UMFA Special Exhibition: LeConte Stewart

UMFA Special Exhibition
LeConte Stewart:
Depression-Era Art
July 21, 2011 - January 15, 2012


In a groundbreaking collaboration, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and Church History Museum have partnered to stage the largest exhibition ever mounted by famed Utah artist LeConte Stewart (1891-1990). The shared effort focuses on the most creative and skilled period of Stewart's long career. With a combined total of over 200 paintings and works on paper selected from museums and private collections across the west, these joint exhibitions will feature masterworks that have rarely been seen.

LeConte Stewart, Smith's House, oil on canvas
Gift by bequest of Kay H. Blood
Collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts

The UMFA’s exhibition, LeConte Stewart: Depression Era Art, explores themes of isolation and loss during the Great Depression, a period when the artist examined thematic images of progress juxtaposed to the human consequences of economic upheaval. Farms and homes that had been depicted in his earlier work at a warm distance are replaced in the 1930s with stark urban scenes devoid of human activity, using bold shapes and unfamiliar lighting to capture a mood of isolation in his subjects. Stewart was not a WPA artist and was therefore free to paint the "...raw side of life" as he once commented. His vision of the Great Depression sets his work apart from his peers and places it within the broader context of American Scene painters of the time.

The Church History Museum’s exhibition, LeConte Stewart: The Soul of Rural Utah, will reveal the beauty of Utah’s early rural works on paper and paintings with an emphasis of rural Utah. Farmhouses, barns and fields are depicted in rich tones with thick impasto and loose brushstrokes. They are familiar scenes of the western environment. It is a backdrop in which Stewart found not only the isolation he sought throughout his life, but a spirit in the land that was of solace to him.

Utah Museum of Fine Arts
University of Utah Campus
Marcia & John Price Museum Building
410 Campus Center Dr.
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112

Museum Hours
Tuesday - Friday: 10 am - 5 pm
Wednesday: 10 am - 8 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 11 am - 5 pm
Closed Mondays and holidays


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