UTAH PAINTING & SCULPTURE

This revised edition further reveals the exceptional quality and diversity of Utah's visual arts tradition. Over 150 color plates bring Utah's masterpieces to life, with more than 100 of these color plates new to this revised volume. Additional black-and-white photographs take the reader into the artists' world. The text is authoritative but full of personal detail and cultural insight. It traces the distinguished progress of Utah painting and sculpture from pioneer origin to full contemporary flowering, and it places Utah--with California and New Mexico--among three great aret centers of the western United States. The first permanent European settlers in the territory of Deseret established an early emphasis on art, theater, and literature, and recognized a need for education and travel to broaden the frontier perspective. Each new generation responded to the larger international art scene. Mahonri Young argued art theory with Gertrude Stein. John Willard Clawson received criticism from Claude Monet. Fauvism captured Waldo Midgeley and Philip Barkdull. George Dibble experimented with cubism in the thirties. Don Olsen, a high school teacher, spent his summers hobnobbing with the abstract expressionists in New York. One enduring motif is the grandeur of Utah's landscape; it was this that brought Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, Maynard Dixon, Birger Sandzen, and other to Utah to paint its landscapes and influence its artists. John Hafe, J. T. Harwood, and LeConte Stewart used landscape as a primary source of inspiration. And many contemporary painters--Ken Baxter, Harrison Groutage, Frank Huff, Earl Jones, Doug Snow, and others--testify to its enduring power.