Thomas Hart Benton
Legacy
©T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York.
Evergreen Fine art is proud to offer original oil paintings, works on paper and lithographs for sale direct from the estate of Thomas Hart Benton.
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. Benton paintings included sculpted figures, distinctly stylized and fluid works of art that focused upon the working class as a usually underrepresented group of people. Many of the murals he created dealt with subject matter commonly attributed to a Midwest lifestyle and are packed with complexity and energy. Benton enjoyed a long career. He studied in Paris, lived in New York, and had many milestones such as his famous murals. Thomas Hart Benton continued to work until his death in 1975, and his paintings are still viewed by millions each year in museums around the nation.
©T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York.
An extraordinary chapter in American art history is about to be opened at Evergreen Fine Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, giving lovers of both art and history an unprecedented chance to possess their own unique page of our nation’s cultural heritage.
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 9, gallery owners Barb Hadley and Phil Shanley will be pleased to unveil “Legacy”, a remarkable collection of original works and lithographs by painter, muralist and iconic American artist Thomas Hart Benton.
“These pieces all come directly from his family estate, and many of them have never before been offered anywhere,” says Hadley.
Born in 1889 to a prominent Missouri political family, Thomas Hart Benton studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and went on to study in Paris alongside such renowned painters as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. He would in later years become a cherished professor and mentor to a young artist destined to become famed abstract impressionist Jackson Pollock.
Short of stature, famously pugnacious and fiercely loyal to his friends, in the 1920’s Benton joined American laureates Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry in spearheading the powerfully representational Regionalist movement. He traveled the country’s byways alone, amassing a poignant treasury of images marking the nation’s growing industrial mastery and celebrating the unsung working classes that made it possible. Although Benton was best known for his powerful depictions of the Midwest, many of his most memorable works portray the people and places of the South and the distant West.
Benton died at his easel in 1975, and his estate came under the stewardship of the UMB Bank in Kansas City, Mo., which has offered his works for sale on behalf of the Benton family only sparingly and, until now, only through selected Eastern and Midwestern galleries. Late last year his best-known work, a majestic mural entitled “America Today”, found a permanent home at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, becoming the only occupant of a grand chamber constructed solely for its display. Composed of 10 broad floor-to-ceiling panels, “America Today” presents a broad and balanced picture of the Union as it lived and breathed in the 1930’s, and provides a comprehensive tutorial on Benton’s unmistakable artistic style – complex fields,
strong forms and distinctively fluid shapes that excite the eye with energy and motion.
Thomas Hart Benton holds a place of reverence in galleries, museums and private collections the world over, and in “Legacy” he will at last be directly available to Rocky Mountain admirers. UMB Bank has generously entrusted to Evergreen Fine Art an exquisite assortment of Benton originals including oil paintings still snug in their original frames, powerful and pristine lithographs, and a wonderfully intimate and diverse portfolio of drawings that trace Benton’s footsteps on his journeys across a much younger America.
“It is unusual to have this concentration of Benton’s work available for sale to the public,” Shanley says. “We’re privileged to be able to offer the works of such a significant American painter right here in Evergreen, and grateful to UMB Bank for giving us that opportunity.”