VERO BEACH, FLA.- The Vero Beach Museum of Art announced From Homer to Hopper: American Art from The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, featuring a rich assembly of independent-minded artists including Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, Winslow Homer, Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe on view from February 1 through May 31, 2020.

From Homer to Hopper: American Art from The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, presents some of the most influential American paintings and sculptures from The Phillips Collection, the first museum of modern art in the United States. With sixty-five works, the exhibition explores the history of American art from the birth of the modernist spirit at the end of the nineteenth century through post-war American painting in the mid-twentieth century. During these years, artists were establishing the artistic identity of the United States and setting the course for modern art in this country.

The exhibition is arranged into a series of thematic groups, beginning with the exacting realism of Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. The narrative continues with the impressionist paintings of Childe Hassam and John Henry Twachtman and then the evocative realism of Edward Hopper and Charles Sheeler. The next sections highlight the bold modernist abstractions of Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe. The show culminates with the inventive works of the post-war decades when artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, and Philip Guston made this country the center of the art world. Themes include the unparalleled variety of the American landscape, the artists’ engagement with nature, cityscapes, depictions of urban life, portraiture, and still life. Additionally, the exhibition will explore the advent of abstract techniques, such as action painting and stain painting.

American art has been essential to The Phillips Collection since its founding by Duncan Phillips in 1921 in a room of his boyhood home. By 1930, he turned over his entire home to this outstanding collection that serves as the cornerstone of The Phillips Collection today.

The works in the exhibition draw rewarding parallels with the Vero Beach Museum of Art’s collection, particularly American Modernism between the world wars, and Abstract Expressionism of the post-war period. Also, a wide array of humanities programs at the museum will continue to explore key themes and figures featured in the show.

Museum hours are Monday to Sunday, 10 am – 4:30 pm.