Exhibit - Garden of Delights: Artists Embrace the Flower
Mathias Alten, Chrysanthemums, oil on canvas, ca 1900, 2021.86.21.
A Garden of Delights: Artists Embrace the Flower
During his lifetime, Mathias J. Alten interacted, taught, traveled, and worked with many artists. Drawn from a variety of public and private collections, Among Friends highlights the work of Alten and five other artists he was connected to with roots in Grand Rapids, Michigan: Norman S. Chamberlain, Kreigh Collins, Will Howe Foote, Foster Jewell, and Edward Gregory Smith.
Although Alten was not born in Grand Rapids, he established it as the base for his family and studio, and quickly forged relationships with other artists. Upon completion of his formal training in Europe, he returned to Grand Rapids and began to teach. Many aspiring artists received training from Alten in his studio and outdoors. For some, this also included traveling with the artist and often his family to American artist colonies and locations abroad.
Throughout his career, Alten sought out opportunities to teach and to learn amongst a community of other artists. He developed personal and professional relationships with many artists, most notably these five. While some were initially his students, they eventually became colleagues and friends who played an important role in Alten’s life.
Mathias Alten, Nude with Amaryllis, oil on canvas, 1935-1936, 1999.509.1.
Flowers in Art
Flowers have long held a place in culture, influencing fashion, design, and literature through their beauty and symbolic weight. And for centuries, artists have turned to flora for inspiration.
Flowers’ visual, olfactory, and tactile qualities, as well as their associations with love, femininity, and the natural world, have inspired the work of innumerable modern and contemporary artists, too. They’ve figured prominently in myriad iconic bodies of work, such as Vincent van Gogh’s expressive sunflowers, Georgia O’Keeffe’s dynamic blooms, and Takashi Murakami’s playful, anthropomorphic blossoms.
Fernand Renard, Le Panier de Fraises, oil on canvas, ca 1971, 2013.68.26.
Flowers have been photographed, sculpted, drawn, and painted by countless artists. Thus, on occasion, it might seem like there is nothing new to be said or done. Yet the fantastic contemporary artists featured below demonstrate that that couldn’t be further from the truth. Working across a wide array of mediums, each of these artists has managed to harness the visual and conceptual power of flowers in fresh and unexpected ways.
The Artists
Mathias Alten, Adam Avery, Ricke Beerhorst, Andrea Burns, Jules Chéret, Elaine Dalcher, Keisai Eisen, Tony Fitzpatrick, MaryBeth Koeze, Robert Koropp, Henk Krijeger, Jay Lefkowitz, Claudia S. Liberatore, Dana Lixenberg, Dorothy Market, Babulal Marotia, Mike McDonnell, Armand Merizon, Dennis Nahabetian, Michael Pfleghaar, Fernand Renard, Matilda Burns Silvestre, Rob Stephens, Tonja Togerson, Ernst Wahliss, Reain Vanderhill.
Rein Vanderhill, Untitled, watercolor, 2014.113.19.
Ernst Wahliss, Bohemian Bowl Vase with Maidens and Lilly Leaves, porcelain, ca 1898, 2022.26.1.
Dana Lixenberg, Untitled (Flowers), New Jersey, C-Print, 2004, 2016.73.1.
Exhibition Resources
This exhibit is no longer on display.