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On Friday, 20 March 2009 THE WATERCOLORS OF TONY VEVERS, an exhibition of landscape-inspired abstractions by Tony Vevers from the 1950s, will open at ACME Fine Art, Boston. A reception from six to eight on Friday evening (the 20th) will mark the opening. The exhibition will be on view through 8 May.

Upon emigrating from England to the United States in 1940 at the age of fourteen, Tony Vevers was impressed by the sprawling lushness of the American landscape. This connection to and appreciation of the American landscape quickly formed a theme in Vevers’ artistic pursuits, a theme that continued throughout his lengthy career as an artist and educator. Vevers was surrounded by art as a boy, and he was eager to undertake the serious study of painting and drawing as soon as he could. He welcomed the opportunity to do so at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville CT, where he particularly enjoyed painting the landscape en-plein-air. In 1946 Vevers went on to study at Yale University where he earned his BA degree in Drawing and Painting in1950.

Following graduation from Yale Vevers spent time traveling in Italy. While there his focus was on abstracting the landscape in oil paintings and in watercolors. Of this period Vevers said, “When I first got there I tried to do a more abstract figuration. By the end of my stay, I was taken with the idea of working abstractly through nature, something I’ve always done.”

Upon his return to the US, Vevers attended the Hans Hofmann School in New York. While many of his colleagues’ work adopted a more distinctly non-objective, abstract expressionist style, Vevers work consistently maintained a connection to nature. In fact, by 1955 Vevers was beginning to incorporate the human figure into his work. This was at a time when such a thing was almost taboo among the art world’s avant-garde elite.

The watercolors that will be featured in ACME Fine Art’s upcoming exhibition include two early Italian landscapes, and a group of four exceptional shoreline-inspired abstractions painted in Provincetown from 1958. This was a period that was particularly rich both with respect to the history of the arts in Provincetown but also in Vevers’ own development as an artist. At that time he was exhibiting his work at a relatively small gallery known as the Sun Gallery on Commercial Street in Provincetown. His colleagues in the gallery were such artists as: Jan Muller, Bob Thompson, Lester Johnson and Red Grooms, and all were breaking new ground by bringing the “subject” back to modern art.

Vevers exhibited at many notable institutions throughout her career, including Indianapolis Art League, IA; Boston University Art Gallery; Cape Museum of Fine Arts; Copenhagen City Gallery, Denmark; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; Guildhall Museum, East Hampton, NY; and the Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, IA. Vevers’ work is represented in the permanent collections of the Isaac Delgardo Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; Farleigh-Dickinson University, NJ; Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN; Walter Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA.

For further information about this exhibition or other gallery events, please contact the gallery at 617.585.9551, or via e-mail at info@acmefineart.com.

ACME Fine Art and Design is located at 38 Newbury Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02116. Gallery hours are 11:00 to 5:30 Tuesday through Saturday.

selection of works