There’s a reason PleinAir magazine has chosen Santa Fe, New Mexico, as the location for next year’s Plein Air Convention & Expo. For decades — if not centuries — the city has enthralled visitors and artists with its colorful views and extraordinary climate. An esteemed gallery will soon present a summer exhibition of Santa Fe subjects by this great American artist.
Gerald Peters Gallery will open a must-see exhibition this weekend featuring works by American artist John Sloan (1871-1951). The apropos title, “Santa Fe Sojourn,” calls attention to the city as one of the premier destinations for artists. Opening on August 25 and hanging through October 7, the exhibition highlights Sloan’s incredible knack for capturing the indigenous cultures, colorful landscapes, and everyday genre scenes in and around Santa Fe. From 1919 to 1950, the artist spent nearly every summer in the artist colony, attracted each year by its infinite number of subjects and views.
“I like to paint the landscape of the Southwest because of the fine geometric formations and handsome color,” the artist once proclaimed. “The ground is not covered with green mold as it is elsewhere.” According to the gallery, “Sloan became a part-time westerner midway through his career, doing much to advance the early exhibition policies at the Museum of New Mexico and the social and artistic fabric of Santa Fe’s burgeoning art colony.
“Born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania in 1871, Sloan’s earliest experiences as an illustrator at the Philadelphia Press were augmented by his studies with Thomas Anshutz and through his associations with mentor Robert Henri and his New York circle. In New York, Sloan teamed up with other anti-academic painters and exhibited at the Exhibition of Independent Artists (1910) and the 1913 Armory Show. At the advice of Henri, Sloan loaded up a 1912 chain-driven Simplex touring car and motored west on a trip that would change the course of his art.
“Beginning in 1919, Sloan painted New Mexico’s landscape and its multi-cultural inhabitants with fervor and frequency. This exhibition, which includes approximately 15 paintings, offers rare insight into a somewhat overlooked aspect of Sloan’s production, despite his nearly 40 summers spent in Santa Fe.”
To learn more, visit Gerald Peters Gallery.
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