Karl Umlauf: Industrious- Then and Now!

William Reaves | Sarah Foltz Fine Art  presents Karl Umlauf: Industrious – Then and Now!, on view January 8–February 6, 2016.

William Reaves | Sarah Foltz Fine Art rings in the New Year in their recently re-named gallery with an incredible exhibition of industrial paintings and assemblages by renowned Waco artist, Karl Umlauf.

Umlauf, a veteran painter with an illustrious career spanning seven decades, will be a familiar player to many who follow Texas art.

With formal art training at The University of Texas and Cornell (as well as a Yale Fellowship), Umlauf held long-term and productive tenures as an instructor and artist-in-residence at both East Texas State University (now Texas A&M University-Commerce), and more recently, at Baylor University.

Along the way his works have been shown in an impressive resume of solo and group exhibitions throughout the Texas and across the nation.

Indeed, Umlauf paintings are counted among the permanent collections of over 30 museums across the country (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fogg Museum), as well as many important private and corporate collections.

Raised in a prominent art family, the son of two professionally trained artists, Karl Umlauf was destined to become an artist himself.  His father, Charles Umlauf, ranked among the state’s most prominent sculptors and was a stalwart of the art department at The University of Texas.  Following high school graduation in Austin, Umlauf entered the University of Texas for undergraduate training, falling under the early influence of Regionalist painters William Lester and Everett Spruce.

Supporting his art studies through a series of part-time jobs in lumberyards and related factories in the vicinity, Umlauf developed a keen eye and artist’s sensibility for the unique metaphysical qualities of the industrial habitat. Little surprise, therefore, that his earliest art work beatified this industrial landscape with his paintings addressing the accompanying waterfronts, steel mills, machine shops, cotton gins, and petroleum refineries.

Pursuing this industrial nomenclature in his earliest work with remarkable success, Umlauf continued to visit and perfect such themes at various intervals throughout a long and accomplished career.

As noted by art historian Katie Robinson Edwards, Umlauf’s approach to his industrial abstractions represents a “distinctive blend of regionalism and expressionism”, bringing both an elegance and sublimity to his muscular, metallic scenes.

His paintings articulate everyday scenes and objects such as those encountered by “working men” (and women) in the plants, factories, refineries, mills and docks that abound on the coastal plains surrounding the Bayou City. They capture and celebrate the interaction of man and machines at work.

While these places of industry are overlooked by most artists as redeeming sources of inspirational art, Umlauf has found solace there and reminds us that such settings possess their own powerful blend of dynamic energy, bold patterns, structural intrigue, sensual light and dramatic color – all of which combine under the informed eye and capable hand of a master painter to foster incredible works of art.

Umlauf’s industrials present an interesting, edgy point of view, and the selections reveal the artist’s refined expertise in composition, palette and brushwork.  The selections also track the evolution of Umlauf’s industrial perspectives and stylistic approach over the course of his career.  It constitutes a fresh and compelling display by one of Texas’ most distinguished latter-twentieth-century painters, bringing a subject matter and “heavy-metal” style that seems especially at home in Houston, the epicenter of industrial Texas.

Overall, Reaves and Foltz have curated an intriguing exhibition filled with the strong paintings of a notable Texas artist, all of which emanate formidable mechanistic energies and distinctive technological narrative. It is for sure another worthwhile assemblage at Houston’s home for Texas art, and a perfect way to usher in the new year!

Biographical Information

Karl Umlauf (American, b. 1939)
Karl Umlauf was born in Chicago and raised in Austin, Texas. From the age of 8 he was training to become a violinist with solo performances at the University of Texas String Project, the Aspen String Festival and the All State Orchestra.  A high school art teacher Francis Walker and University of Texas art instructor Kelly Fearing changed his focus in his senior year of high school.  Fearing’s Saturday morning classes at the University of Texas for high school students opened his eyes to a new visual world.

At UT’s Art Department he studied with Everett Spruce, John Guerin, Michael Frary and Loren Mozley.   After three years and a Summer Fellowship at Yale, where he studied with Gabor Peterdi, Jack Tworkov, Jon Schueler and Bernard Chaet, Umlauf received his BFA from UT-Austin in 1961.   In 1961 he and his wife, Shirley moved to Ithaca, New York where he had accepted a Graduate Fellowship at Cornell (1961-63) for his MFA where he studied with Milton Resnick, Charles Cajori, George Morrison, Wolf Kahn and John Hartell.

Before accepting a position at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1963, Umlauf had solo exhibitions at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, the Green Gallery and the American Gallery in NYC. Umlauf’s paintings expressed a close encounter of cliffs and streambeds especially where geo-physical faults were visible.   By 1970 Umlauf had converted his geological abstractions to fiberglass and aluminum and by 1971he was one the two innovators in the United States of vacuum formed plastics.  After 10 years and four research grants from A&M University-Commerce and Indiana University in Bloomington, he was working in large cast paper reliefs of geological facades that were exhibited throughout the United States in solo and competitive shows.

Since 1989 Umlauf has been Artist in Residence at Baylor University receiving numerous travel and research grants from Baylor University, the Bolton Foundation, Horsfull Foundation and Allbritton Art Institute.  His work can be seen in over 100 public and museum collections such as the New Orleans Museum, Joslyn Museum, Dallas Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Modern and Metropolitan Museums, etc. He has also been a visiting artist to over 75 institutions and museums, received over 80 awards and 75 solo exhibitions. In 2012 Umlauf received the “(2-D) Artist of the Year Award”, presented by the Texas Commission of the Arts.

Pictured: Karl Umlauf, Wedging Chamber, 2010, pastel on paper, 36 x 30 inches.

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