Texas Originals: Six Bayou City Expressionists

William Reaves | Sarah Foltz Fine Art presents Texas Originals: Six Bayou City Expressionists February 12-March 19, 2016, with an opening reception 6-8:30 p.m. Saturday, February 13, 2016. A gallery talk will be held 2-4 p.m. Saturday, February 20, 2016 with Pete Gershon, Art Historian and Coordinator, CORE Residency Program, Glassell School of Art.

As the title implies, the current exhibition celebrates the work of six pioneering Houston artists who served as principal sources of origin and unrivaled champions of a particular brand of Houston-based abstraction emergent in the late 50s and dominating the local scene over the ensuing decades of the twentieth century. This sextet of painters includes Jack Boynton, Dorothy Hood, Leila McConnell, Charles Schorre, Richard Stout and Dick Wray, all of whom now stand as Houston icons and whose collective work energized the early expressionist movements of mid-century Texas modernism.

Working with “heads down” in “down home” isolation of the city’s nascent post-war art scene, this talented assemblage of Houston-based abstractionists created powerful and compelling works of breakthrough proportion. Their collective output was on a par sufficient to achieve strong regional affirmation, and theretofore unprecedented national recognition for the city’s cultural resources.

Propelled by progressive gallerists and cosmopolitan museum leaders of the day, these six pioneering modernists played a major role in transforming the Bayou City into a major national art center, and set the standards for what would ultimately emerge as a distinctive “Houston school” of painting near the close of the century.