The Nevada Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of Andy Warhol: Athletes, a collection of 10 paintings by the iconic artist featuring some of the most celebrated sport stars of the 1970s.

Andy Warhol: Athletes immortalizes 10 athletes in Warhol’s signature style of screen-printing – a project commissioned by his friend and collector Richard Weisman. The exhibition also includes a portrait of Weisman painted by Warhol.

The exhibition exemplifies the changing nature of fame in the twentieth century as sports figures became celebrities in American popular culture. The athletes featured in this series benefitted from newfound celebrity status following the series due to Warhol’s international fame. Featured sport stars include Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, Tom Seaver, Rod Gilbert, Jack Nicklaus, Dorothy Hamill, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Evert, Willie Shoemaker and Pelé. Each of the paintings measure 40 x 40 inches.

Carmelo Ortiz de Elgea is one of the most well-known painters living and working today in the Basque Country, located on the border of northern Spain and southern France. Ortiz de Elgea rose to prominence in the Basque art world of the 1970s, following the emergence of the Modern art movement, which became a galvanizing force among artists in Spain seeking a progressive alternative to the oppressive regime of General Francisco Franco.

Ortiz de Elgea was a founder of a group of artists known as Orain in the Basque province of Álava. Orain was established with a commitment to supporting aesthetic experimentation as a tool for social change during a period of extreme historical and political upheaval. Ortiz de Elgea’s work from this time combined figurative and abstract qualities; a unique blending that would continue to manifest itself throughout his career.

This exhibition includes paintings from Ortiz de Elgea’s travels to the American West in 2011, specifically northern Nevada and California. The artist was invited to the region by Bill Douglass, a scholar of Basque culture and founder of the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. After visiting places like Lake Tahoe, Mount Rose, Virginia City, and Smoke Creek, he then explored the surrounding areas of California, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, and Utah. “I couldn’t imagine the impression such a big open space and the expanse of landscapes of virgin nature would have on me,” Ortiz de Elgea said of his travels. “I immersed myself into the magnificent landscape, revisiting it with my canvas and colors, and painting it without a moment of rest. I would have loved to live there and never leave the immense land where eyes get to see all the way to the horizon without interruption.”

While Ortiz de Elgea’s work has been shown widely in the Basque Country, this is his first exhibition in the United States.

Sponsors

Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno and the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency

Santa Cruz-based artist Andrea Borsuk will create a new site-specific mural installation portraying the journey from the California coast to the Nevada desert. By layering paintings, drawings, and objects on top of a wall mural to imply a narrative trajectory, Borsuk explores the precarious notion of time and destiny.

“I am fascinated by our cultural obsessions with the various rituals and talismans that we subscribe to for protection, good luck and safety in our daily lives,” explains the artist. “Horseshoes, rabbit’s feet, and safety devices–all are mementi mori—signs and reminders of the precarious nature of life and our need for all kinds of faith. Referencing the three sisters of fate from Greek mythology, my narrative toys with the notions of divine powers and the hopes we may cast upon these eclectic ‘goddesses’ for bestowing upon us fortune and survival.”

Featured as jewels on an elaborate ‘thread of life,’ Borsuk’s cast of characters are reveling in and ultimately submitting to the journey of life—an unpredictable and ever-changing ride.

Watch a video of Borsuk’s journey from Santa Cruz to Reno, NV here. (Link)

This exhibition celebrates avant-garde artists–—including the legendary Henri Toulouse-Lautrec—who were living and working at the center of the artistic and cultural scene of Paris at the turn of the last century. Through a variety of paintings and other materials, visitors will explore the nightlife of cabaret theaters, elaborate circus performances, and intimate café concerts that helped to define Paris as an iconic modern city.

Drawn from prestigious private collections, the artworks in this exhibition were made by a generation of artists who battled against the formality of Academic art standards, rebelling against the styles of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism espoused by artists like Georges Seurat, Paul Gaugin, and Vincent Van Gogh. In addition to paintings by Henri Tolouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassat, Paul Heleu, Juan Gris, and Pierre Bonnard, special attention is given to small groups of artists –the Nauralists, the Symbolists, the Incohérents, and the Nabis—who offered new visions for life and society during this era that has been popularly coined the fin de siècle.

The exhibition includes over 185 objects, ranging from paintings, watercolors, and drawings, to rare cabaret shadow puppets, illustrated theater programs, and archive and ephemera materials from Parisian theaters, circuses, and concerts.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia.

Lead sponsor

George and Irene Drews and the Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation

Sponsor

Goldcorp, US

Supporting sponsors

Earl and Wanda Casazza, Casazza SLV, LLC, and Catherine and John Farahi/Atlantis Casino Resort Spa

His Excellency Francois Delattre, Ambassador of France to the United States of America, is Honorary Patron of the exhibition.

See the massive and very rare The Book of the Lagoons by artists Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison on view in the CA+E Research Library, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Wednesday-Sunday.

Purchased with funds from the Elke Hoppe Youth Advancement Trust.

Minerals have been used as a source of pigment ever since humans began making rock art from ochre in Africa, Australia, and Europe more than 300,000 years ago. Ulrike Arnold, who lives in Germany and Arizona, began using earth minerals for her paintings in 1980.

In 2002 Arnold met the owners of the Southwest Meteorite Laboratory, a business in Arizona that supplies meteorite thin sections to NASA and other scientific organizations around the world for study purposes. The laboratory provided her with the dust generated from sectioning meteorites found in China, Namibia, Greenland, Argentina, Arizona, and New Mexico.

To paint with these earth minerals, Arnold grinds stones and rocks into a paste that she mixes on location with an acrylic binder. To work with the meteoritic materials, Arnold spreads her canvases on the ground, applies glue onto the surface then pours the fine particles of iron, nickel, and chondrules over the surface. Chondrules are primitive compounds that are the oldest solid material found in our solar system, and building blocks of the planets.

Arnold’s work incorporates terrestrial minerals from 200 million years ago, and meteoritic dust as old as 4.5 billion years. Her paintings embody the geology of the remote locations in which she works–from Chile’s Atacama Desert and remote Australia to Easter Island¬–as well as the formation of the planets. The paintings seek to evoke the emotional connection between Earth and Heavens, sky and ground, a connection that has been painted from prehistoric time until the present.

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s extraordinary life and iconic biographical paintings have earned her international renown in the world of modern art. Upon Kahlo’s death in 1954, more than 6,500 personal photographs and items belonging to her and husband/artist Diego Rivera were sealed and put in storage. For more than half a century this great collection of personal memorabilia remained hidden from the public. In 2007 this collection was opened and Mexican photographer and curator Pablo Ortiz Monasterio inventoried and catalogued 240 images to create the Frida Kahlo: Her Photos exhibition.

These images reveal a little-known side of the artist and lifelong resident of Coyoacán, a Mexico City suburb and Arlington, Virginia’s sister city. The collection of photographs in this exhibition reflect Kahlo’s tastes and interests, the experiences she shared with those close to her, and her complicated, but also thrilling, personal life. Viewers get an insider’s look, not only through who was behind the camera, in front of the lens or the anonymous nature of some of the work but also through the annotated writing found on the back of many of the photographs.

From family pictures and snapshots taken with lovers, to images that reveal relationships with Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky and American photographers Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, artist Georgia O’Keefe and actress Dolores del Rio, this exhibition provides a glimpse into Kahlo as never seen before.

This exhibition was organized by the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Museums. Its worldwide tour is managed by Terra Esplêndida.

Major Sponsor

IGT

Ashley Blalock fuses craft and fine art to create objects and site-specific installations inspired by everyday artifacts from the female domestic sphere. She uses the meditative process of crochet to explore themes of discomfort and coping mechanisms used to provide solace from the stress and trauma of modern life.

Blalock’s site-specific installation, Keeping Up Appearances, consists of vibrant red forms nailed to the wall that are actually giant crochet doilies. Although non-threatening and quaint in a domestic setting, in the gallery and at this scale the forms overtake the viewer and cover the walls.

New York-based artist Emilie Clark creates art installations informed by the history of science and natural history. The latest in series of works focused on the work and lives of Victorian women scientists and naturalists, Sweet Corruptions departs from the work of Ellen H. Richards—a sanitary chemist who studied air, water, and food.

Richards was the first female student and then professor at MIT, and had a profound interest in the relationship between people and their environment. She also brought the word “ecology” into the English language. Clark uses Richards’s work as a structure and guide, treating her own studio like a laboratory.

The work in this project includes the collection and preservation of the artist’s family’s food waste for one year; an interactive Research Station sculpture that includes an audio piece, specimens, a dissecting microscope (for the public’s use) and terraria; a book; and, drawings and paintings.

Sponsors

Maureen Mullarkey and Steve Miller

Stephen Shore’s seminal work Uncommon Places is considered one of the most celebrated and influential collections of photographic work produced in the past 40 years. These images chronicle the artist’s multiple cross-country road trips, exploring the American landscape from 1973-1981. Shore used a wide-format view camera to capture moments that are highly detailed and complex, presenting to the viewer a dense snapshot of the American built environment. Formal concerns such as framing and structure are paramount to his work.

Shore was born in 1947 in New York, and his career began in the mid-1960s, as a frequent visitor and photographic chronicler of the scene at Andy Warhol’s “Factory.” Warhol’s work influenced the young photographer, who began creating his black and white works sequentially and in series, delighting in American culture. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York honored Shore with a solo exhibition when he was 23 years old. The same year he began working with color film, attracted to the medium’s ability to record the range and intensity of hues seen in life. Shore, together with William Eggleston, is one of the country’s pioneering color photographers. His works transforms banal scenes of everyday life into fine art.