This exhibition is a selection of works derived from The Butler Permanent Collection.

Abstract art has been with us since 1910 when a Russian painter working in Germany created the very first painting without identifiable imagery. His name was Wassily Kandinsky.

Abstract art was to Kandinsky, like music without words. It is all about the interplay of line, shapes, colors, and textures which can be said to be the language of art. Abstract artists put value in creativity, inventing new worlds.

American artists have given us a wide range of abstraction from geometric statement with shapes that have “hard edges” such as the Jack Tworkov painting or the Nassos Daphnis work, Palace at Minos. Other artists present a more “expressionistic” or soft edge painting style like that of Friedel Dzubas, Paul Jenkins or Dan Christensen. Virtually every philosophy of art is represented here from emotionally charged abstract expressionism (Friedel Dzubas) to what has been termed minimalism which is highly simplified compositions that generally present little emotion as Ron Davis’ Five Panel Wave or Leon Polk Smith’s Southwest.

Louis Zona

Director