Gallery displays landscapes
Works from UB's permanent collection are exhibited

By MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

The UB Art Gallery has uncovered some of the university's artistic treasures in an intriguing exhibit that presents a century of work in the landscape genre from UB's permanent art collection by artists both renowned and unknown.

"Landscapes From the Collection," on display in the Center for the Arts until March 17, allows viewers a rare look at some of UB's esteemed artwork and the opportunity to learn about some important artists, including several from the Buffalo area. Gallery hours are 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

The exhibit was curated by Karen Emenhiser and Lisa Fischman, who selected 25 landscape installations from UB's collection to produce a fascinating and diverse collection of paintings, fine art prints, silkscreen prints and color photographs dating from about the mid-19th to mid-20th century.

The show presents an infrequent opportunity for those curious about UB's artistic holdings to get a look at some of the university's permanent collection, since most of it spends its time in a vault in the Center for the Arts. Other pieces are kept in the Poetry and Rare Books Room or are displayed in offices around campus, according to Emenhiser.

"Landscapes" is arranged chronologically and begins by demonstrating the "romantic depiction of nature" by artists in the early 1900s, says Emenhiser, adding that the later work becomes more "subjectified" and features a subtle "performance element."

The performance element is first evident, and perhaps most pronounced, in Salvadore Dali's "Labyrinth," which emanates from a bright-blue background in the center of the exhibition space. Dali, one of the most notorious artists of the 20th century, used the painting's composition as the backdrop for a ballet he produced at the New York Metropolitan Opera House between 1939-41. The surrealist painting, which depicts a distorted female figure floating in clouds above a wavy sea, was a gift of the late Robert Millonzi and reportedly has been appraised at $750,000.

Remarkably, UB is the proud owner of another valuable Dali-"Portrait of Katharine Cornell"-presently archived in the Poetry and Rare Books Collection.

One installation in the exhibit features an oil painting by Harvey Breverman, UB professor of art, titled "Plaza." Fischman, who describes the work as "a composite of highways and overpasses, planes and shadows in foreshortened spaces," says that it is a "reinvention by amalgamation, as Breverman brings bits and pieces of real places together to create a place-scape of the imagination."

Colorful works by acclaimed Buffalo artists Philip C. Elliott, one of the founders of the UB art department, and by his wife, former UB art instructor Virginia Cuthbert Elliott, also are on display. Among them are some very arresting depictions of nature by Philip Elliott, including the intricate, quilt-like "Plant Patterns" and the brightly abstract "Spanish Garden."

The older works in the exhibit capture landscapes in a more traditional style and are nearly all works of American artists, such as "Sunset Scene" by Thomas Eakins and "Harbor Scene" by John N. Twachtman. Of local interest is an undated oil illustration of "Erie Canal at Black Rock" by Buffalo artist Charles Astin Needham.