Audio recording

Welcome to Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art’s uniquely curated exhibition, In Bloom. This colorful celebration of all that blossoms in our lives showcases explorations of rebirth, identity, abstraction, humanity, and the forces that move us to collective change. The featured works are on loan courtesy of Tia Collection of Santa Fe, NM, a global art collection with a mission to support artists and museum institutions by acquiring and loaning works of art. As you walk through the gallery, you will experience a diverse array of artists whose perspectives are materialized through painting, sculpture, and photography and spans over a period of 100 years of art movements and genres.

To your left, this gathering of classic still lifes, displayed salon-style, brings together the earliest works featured in the exhibition. Painted in 1922, Ralph Meyers’ Early Spring, N.M., is an intimate landscape depicting the vibrant colors found in the mountainous terrain of Taos, New Mexico during the early onset of springtime. The desert is not always celebrated as a blossoming climate, but Meyers’ tender directional brushstrokes exude his reverence and admiration for the bright green sagebrush and deep blue of the mountains surrounding his home. As an avid photographer, Meyers taught himself how to paint through his photography. His use of vivid color to document the dramatic landscapes and rugged neighbors gained him notoriety as one of the finest colorists of the early twentieth century and as a key figure of Southwestern art history. Meyers was an exuberant fixture deeply imbedded in the blossoming art scene of Taos, who with his wife Rowena, entertained nightly such artists and writers as Ansel Adams, D.H. Lawrence, Nicolai Fechin, whose work is featured above, and Frank Waters, to name a few.

Undated, Nicolai Fechin’s Lily and Shell escapes establishing a setting; the lilies, daisies, and violets burst from a murky shadow behind a pearlescent empty shell. Fechin’s loose strokes obscure the dark background while illuminating the striking lines of the clear white trumpeted florals across the visual field. Fechin, a Russian immigrant, moved to Taos, New Mexico from New York City in 1927 with his family and affectionately invested in the fledgling art community like his contemporary and friend, Ralph Meyers.

Bror Julius Olsson or B.J.O. Nordfeldt’s Still Life with Grapefruit (recto), Red House (verso), circa 1930, displays a humble floral arrangement balanced with a simple breakfast setting atop a skewed checkered tabletop. While the mood is casual and the multipoint perspective subtle, this charming but never sentimental presentation of homey domesticity recalls Nordfeldt’s influence from French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne.  His vigorous strokes accentuate the distortion of perspective in Still Life with Grapefruit. Nordfeldt emigrated in 1891 from Sweden to Chicago where he began studying painting and printmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Over the course of a decade, Nordfeldt studied in both Chicago and Europe, where he absorbed the work of Fauvists, like Henri Matisse, such Expressionists as Piet Mondrian, and Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne. In 1919, Nordfeldt began a twenty-year life in the growing art community of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The title of this work references “recto,” the front, and “verso,” the back, of a surface, which identifies the scenes painted on two sides of the canvas. Lying perpendicular in orientation, Red House (verso) was originally acquired and when Still Life with Grapefruit (recto) was discovered on the back, the paintings were reversed in framing. Using the audio guide app, take a moment to scroll through the images for stop 1 to see an image of Red House (verso).

On the opposite end of the wall, a singular long-stemmed rose fades into the background as its starkly cast shadow becomes the center focal point of the composition. Rose (1977) triumphantly displays American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s deftly honed skill of dramatic composition. Recognized as a giant of late twentieth century photography, Mapplethorpe sparked national debate around artistic freedom and eroticism. Although his artistic accomplishments range across many media, he is best known for his erotic black and white photography that documented the gay fetish and leather imagery of New York City’s underground culture. His formalist approach to photography allowed the artist to address subjects primarily through beauty and composition and secondarily through content. His subjects consisted of sculptural nudes, still life floral, and portraits of celebrities. The only black and white photograph in the exhibition, this solo, cut rose at the onset of wilting, conjures images of romance, longing, and the inevitability of death.

These four introductory works, while directly representing florals and landscape, begin a metaphorical exploration of the perennial growth seen in early spring. Keeping these introductory pieces in mind, this exhibition will present the enduring symbolism of the natural phenomena of change. Over your shoulder is a starkly contrasting work on a yellow wall.