Shifting Landscapes

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

This grouping features three landscapes that demonstrate both the vitality and pertinence of the genre during the first half of the 20th century. The untitled painting by Blanche Lazzell evinces the artist’s profound engagement with Cubism and geometric abstraction. While the work attests to her association with European modernism, she was profoundly invested in printmaking around this time too, producing her widely collected The Monongahela series in 1926. Dave Nichols’ Earth to Rest is reminiscent of his 1934 painting The Hunt, a renowned work that won Nichols almost instant praise as a fine artist after he was forced to abandon his career as a commercial illustrator in the wake of the Great Depression. Rockwell Kent’s Adirondack Valley, Winter Night, a snow-covered panorama of the eponymous valley, reflects the artist’s fondness for the region he had called home since 1927. Devoid of figures, the serene landscape offers a counterpoint to the patriotic and boisterous depictions of America that he had developed during the war years. The pairing of works by Nichols and Kent is particularly generative: Kent’s artistic forays into Alaska in 1918 likely inspired Nichols to undertake similar trips to remote areas of the state during the late 1930s.