European Art Comes to Oglethorpe

REFRAMING NATURE
European artist colonies blazed a trail -- all the way to Oglethorpe
by Tom Sabulis

Das rote Haus in Althagen (1911) by Dara Koch Stetter

This is more than just a cozy yarn about a little museum that could.

Or a polyglot tale of international art lovers who targeted Atlanta as their launching pad for American exhibits.

Or a listing of the corporate turbines that paid to generate an unprecedented art exhibition, reportedly the first of its kind in the United States.

It's more than the artwork itself, too --- although the soulful scenes of fishermen and sunbathers, barnyards and plow women, fieldscapes and rivers are the main draw.

At its heart, Oglethorpe University Museum of Art's current show is a window into the human desire to step outside the boundaries. Its 70 paintings tell the story of the farflung settlements where major trends of 19th and 20th century art got their seedling start. And how many varied pieces had to fall into place to make it happen.

The art

The exhibit, a virtual European union of countryside paintings, transports the visitor to such tongue-twisting places as Worpswede in Germany (immortalized in essays by Rainer Maria Rilke) and Grez-sur-Loing in France, where artists went seeking what one organizer calls the "primal simplicity of nature."

What they found --- along with the work they created --- changed the art world forever, igniting such epoch-changing movements as impressionism, pointillism and realism.

"Monet was absolutely influenced by the Barbizon school," says Oglethorpe director Lloyd Nick, speaking of the famous French colony near Paris. "The Pont-Aven artists inspired Gauguin and the symbolists. [Jan] Toorop was a leader of the pointillists. And Anna Ancher brought impressionism to Denmark."

The theme of adventurous self-discovery applies to the exhibit's host, as well.

The museum

Oglethorpe Museum is a tiny, mom-and-pop institution operating out of the third floor of the campus' Weltner Library. It has a minuscule budget --- the university designates about $150,000 for it annually --- and a staff of two people: director Nick and Kathleen Cody Guy, who doubles as director of museum operations and gift shop manager.

How small is it really?

The 63-year-old Nick injured his hand and tweaked his rotator cuff in February while lifting 42 crates of exhibit paintings off the delivery truck. He then unpacked the boxes, inserted hooks and wires in many frames and, with minimal help, hung the work on the "Comanche Red" walls of the museum's two galleries. (He had painted the museum's interior himself.)

But "Masterpieces From European Artist Colonies" required much more manpower to reach Atlanta.

Only by organizing an international network of collectors, sponsors and governments was the museum able to mount what Nick calls "the biggest, most ambitious, most expensive" exhibit in its history.

It cost about $400,000 to bring together pieces by 65 artists (nine of them women) originating at 18 artists' colonies in seven countries --- Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The works, which include selections by Corot, Klee and Pissarro, are on loan from 23 collectors. Most are being displayed in America for the first time.

The history

The way "Masterpieces From European Artist Colonies" landed in Georgia is a tale of passionate collaboration and national pride on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

For years, EuroArt (the European Federation of Artists Colonies, formed in 1994) had wanted an American museum to help spread the legacy of these rural outposts. Beginning in the early 1800s, artist colonies sprouted across Europe offering sylvan and seaside retreats to painters and others. Thanks to the emergence of sealed metal tubes that made paint portable, they could easily work "en plein air," or outdoors, in often primitive surroundings that allowed them to shed the academic restraints of the formal art world.

But time's passage, and two world wars, obliterated some colonies and obscured others. Some 200 colonies existed in Europe at the turn of the 20th century, but only about 65 survive, says EuroArt chief Benno Risch.

In the mid-1990s, EuroArt hatched plans for exhibitions that would promote the surviving colonies and simultaneously broaden relationships among European Union countries and with the United States. EuroArt leaders began to look for American partners.

The connection

As it turns out, Risch belongs to the same German international organization as Atlanta lawyer Stefan Tiessen. At one meeting, Risch told Tiessen (pronounced TEE-sen) of EuroArt's ambitions. A local cultural ambassador of some note --- he's chairman of the Friends of Goethe, which supports the Goethe-Institut, a local German cultural center --- Tiessen took the exhibit idea to Rene-Serge Marty, the French consul general in Atlanta.

Marty, in turn, invited Tiessen and Oglethorpe's Nick to dinner at his home in the summer of 2003. A match was made.

"The Europeans picked Atlanta because of CNN, the Olympics and all that. It's an international city, and it has a great reputation in Europe. And they all know Peachtree," Nick adds.

"It's a fact that an address with Peachtree in it was important to them." Oglethorpe is at 4484 Peachtree Road N.E.

Fortunately for the museum, European representatives in Atlanta and overseas were quick to offer help. They wrangled artwork and enlisted corporations to cover the $400,000 in expenses needed to assemble the exhibit.

The Flemish Ministry of Culture coughed up 50,000 euros (more than $65,000) to transport the paintings to the Frankfurt, Germany, airport.

The Germans provided the airplane through Lufthansa Cargo.

A Dutch historian assembled the catalog, and loaned pieces from her own collection. From his office in Peachtree Center, Danish trade commissioner Kent Fallesen pulled strings to secure paintings from Skagen, a colony in northern Denmark. For Fallesen, the job of cutting red tape in order to get paintings to Atlanta was a new experience.

"We were obligated to make sure the Danish art pieces got over here. It's all part of building an awareness for Denmark," he says, adding that 52 Danish companies have subsidiaries in Georgia. "Art is a good way, because it creates feelings in everyone no matter where you come from."

Local attorney Tiessen was a bit surprised by the international enthusiasm.

"Everyone wanted to see this happen," says Tiessen, who hails from near Cologne, Germany, and studied law at the University of Illinois. "In my 20 years of living and practicing in Atlanta, I can't think of another cultural event with more international involvement and participation than this exhibit."

EuroArt's Risch credits "the Americans" for being able to organize and mount the exhibit in little more than a year's time.

"[Americans] are more practical people," he says. "One year from a European point of view is impossible."

French consul general Marty agrees.

"I didn't think we could realize this from a small idea shared among three or four people around a table," he says. "But that is the U.S. Only in the United States can you do that."

Nick gives an added nod to modern technology, which helped bridge the ocean between Oglethorpe and his European cohorts.

"It's the epitome of irony, really," Nick says. "Here you have these artists who wanted to get out of the city, go out to nature and paint. And it was mostly thanks to the Internet that we could put this exhibition together and produce the catalog."

Now if only he can get someone to tend to his shoulder --- at least before he has to dismantle the show. It closes May 22.

SEVENTY PAINTINGS from 18 European artist colonies are on display at Oglethorpe University, many of them being shown in America for the first time. The exhibit focuses on a small sample of the work created at these outdoor outposts between 1830 and 1930. The show's mission is raising awareness of the colonies' legacy in hopes of preserving the existing sites.

IF YOU GO
"Masterpieces From European Artist Colonies 1830-1930"
Through May 22. Noon-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays (closed April 29). $5; children under 12 free. Oglethorpe Museum of Art, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-364-8555,  http://museum.oglethorpe.edu.