01 May 2018

Expressionism and the South

Greenville County Museum of Art

Reviewed by Andy Gambrell

"Expressionism and the South" is a delectable exhibition of nonobjective paintings by eight renowned artists. A classic Walter Darby Bannard painting, Sumerian (1980), is composed of high-relief, dark, wave-like marks in a field of yellow-green gloss medium. The field is interrupted with coral-colored areas of texture. On the same wall is a large Syd Solomon painting, Landline, also from 1980. The top half of the painting is a luscious rectangle of peachy orange desaturated with an overlay of transparent blue. The bottom is dense with black calligraphic marks. Negative spaces are filled with vibrant tinted hues like cyan, magenta, yellow, and green.

Pagan Ritual, a barrage of intense color by John Little from 1946, is every bit as assertive and dynamic today as when it was painted. From a work by Fritz Bultman, a member of The Irascibles, to a painting by Alma Thomas, the first African-American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum, substance abounds.