Collection of Dwight Kirsch's artwork emphasizes artist's attachment to the Plains landscape

By Amanda Mobley

Frederick Dwight Kirsch had an unmistakable influence on the art department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the regional fine art collections of the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Neb., and the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, as both an educator and a museum director. Now Dwight Kirsch, the artist, is being explored in an exhibition that emphasizes his aesthetic relationship with the open sky of the Great Plains. This collection of Kirsch’s work, donated by his niece JoAnn Kelly Alexander, on exhibit at the Great Plains Art Museum through July 27, 2008, emphasizes the atmospheric landscape that stretches above a low-lying horizon and dwarfs the vast scale of mountain ranges.

Kirsch graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1919 and began as an art instructor there in 1924. He was an enthusiastic teacher who encouraged his students to experiment with various media, while reinforcing the importance of a complete understanding of the natural world. In 1936, Kirsch became the director of the University Art Galleries. He acquired an extensive collection of contemporary art that served as the nucleus for the Sheldon Museum of Art’s prestigious collection. Kirsch repeated the acquisition process for the Des Moines Art Center beginning in 1950. Even though much of Dwight Kirsch’s professional career was as a museum director, his heart remained in teaching. In the 1960s, he was an artist-in-resident at Iowa State University in Ames, where he was able to share his artistic knowledge with young­er students. Once he retired, he had the personal studio time that he had longed for and yet still made teaching artist workshops and lectures a priority. In the later years of his life, Kirsch finally had time to devote to his own art. He traveled extensively, taking hundreds of photographs as well as sketching and painting, capturing the natural wonder of distant places. He was equally inspired by nature close at hand; a blooming garden in the backyard or a winter snowstorm stirred his appreciation for nature and provided constant inspiration. The last years of his life saw the highest production of his artwork; he painted over 90 pieces each year. Dwight Kirsch died in 1981 after almost a decade of highly productive creativity, and his work from this period serves as a record of the regional landscape for viewers today.

Kirsch was an experienced businessman, knowledgeable art historian, excellent conversationalist, beloved family member and effective educator. He was also a proficient artist with an ability to depict numerous subjects in various styles and media. However, his inclinations led him to draw landscapes with large, over-arching skies and clouds, typical of those from his childhood memories on the prairie, over and over again. Despite his exposure to a larger world of languages, cultures and places, during his travels throughout East Asia, Hawaii, New York and Colorado, something deep within him remained constant; a connection with the regional landscape.

Kirsch is identifiably a regional artist—an artist who depicts the surroundings and mentality of a specific region of the country. He had a deep connection to place, as if those distant mountains and open plains provided a sense of security, throughout many life changes. No matter where he went, he could find those constant elements that reminded him of home. Land identification is an idea that resonates with many people on the Plains. Connection to place is an important part of the heritage of the Plains Indians and continues for all of those who derive their living from the land. Whether farmer, rancher, small-town citizen or big-city resident, everyone creates a connection to place. For some, this connection is much stronger than others. Kirsch’s close connection to place provided a record of the landscape. Not only did he visually record the landscape, but he meticulously noted the specific place, direction, date, time of day, even weather to provide an accurate picture of the past history of place. Primarily, his landscape paintings were simply that: the land. Even when Kirsch painted an urban building or a small-town street, the sky was ever present. It may reflect off of city windows or dominate the town scene that appears dwarfed by comparison. For Kirsch, there seemed to be no escaping the majesty of the large canopy of clouds and sky outstretched overhead.

The subject of his later works could be compared to the 1930s landscapes of Grant Wood, an artist whom Kirsch worked with on occasion, as well as other regional artists, such as Dale Nichols and Aaron Gunn Pyle. Robert Henri was also a great inspiration to Kirsch, whom Kirsch studied under in New York. Kirsch’s most famous piece “Aries,” painted in 1936 and owned by the Sheldon Museum of Art, references the subject of the southwest, a skull and cactus plant, similar to those made famous by Georgia O’Keefe. “Aries” is a still-life painting of a skull and cactus plant with an urban scene depicted in the windows just beyond. While Kirsch was among many contemporary artists interested in the regional landscape as subject matter, he had a consistent personal style that was unlike any other artist of his day.

Kirsch adopted a personal style at a young age that resonated throughout his art career. He was a consistent artist, both in style and subject matter. Kirsch began experimenting with art and expressing his creative voice at a very young age. He received his first watercolors at age six and was developing his own photographs by age 10. His illustrations are found throughout the Cornhusker yearbooks while he was a student at the University of Nebraska, 1916–1919. His stylistic line work was consistently identifiable at this young age. In his later years, the identifiable style of Kirsch is still pronounced, though now fine-tuned and more confident, employed through various media: watercolor, gouache and pastels. In fact, the identification of his personal style is further reinforced by the volume of work recently acquired by the Great Plains Art Museum.

Dwight Kirsch was influenced by the natural landscape of the Great Plains. And, in turn, he has greatly influenced the regional arts community and the University of Nebraska by his exceptional paintings of the canopy of sky and clouds overhead.
 

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