Hardy S. George

Breaking the Mold focuses on paintings from a pivotal time, one of transition from postwar abstract expressionism to new artistic developments. It includes works on paper, paintings, and sculpture by fifty artists including Josef Albers, Richard Diebenkorn, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, and Marcel Duchamp. The Washington Gallery of Modern Art (WGMA) was founded in Washington, DC, on October 28, 1961, to increase the national and international attention given to contemporary art in the nation's capital, with an expressed purpose to exhibit and collect contemporary works of art. In 1968, the museum's collection was sold to the Oklahoma Art Center. This historically important collection from the former Washington gallery played an important role in the collection and cultivation of contemporary American art movements from the 1950s and 1960s, including late abstract expressionism, color field painting, minimalism, and pop art.

With styles ranging from traditional to abstract, the works in this volume span late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century American art and include examples from both Europe and Latin America. The common thread is excellence. Many of the paintings play on the boundaries between reality and fantasy, contain elements of humor or satire, or are rendered in a highly colorful, expressive style which does not directly imitate the natural world.

Tempests and Romantic Visionaries examines the many ways artists have portrayed both turbulent and calm weather conditions in marine and landscape paintings, drawings, and prints. Emphasis is placed on the artist's observation and experience of weather and climate, as well as on works which use calm seas, storms, and tempests as symbol and metaphor. Essays discuss J. M. W. Turner's storm subjects (Hardy George), tempest and shipwreck subjects in Dutch art and Romantic marine painting (Lawrence Goedde), storms at sea in British marine painting (Geoffrey Quilley), and paintings of shipwrecks and disasters at sea (Daniel Finamore).