Loretta Howard Gallery is pleased to present: Edward Dugmore: 1969 Topography of Body and Land opening Thursday, February 21st. The exhibition consists of major paintings and related drawings created by Dugmore in the year 1969. An essay by David Anfam – Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, and the foremost scholar of Abstract Expressionism - accompanies this exhibition catalogue. Also on view are photographs by Dugmore’s wife, Eadie Dugmore, which show their shared engagement with nature. Dugmore’s daughter, Linda Shannon Dugmore, gives insight into Dugmore’s work and life in a short video:
He loved to people watch. He loved to sit and look at mountains or some clouds. Dug really gave me an education in how to see things.
Dugmore underwent classical art training at the Hartford Art School before going in 1941 to study with Thomas Hart Benton at the Kansas City Art Institute. He entered the Marine Corps in 1943. In 1948, Dugmore took advantage of the G.I. Bill and moved out West to San Francisco to further his studies in art at the California School of Fine Arts and became a distinguished member of the Bay Area Movement. His teacher, Clyfford Still, became a great influence and friend. After Dugmore’s graduation, they wrote letters to one another and continued a close relationship. Dugmore took over Still’s New York studio on the Bowery. When Dugmore moved to New York City in 1952, he joined the famous Stable Gallery and was a prominent member of the New York School. Dugmore exhibited alongside other Abstract Expressionists including Willem de Kooning, Phillip Guston, Franz Kline, Nicolas Carone, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, and Jack Tworkov.
In the eventful year of 1969, when the works in this exhibition were produced, Dugmore painted in his studio in New York, teaching part-time at Pratt Institute. In the summer he and his wife moved to Maine and worked on a series of abstracted nude paintings, some of which are displayed in this exhibition.
Dugmore works have been shown at Greenville County Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX; Museum of Art, Northwestern University, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The New School for Social Research, The Portland Museum of Art, Museum of Art, Utah State University, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; New York University, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Oakland Museum of California, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The Kansas City Art Institute; The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY; Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Musee A. Lecuyer, Saint-Quentin, France (organized by MoMA); among others. Dugmore is also in the permanent collection of prominent museums including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Menil Collection in Houston.
Dugmore received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966, National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1976 and 1985, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. In 1992 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1994. Dugmore died in 1996 at the age of 81.