As the winter starts to seem long and cold, even in Georgia, opening on Saturday, February 13 at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, visitors will be transported to the warmth of California with the exhibition, “David Ligare: California Classicist” which remains on view through May 8, 2016. The show consists of 76 paintings and drawings, mostly borrowed from the collection of the artist and other private lenders.
Many of the paintings are on an extremely large scale; several measure nearly 10 feet wide, dwarfing the viewer and making for an in-person experience very different from looking at reproductions in a book or online.
Sarah Kate Gillespie, the museum’s curator of American art, said “This exhibition brings something new to our schedule at the museum, partly because of the scale of the works (we’ve shown mostly smaller paintings lately) and partly because of Ligare’s neoclassical influences. Whether landscape, still-life or character-based in subject, his paintings and drawings are precise, beautiful and timeless. We think students and visitors will be able to draw connections to many eras in art history from contemplating his work.”
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1945 and educated at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, artist Ligare began painting large canvases inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity in the late 1970s. The West Coast landscape and light form the background for images drawn from classical sources, such as his paintings “Hercules Protecting the Balance Between Pleasure and Virtue,” “Orpheus” and “Penelope.” More works at: www.davidligare.com.
For more information on related events, see: http://georgiamuseum.org or additional details, contact Michael Lachowski, mlachow@uga.edu, 706.542.9078.