguissola was only 16, this emotionally resonant white on white likeness foreshadows her future prominence as an internationally known portrait painter.

Unlike most of the artists in “By Her Hand,” Anguissola was not the daughter of a professional artist. Her noble Cremonese father, Amilcore Anguissola, was an enlightened proponent of education for women. He arranged for all six of his daughters, of which Sofonisba was the eldest, to receive instruction in Latin, music and painting. Already a local art celebrity at a young age, she was known for painting a large number of self-portraits which served as calling cards advertising her skills. She was sufficiently celebrated in her twenties to be invited to join the Spanish court of Philip II in Madrid, where she later painted the portrait of Infante Don Fernando in 1573 which is now on view in the gallery. Unfortunately, not many of her paintings survive; most of the artworks from her Spanish residency were lost in a 17^th century fire.

Fede Galizia, Orsola Maddelena Caccia, Diana Scultori, Lavinia Fontana enter the family business.

Each of the four artists who share the gallery adjoining the entrance found her own path to success in the cultural environment of her day. As was usual at the time, Fede Galizia, Orsola Maddelena Caccia, Lavinia Fontana and Diana Scultori all gained access to the art world through connection with their artist fathers, but from there their stories widely diverge.

Glass Tazza with Peaches, Jasmine Flowers and Apples by Fede Galizia, 1607, oil on panel, photo DIA

Fede Galizia (1578- c.1630), the daughter of a well-known painter of miniatures, chose to concentrate on portraits and religious scenes, but was particularly admired as a pioneer in the new genre of still life. The very beautiful, modestly sized Glass Tazza with Peaches, Jasmine Flowers and Apples featured in this exhibit is typical of her work. In it, a centrally positioned bowl of vibrantly colored fruit almost invites the viewer to reach out for a delicious taste.

Vases of Flowers on a Table by Orsola Maddelena Caccia, 1615-25, oil on canvas, photo K.A. Letts

Perhaps the most interesting life story of the four is that of Orsola Maddalena Caccia (1596–1676). Her father Guglielmo Caccia, a Mannerist painter, founded the Ursuline Convent at Moncalvo to shelter his six daughters from the political turbulence of the region. Caccia later became abbess there and encouraged the nuns to make art as a means to support the convent. She herself painted religious scenes as well as spiritually symbolic still life compositions. (Coincidentally three of Caccia’s paintings, which are vanishingly rare outside the region of their production, were recently donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where they now are on display in the newly reinstalled European painting galleries.)

Spinario, State 1, by Diana Scultori 1581, engraving on laid paper, photo DIA

The engraver Diana Scultori (1547–1612), learned her craft from her father and used her expertise to promote the fortunes of her architect husband, Francesco da Volterra, during their long and productive professional lives in Rome. Lacking a strong foundation in drawing, and like many other engravers, Scultori often used other artists’ work as the basis for her prints. Most of the drawings for her engravings came from her husband, her father, or an artist with whom she was acquainted. She was well known during her life as a savvy businesswoman who promoted the interests of her family through the acquisition of the Papal Privilege, a kind of license that allowed her to make and market her own work.

Of the four painters in this gallery, Lavinia Fontana, (1552-1614) was probably the most famous during her lifetime. She had the good luck to be born in Bologna, where attitudes toward women in the professions, including art, were unusually enlightened. She was trained by her father Prospero Fontana and had a highly successful career as a portraitist, as well as a painter of mythological and religious subjects. Her meticulously observed and psychologically penetrating Portrait of Ginevra Aldrovandi Hercolani shows why the artist was greatly admired by her contemporaries.

Giovanna Garzoni and Elisabetta Sirani

A Hedgehog in a Landscape by Giovanna Garzoni, 1643-1651, bodycolor on vellum, photo DIA

The sensitively rendered still life paintings of Giovanna Garzoni (1600-1670), are a highlight of this exhibition; they reward the viewer’s attention with a palpable sense of connection to the artist and her world. Garzoni, who never married, was essentially an itinerant painter who created work for wealthy patrons in Venice, Naples, Florence and Rome. The accuracy and intimacy of Garzoni’s gaze is particularly evident in her wonderfully realized Hedgehog in a Landscape. Each quill of the little creature is lovingly depicted; his soft undercoat is in delightful contrast to his pointy claws and twitchy nose and the chestnuts in the foreground look good enough to eat.

Portia Wounding Her Thigh by Elisabetta Sirani,1664, Oil on canvas. Photo DIA

On the opposite wall of the gallery from Garzoni’s artworks, we find the prolific Bolognese painter Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665). Throughout her short but intense career, Sirani painted a wide range of subjects, from portraits to allegories to religious themes. Not only was she the source of a remarkably abundant body of work, Sirani founded a painting school for aspiring woman artists. Her painting in this exhibition, Portia Wounding Her Thigh, is remarkable for a number of reasons. In addition to the rarity of the theme, the veiled eroticism of the subject’s exposed thigh and her dreamy facial expression make this composition startlingly complex on a psychological level. To a modern eye, Sirani’s choice of self-cutting as a mark of female agency may seem fraught, but there is no denying that this is a major painting by a woman artist from the Baroque period.

Artemisia Gentileschi

Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1615–1617, Oil on canvas, photo DIA

The central placement of Artemisia Gentileschi’s famous painting Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, one of the gems in the DIA’s permanent collection, leaves no doubt that she is the star of this show. The subject of the virtuous Judith triumphing over the villainous Holofernes was a favorite of Renaissance and Baroque painters, but Gentileschi (1593-1652/53) tells the story here with remarkable energy and immediacy. The cinematic play of light and shadow across the face and arm of Judith and the powerful dynamism of the two women united in murderous sisterhood makes this painting unique.

In acknowledgment of Gentileschi’s well-deserved status as the quintessential female painter of the Baroque era, the museum has produced an informative and insightful video that puts her in art historical context and provides welcome detail for understanding of Gentileschi’s life and times.

Penitent Magdalene by Caterina de Julianis, 1717, Polychrome wax, painted paper, glass, tempera on paper, and other materials.

The final gallery in the exhibition, which features work by women artists from the eighteenth century, suffers from a puzzling sense of decline in the energy and scale in the work. Or possibly the bravura visual fireworks of the paintings by Elisabetta Sirani, Giovanna Garzoni and Artemisia Gentileschi in the previous gallery are simply a hard act to follow. Of some interest is the lone 3-dimensional piece in the show, Penitent Magdalene by Caterina de Julianis (1670-1743). The diorama, which is part of the DIA’s permanent collection, contains a small female wax figurine in a wooded environment, surrounded by animals and symbolic elements. The exhibition ends as it began, with a single painting, a restrained self-portrait of the Florentine artist Anna Bacherini Piattoli (1720-1788), currently on loan from the Uffizi.

The virtuosic and often transcendent work that comprises “By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800” will be on view at the DIA until May 29, 2022. This expertly curated and enlightening exhibition tells the story of women artists who were eminent and highly successful in their time but were often rendered posthumously obscure through misattribution of their work to more famous male artists and other forms of art historical neglect. Shows like this are an important corrective to previous critical malpractice.

While the exhibition’s press release lists the Detroit Institute of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum as the organizers of “By Her Hand,” it would be a shame not to acknowledge the contributions of the co-curators of this expertly researched and beautifully installed show by name: Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, former Head of European Art Department & Elizabeth and Allan Sheldon Curator of European Paintings at the DIA (and now Curator of Italian and Spanish Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) and Doctor Oliver Tostmann, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum.