Report on the visit to the Denver Palace of Arts

Art Appreciation

May 08, 2012

The Denver Art Museum Report

I had the opportunity to go to the Denver Art Museum, spending hours looking at the variety of art works. Particularly, during my visit I found two pieced that I think that are worthy to write about. The first one is Moraine Park, a painting from Charles Partridge Adams, the second one is an exhibition called Rainbow Vision Sand Pictures from the Austrian artist Klaus Bosch. Both manifest the beauty of the Universe, regardless their techniques or methodologies.

The Moraine Park is oil paint on canvas and was painted about1900, and it is part of a collection called Rocky Mountain Majesty. The Denver Art Museum is currently exhibiting 37 of Adam’s collection that includes both, oil and watercolor paintings.

Charles Partridge Adams was born in 1858 in Massachusetts. When he was a teenager, he moved to Colorado because he was looking an arid climate for his sister who had tuberculosis. He stayed in this State and began his painting career when local artist help him to develop his working methods and style. However, Adams is also considered a self-taught because he the learned his craft interacting with others in the field, and practicing techniques and experimenting with different styles. He lived in several parts of Colorado, but was in Estes Park, where he was inspired as an artist by the beautiful landscapes of the Rocky Mountains. Adams wrote in his memories: "I saw the Rocky Mountains as I had dreamed of them before I came West. Towering above a great valley filled with afternoon mists, their summits glistening with the pure white of winter snows. They formed an entrancing sight that I can never forget" (Rocky Mountain Majesty.)

Adams used impressionism, realism and tonalism style in his art works and preferred to accentuate the emotive in his landscapes. (Rocky Mountain Majesty) I believe, The Moraine Park has a modernism style as well because in this style predominate natural themes and the blue color. Over the years Adams was changing his methodology. For example, I believe that in this painting he added more colorful touch because I noticed it looks brighter than other pieces I looked from his collection. Materials used in this painting are “Canvas -made from linen-, Oil paint –made with pigment that are bound with drying oil-, different types of brushes -rounds, flats-, Mediums -the vehicle painters use when painting, to mix with their tubes colors, for various purposes, such as thinning or thickening the paint-, Paint Palette, Easel and Varnish -there are varnishes to make paint thinner and glossy and varnishes which have a protective coating to help painting last for many years-” (Oil Painting Lessons.)

Another exhibition at the Denver Art Museum is sand pictures, which have a theme of nature and cosmos. For example, they had mountains as background of the Mars planet. When sand finishes falling and the picture is turned upside down and sand cascade starts all over again, it will form a different picture because of the sand that falls in a different way. The Bosch pictures are part of this exhibit. Klaus Bosch was born in Austria in 1963. Before his activity with sand pictures, Bosch developed his creativity through painting and music, as a co-signer

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