February 18 - March 26, 2022
From Foltz Fine Art:
“On view from February 18 – March 19, 2022, Foltz Fine Art presents Dan R. Stewart: A Modernist Perspective at Home and Abroad – a mid-century “rediscovery” exhibition for artist and architect Dan R. Stewart (1926-2013). Like many post-war American artists, Stewart’s life and art reflects its era, coming of age in a time of greater access and travel opportunities abroad, and allowing more artists to explore and paint their changing world. During his time at the American Academy in Rome in the late 1950s, Stewart cultivated a Modernist sensibility, combining his passion for modern art and architecture, that indelibly left a mark on the artist’s work for the rest of his life.
Born in 1926, Dan R. Stewart examined the world around him as both artist and architect. While his professional goal was to become an architect, he always sought to weave a spatial or architectural association in his art. He received his architectural education at Cooper Union, University of Cincinnati (BArch) and MIT (MArch) before winning the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1955. As a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, he explored the interconnected relationship between art and architecture and continued that tradition throughout his life. Though the award was for a one-year residence, his explorations provoked such interest that he was asked to stay on for a second year. After his return to the States, Stewart plied his trade as an architect, working for Eero Saarinen before joining CRS in Houston in 1961.
Throughout his life, Stewart’s passion for art and architecture combined with his preoccupation for travel. As result, he painted and traveled extensively to every continent except the Arctic and Antarctic with stints living abroad in Rome, Italy; Santiago, Chile; Istanbul, Turkey; Cairo, Egypt; Tokyo, Japan; and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
While he was an avowed Modernist, Stewart spent a lifetime visiting and ruminating over man’s ancient creations, be they building, sanctuary, sculpture, or painting. Stewart also loved flying and surveying earth’s features, and man’s interventions, from above. He was equally enthralled by maps of all kinds and would mark his route as a way of chronicling his explorations. It is thus no wonder that one can sense an aerial or plan expression when one looks at many of his oil and acrylic compositions. His favorite medium was oil on canvas, but he also painted with acrylics on board as a way of sketching out his ideas or when traveling overseas.
Stewart passed away in 2013, and his artwork remained in the family’s modernist home in Houston near Rice University. Aside from exhibiting his early work in the 1950-60s through galleries and museums in the United States, Stewart had little interest in showing his work publicly, and the majority of his paintings remained in his studio, occasionally selling them privately. At this time the Stewart family and Foltz Fine Art are pleased to present this treasure trove of incredible, modernist paintings created over the span of 5 decades, chronicling his travels and explorations both nearby and abroad. This retrospective exhibition contains over 70 paintings, including early works from his student days at the American Academy in Rome in 1955-1957, immense canvases with heavy impasto depicting various locales in South America and Europe in the 1960s, to later works depicting sites in the Middle East and Asia as well as explorations throughout his adopted home state Texas. In Stewart’s evolving presentation of abstract expressionism rooted in a sense of place, whether a city scape or geological curiosity, there is something for everyone in this fascinating examination of the life and work of this little-known American modernist. Through this reassessment, we hope to keep Dan R. Stewart’s art and legacy alive.
Dan R. Stewart: A Modernist Perspective at Home and Abroad will be on view at Foltz Fine Art from February 18 – March 19, 2022, with an opening reception on Saturday, February 19th from 6-8pm. The artist’s family will be in attendance. For more information, please visit FoltzGallery.com.”
Reception: February 19, 2022 | 6–8 pm
2143 Westheimer Road
Houston, 77098 TX
(713) 521-7500
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