OGUNQUIT, ME.- Ogunquit Museum of American Art mourns the recent passing of renowned painter and illustrator Dahlov Ipcar. The museum had been looking forward to welcoming the artist at the opening of its 64th exhibition season with an installation of her work. Dahlov Ipcar was 99.
“Dahlov brought such brilliant color to the lives of so many. She is beloved in Maine and her passing is deeply felt,” said Michael Mansfield, Executive Director and Chief Curator of OMAA. “We are honored now to be mounting an important exhibition of her early work in the coming season. What better way to celebrate the life and career of this extraordinary woman than by revisiting her premiere exhibition, which will bring much deserved attention to her achievements in painting and sculpture. We’ll also continue to share her illustrated books with young audiences through public readings and to further champion her work in the museum’s permanent collection.”
Curator Andres Verzosa, former Interim Executive Director of OMAA, had been working closely with Ms. Ipcar since this summer to realize the museum's upcoming exhibition which opens May 1. Verzosa stated, “I have been so fortunate to have spent time with Dahlov developing and planning Dahlov Ipcar: Creative Growth for this spring at OMAA. She is truly a master, and I feel so lucky to have had the entree of meeting her and getting to know her. I was first introduced to Dahlov's art simultaneous to that of one of Maine’s other most celebrated animalier, Bernard Langlais in the mid 1980’s. Over the ensuing years I would see Dahlov at her various art openings and book signings. It was not until my recent visits to her Robinhood Cove home and studio in Georgetown this past summer and winter that I would get to know her and her art more intimately. It was especially poignant speaking with her in the studio surrounded by her work.”
OMAA’s opening installation this season will revisit Dahlov’s first solo exhibition which took place at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1939. That show, Exhibition of Creative Growth: Childhood to Maturity was the inaugural exhibit for a newly conceived Young Peoples Gallery and featured artworks rendered by the artist between the ages of three and twenty-one. OMAA’s 2017 exhibition will not simply reconstruct Dahlov’s MoMA show, but rather offer a fresh look at patterns and themes that arise from this early and transformative body of work.
A series of public programs and events will accompany the exhibition. On June 27, OMAA will host Maine writer and art critic Carl Little, author of “The Art of Dahlov Ipcar,” who will speak about the artist as part of the museum’s Totally Tuesday summer lecture series. OMAA will present public readings of Ipcar’s illustrated children’s books in its summer Stories by the Sea program
Dahlov Ipcar has maintained a close relationship with the museum for decades. OMAA’s permanent collection includes paintings and works on paper gifted by the artist, as well as works by her well-known parents, modernist artists William and Marguerite Zorach. OMAA was founded by Lost Generation artist Henry Strater and opened in 1953. Closely connected to two of America’s earliest art colonies that directly contributed to the roots of American modernism, OMAA today houses a permanent collection of important paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints and photographs from the late 1800s to the present and is the only museum in Maine devoted exclusively to the exhibition, preservation, and interpretation of American art. A short walk from Perkins Cove, the museum and its three acres of sculpture gardens overlook Narrow Cove and the Atlantic Ocean.
