Jon Schueler: Weathering Skies

April 1 – June 24, 2017

East Gallery

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Jon Schueler: Weathering Skies, presents 26 watercolors from the Jon Schueler Estate and the Arkansas Arts Center that explore the artist’s fascination with the power of the sky. Before he was a painter, Schueler navigated a B-17 bomber during World War II. The sky became a place fraught with anxiety and yet incredible beauty and meaningful. Only after the war did Schueler train as an artist at the California School of the Fine Arts. He became one of the 20^th Century’s second-generation Abstract Expressionist painters known for filling his canvases with abstractions inspired by the atmospheric sky.

Weathering Skies features watercolors made in Scotland and in Connecticut between 1967 and 1969. All but one of the watercolors in the exhibition is from the Schueler Estate. The remaining work, Weathering Skies, is a previously un-exhibited work in collection of the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation.

 

About Jon Schueler

Jon Schueler (American, 1916-1992) was a second-generation Abstract Expressionist. Schueler was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1916 and received his BA and MA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Following World War II, where he flew missions over France and Germany as a B-17 navigator, he attended the California School of Fine Arts (1948-51) where he was surrounded by group of historically important artists who led to the development of the Bay Area Figurative Movement of painting.  Schueler moved to New York in 1951, which became his base until his death in 1992. However, these years were dotted with visits to Mallaig, Scotland, where the light and weather of the area became the hallmark for his signature style. 

For additional information about Jon Schueler please visit https://www.jonschueler.com/.

Co-organized by the Jon Schueler Estate and Arkansas Arts Center.

 

Images:

 

(Left) Jon Schueler (American, 1916 - 1992), Weathering Skies, August 6, 1967, watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 inches, Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection: gift of the Stonehill Family, New York, 2010.010

(Right) Jon Schueler (American, 1916-1992), Winter Storm, 1968, watercolor, 5 1/4 x 6 3/4 inches, collection of the Jon Schueler Estate