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Hultberg work to be exhibited in UB Anderson Gallery
By KRISTIN E.M. RIEMER
Reporter Contributor
"John Hultberg: Vanishing Point," an exhibition highlighting 21 paintings and 14 graphic works from UB's permanent collection, will open at 11 a.m. July 14 in the first floor gallery of UB's Anderson Gallery, located on Martha Jackson Place near Englewood and Kenmore avenues.
Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday 1-5. Admission is free.
John Hultberg (1922-2005) belonged to the generation of artists known for abstract expressionism—a style, or attitude, that valued individuality and freedom of expression, in contrast to the social realism of previous decades. Hultberg made his mark with dramatic, often dark landscapes and interiors interspersed with recognizable imagery and grounded by an obvious horizon line. His paintings and prints take viewers through a vortex into compartmentalized apocalyptic and alien lands—often inhabited by demons or otherworldly beings—where occasional uncluttered expanses create windows into the unknown.
For example, his painting "The Dark Room," 1957, (pictured on the cover of this week's issue) depicts a window framed by dirty shades and wall shelves cluttered with unidentifiable debris. A multiplicity of perspectives draws the eye from the dark interior through the window to a blank landscape marked only by diagonal lines that recede to a vanishing point on the horizon. Several eye levels create a dizzying effect as the viewer seeks to make sense of Hultberg's distorted point of view.
Hultberg's innovative compositions made a lasting impression on his New York City art dealer, Martha Jackson, who also represented Willem de Kooning, Antoni Tàpies and Karel Appel, among others. Regarding Hultberg's influence on her perspective, Jackson wrote in a publication accompanying a 1964 exhibition of his work at the Martha Jackson Gallery, "Why was I so open to new ideas?...Could it be that I have been conditioned in advance by my intimate knowledge of John Hultberg's painting?"
A writer and poet as well as a painter, Hultberg received a bachelor's degree in literature in 1939 from Fresno State College, then served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy from 1943-46. Following his discharge from the Navy, he studied painting at the San Francisco School of Fine Art and produced black-and-white lithography with Richard Diebenkorn, who influenced his use of perspective. He moved to New York City in 1949 to study at the Art Students League and was represented by Martha Jackson and, following her death, by her son, David Anderson.
Among Hultberg's awards are a First Prize Medal for Painting, Corcoran Biennial (1955); a Guggenheim Fellowship for Painting (1956); a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974); two Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants for painting (1988 and 1992); two Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grants (1993 and 1997); and the Lee Krasner Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in Art (1998). Hultberg was an instructor at the Art Students League and an exhibiting member of the National Academy of Design.
His work is featured in more than 150 public collections throughout the world, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of American Art and Whitney Museum of American Art. The UB Anderson Gallery is home to the archive of his relationship with the Martha Jackson Gallery and David Anderson Gallery, and his personal papers and complete writings are in the collection of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. A volume of his poetry, "Sole Witness," was published in 2005.