Earl Cunningham: American Fauve
September 8 - October 29, 2011
Jackson Hole, WY
Press Release
The paintings of the Maine-born self-taught marine painter Earl Cunningham (1893-1977) are distinguished for incorporating significant aspects of mainstream modern art, particularly the high keyed coloristic work of the Post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh and the French Fauves. Known for his visionary scenes of both Maine and Florida, Cunningham created an art that belies the once widely endorsed view regarding self-taught art’s presumed lack of erudition. Although he was certainly an autodidact in his art and semi-literate, as his occasionally recorded personal journal testifies, Cunningham’s work is not lacking in sophistication, and he himself was not unaware of mainstream avant-garde art developments, as his own art so clearly indicates.