CEDAR CITY, UTAH.- Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA) is currently hosting the third stop in the traveling exhibition, Lennart Anderson: A Retrospective, on view through September 23. Lennart Anderson (U.S., 1928-2015) was an American painter renowned for his mastery of tone, color and composition, place of high regard within the artistic community, and teaching career that deeply influenced future generations of painters, including guest curator Randall Cabe. This is the first major survey of the esteemed artist's work since his death, and the exhibition at SUMA features 56 works of art spanning a period of over seven decades.

“When I have spoken to former students about Lennart’s pedagogic approach, they describe it as both tender and uncompromising, expecting from his students the same high standards that guided his own practice,” said Jessica Kinsey, SUMA Executive Director. “His legacy was felt by many students throughout the years, including Randall Cabe, former SUU instructor and guest curator, who was instrumental in bringing Lennart Anderon’s work to southern Utah.”

In collaboration with the artist's estate, the exhibition features works from both public and private collections, including Anderson's gallery, Leigh Morse Fine Arts. As the largest iteration of this retrospective, SUMA’s exhibition brings together a variety of genres, such as the human form, still life, portraiture, landscape, and urban scenes. Viewed together, the works attest to Anderson's lifelong interest in the interplay of tone, color, and light. Equally importantly, this survey demonstrates the singular approach that informed his artmaking, which defied trends such as Abstract Expressionism.

Described in the New York Times as one of the “most prominent and admired painters to translate figurative art into a modern idiom,” Anderson had a profound interest in formalism and an appreciation for both OId and New Masters, especially Piero della Francesca, Diego Velazquez, and Edgar Degas, and his work was directly inspired by this knowledge of art history. For instance, Bacchanal (1956) is one of four paintings inspired by Claude Poussin that depicts pastoral bliss, a subject Anderson began exploring in the 1970s.

Born in Detroit, Anderson earned an undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of Chicago, a Masters at Cranbrook Academy, and later studied briefly at the Art Students League in New York with Edwin Dickinson. Anderson taught at several prestigious schools, including Columbia University, Princeton University, and Yale University, before serving as a distinguished professor of Brooklyn College, where he mentored guest curator Randall Cabe. He received numerous awards including the Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tiffany Foundation. Anderson was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design. Anderson's work is represented in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Fralin Art Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Palmer Museum of Art, and Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts, among others.

This project has been spearheaded by the artist's daughter, Jeanette Anderson Wallace, who manages the estate for the artist's family. Of the process of bringing together this collection of works to show the scope of Anderson's practice, she says, “It has been particularly meaningful to bring out paintings that have not been seen by the public for many years, and introduce a new generation of painters, curators, and collectors to his work.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue that pairs more than 50 full-color reproductions of Anderson's work with essays by art historians Martica Sawin and Jennifer Samet and painters Susan Jane Walp and Paul Resika. Following its presentation at Southern Utah Museum of Art, the exhibition will travel to other venues, including the Bo Bartlett Center at Columbus State University.

This exhibition is possible through the generous support of Iron County, Center for Figurative Painting, American Macular Degeneration Foundation, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Richard Spurzem, and Eric Brecher.
Southern Utah Museum of Art

Southern Utah Museum of Art, on the campus of Southern Utah University, features the artwork of regional artists known for their landscapes, faculty and student artists from the SUU Department of Art & Design, as well as emerging and distinguished artists from around the country and the world. Strengths of the nearly 2,000-object permanent collection include several works by famed Western artist Maynard Dixon, important regional women artists Eve Drewelowe and Edith Hamlin, and a comprehensive collection of work by Jimmie F. Jones that exemplifies his notable career in the region. Within SUMA’s holdings is an especially robust collection of prints that includes well-known artists such as Marc Chagall, James McNeill Whistler, Kawase Hasui, Thomas Hart Benton, and Käthe Kollwitz, among others. A number of recent gifts and acquisitions have focused on photography, such as Brett Weston, Gary Edward Adams, and a portfolio called DE | MARCATION: A Survey of Contemporary Photography in Utah. Named the best-designed museum in Utah by Architectural Digest, SUMA’s building, designed by Brooks + Scarpa and inspired by the region’s famed slot canyons, is an artwork in and of itself.

Southern Utah Museum of Art
Lennart Anderson: A Retrospective at Southern Utah Museum of Art
June 10th, 2023 - September 23rd, 2023