Winter/Spring 2023 Exhibitions
Opening February 11, 2023
Nathan Oliveira (1928-2010) was a member of the “Bridge Generation” of the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative Movement during the 1950s and onward into the 1960s joining “First Generation” artists that included David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, Wayne Thiebaud, and James Weeks. In this first and only museum exhibition since his death in 2010, Nathan Oliveira: Rare Works From the Private Collections of His Children is an original exhibition of the Fresno Art Museum.
This exhibition is a treasure trove of over fifty rare drawings, monumental and small paintings, assemblage, lithographs, and bronzes. The selected works have rarely, if ever, been seen before by the public in either museum exhibitions or gallery presentations during his lifetime.
It was Nathan Oliveira’s process to bequeath his artwork to his children on an annual basis as their inheritance. This exhibition shares and assembles for the very first time these gifts by Oliveira to his three children: Joe, Lisa, and Gina. The exhibited works were chosen during studio visits to the homes of Joe Oliveira and Lisa Oliveira Lamoure, where Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator, was given carte blanche to select (with their guidance) from pieces given to them by their father, an indescribable experience for any curator.
Oliveira came into prominence as a figurative painter in the late 1950s, counter to the then-dominant Abstract Expressionist trend. Yet Oliveira worked using a method much like certain Abstract Expressionist painters by beginning each of his works without a specific plan, applying pigment to the canvas almost at random until an image began to appear. Frequently, his works explored the relationships between people, animals, and nature, which are all well represented in this selection of rare works.
Nathan Oliveira was born in 1928 in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions, in addition to having been included in hundreds of group exhibitions in important museums and galleries worldwide. Beginning in the early 1950s, he taught studio art for several decades at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in Oakland. After serving as a visiting artist at several universities, he became a professor of studio art at Stanford University.
His work is held in many major museum collections including the Tate Modern in London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, all in New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Oakland Museum of California, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, to name but a few. He is represented by the Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco.
Exhibition Curator: Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator
Exhibition sponsor: Ellen Hirth
This 2023 solo exhibition of Oakland, California-based, internationally-known sculptor Bruce Beasley (b. 1939) expresses a New Direction in his work and expands our appreciation of his long and illustrious career. Selected works on exhibit include one monumental stainless steel sculpture and ten large-scale, dye sublimation on ChromaLuxe aluminum panel wall works created from monochromatic 2018 collages. Beasley created the collages using virtual reality as his medium—an exciting and intriguing New Direction for the artist.
Beasley did not consider creating two-dimensional art until 2018 when he discovered that a computer with a virtual reality program could become a tool for new creative concepts. Using virtual reality software, he is able to “sculpt” three-dimensional shapes by gesturing within the boundless space afforded by virtual reality. After creating his swooping shapes inside the digital environment, he then “grabs” the floating gestures and prints them out onto canvas on a monumental scale. He then cuts up the gestures printed on the canvas and re-assembles the pieces by pasting them into unique compositions using the collage technique. The resulting collages are modern, sleek, and lyrically strong. The aluminum panel editions exhibited here are the print iteration of the original, layered, collage technique.
In essence, Beasley has created sculpture without gravity. He tells us, “I bring the sculptures out of the open space/virtual reality environment and into our real, actual, experiential world. The result is that I can create shapes in a gravity-free, three-dimensional environment, and the fully three-dimensional shapes actually come out at the end of my hand!”
Juxtaposed with the massive two-dimensional panels, Aeolis 10 (2020) is a new sculpture that mirrors the lyrical quality of the wall pieces. This large stainless steel piece has not been exhibited before and completes the artist’s “dance of gesture” throughout the Hallowell Gallery. Here, we acknowledge Beasley’s long and internationally-recognized career in three-dimensional sculpture alongside his new exploration of two-dimensional compositions.
Beasley's sculpture is held in many major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; the Kunsthalle Mannheim in Germany; the National Art Museum of China in Beijing; the Seattle Art Museum; the János Xántus Museum, Győr, Hungary; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Oakland Museum of California, the Palm Springs Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, the Crocker Art Museum, and the Fresno Art Museum in California, among others.
Exhibition Curator: Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator
This retrospective exhibition of Fresno-based architect Arthur Dyson (b.1940) explores sixty-three years of this visionary architect’s work with models and two-dimensional renderings of his private and public edifices. His last exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum was Poetics of Space in 2004.
A student of both Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff, Dyson’s early work was inspired by his own social consciousness. He created buildings serving people whose needs exceeded their means: the Lanare Community Center for Riverdale, California (1969) is one of the earliest. Other examples of architecture designed by Dyson to enhance and celebrate the common experience include a fine arts building proposed for Monterey, California (1966) and a Native American Indian Center for Fresno (1975).
Born in 1940, Dyson realized his affection for architecture was not based on what he saw around him but on what was missing—interesting forms built from unusual materials and, most importantly, a lyrical and organic sense of life in new structures. In the 1960s, houses and public buildings were typically boxes or rectangles built of stainless steel with lots of glass; they felt cold. While practical, they were rarely creatively designed. He was determined to change this, and he did and has made organic architecture his focus throughout his career.
As he began to establish himself, this then-young architect created new structures and also remodeled existing ones in what would become his signature organic style. His structures moved earth into mounds, cast concrete into fluid walls, and were lit by Plexiglas bubbles where sunlight enlivened his interior spaces. He used wood as a decorative element on his facades, allowing it to be geometric by bending it to activate a building’s visual presence.
From his Fresno-based office during the ensuing decades, Arthur Dyson designed and built the structures listed below, among many other projects. These commissions include single-family residences, multi-family dwellings such as condominiums and apartments, and social services housing.
Projects have included:
- Cannery Row Hotel project, Monterey, California (1967)
- Ascherl residence, Almaden Valley, California (1968)
- Leverich residence, Portola Valley, California (1972)
- Evans residence, Fresno, California (1973)
- Najarian-Simonian Office Building, Fresno, California (1973)
- Effie Office Building project, Fresno, California (1975)
- Garrison residence, Fresno, California (1979)
- Geringer residence, Kerman, California (1979)
- Scarborough, Tozlian, Laval Office Building project, Fresno, California (1980)
- Andrade residence, scheme #1, Fresno, California (1982)
- Glynns Restaurant project, Fresno, California (1984)
- Millerton residence project, Madera County, California (1984)
- Simpson residence, Fresno, California (1986)
- Asire residence project, Fresno County, California (1987)
- Barrett-Tuxford residence, Richland Center, Wisconsin (1987)
- Bedwell residence project, Kauai, Hawaii (1989)
- Uhden residence project, Santa Cruz, California (1989)
- Hall residence project, Cayucos, California (1993)
- Interior Systems remodel, Fresno, California (1995)
- Casey residence, La Selva Beach, California (1996)
- Hilton residence, Panama City Beach, Florida (1999)
- Del Coronado Condominiums project, Panama City Beach, Florida (2000)
- Hilton guest house, Panama City Beach, Florida (2002)
- Grand Central Station project, Fresno, California (2003)
- Manchester Sky Train Transfer Station project, Fresno, California (2005)
- Riverview Terrace Office Complex [as DSJ Architects], Fresno, California (2006)
- Salt Aire Dunes condominiums project, Grayland, Washington (2006)
- Zumwalt residence, Madera, California (2008)
- Bishop residence, St. George, Utah (2012)
- Eco Pod, Fresno, California (2013)
All of Dyson's projects have housed individuals, families, and businesses with incomparable designs and aesthetic sensitivity for over six decades and will continue to do so into the future.
Exhibition Curator: Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator
Exhibition sponsors: Marvin Armstrong, Ed and Jan Darden, Ellen Hirth
The permanent collection of the Fresno Art Museum is full of hidden gems and a wide variety of artistic styles. This exhibition brings the work of two California artists, photographer Cay Lang and multimedia artist Caroline Harris, out of the vaults. Their conceptual works evoke strong responses. The Museum has been collecting the work of Cay Lang, an internationally recognized Bay Area-based fine art photographer, since 1991. Caroline Harris was a local artist and philanthropist who was very active in the Fresno community and whose work has been part of the permanent collection since 1984. While the mediums are different, both women have strong ties to Fresno and use bold color and lines to create textured and multi-dimensional works.
Exhibition Curator: Sarah Vargas, FAM Curator
Ongoing from Summer/Fall 2022
July 30, 2022 to June 25, 2023
The Fresno Art Museum is proud to present the visually dynamic and vibrant work of illustrator Raúl Colón from the book Light for All written by Cuban American author Margarita Engle. Published in December 2021, this children’s book is described as a lyrical and unifying picture book that “will inspire young readers” and “magnificently showcases the immigrant experience” in America (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Raúl Colón’s images capture the immigrant experience and shed light on the many reasons why people come to our shores and the numerous contributions they make and have made to the fabric of our nation. His illustrations depict their hopes and dreams, their diversity and the commonalities, and the importance of acceptance and equity for all. The pictures help tell the story by emphasizing that America has been built by a variety of cultures and talents which have all contributed to making it a nation to be desired, to be a part of, and to create a future in. Not always a pretty history, it is our history and is a history we must learn from in order to move forward into the future. Ours is a country in which light should be shared by ALL who call the United States home no matter where they come from or what they look like.
The illustrator Raúl Colón was born in New York City and grew up and went to art school in Puerto Rico. At one time, he aspired to be a rock star, but to his mother’s delight, he chose to be an illustrator instead. In addition to illustrating over 30 children’s books, he has designed puppets, animated films, and created illustrations for The New York Times, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. He has illustrated numerous award-winning children’s books including several Pura Belpré award-winning books (one of which was for the book Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes by Juan Felipe Herrera, one of the featured books included in the 2016/2017 exhibition at FAM, Art of the Word 2.) Colón now works and lives with his family just outside of New York City in Rockland County, New York.
The author of Light for All, Margarita Engle, was born and raised in Los Angeles, California but spent many summers in her mother’s hometown of Trinidad, Cuba where she bonded with both her extended family and the culture of Cuba. Like Mr. Colón, she has won many awards for her writing (including a Pura Belpré award for Drum Dream Girl illustrated by Rafael López who was the featured illustrator in the 2021/2022 FAM exhibition Celebrating Differences.) On her website (margaritaengle.com), she says, “I love to write about young people who made hopeful choices in situations that seemed hopeless. My own hope is that tales of courage and compassion will ring true for youthful readers as they make their own difficult decisions in modern times.” Ms. Engle works and lives in Fresno, California with her family.
Exhibition Curator: Susan Yost Filgate, FAM Education Director
Support for this exhibition from the Bonner Family Foundation and the Foundation@FCOE
GENERAL SPONSORS FOR WINTER/SPRING 2023 EXHIBITION SEASON
Winter/Spring 2023 General Exhibition Season Sponsors
Coke and James Hallowell
Christy V. Hicks
Carole Anderson
Diane Hanson-Barnes
Robert McParland
Anita Shanahan
Cindy Wathen-Kennedy
Evany Zirul
David and MaryAnne Esajian
