Fritz Bultman: Collages

Fritz Bultman, a New Orleans-born artist who studied in Munich, Germany as a teenager, became a student and fellow Abstract Expressionist of Hans Hofmann in the 1940s. He was also one of the 18 Advanced Artists who boycotted the 1950 exhibition American Painting Today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The "Irascible 18," as the artists were dubbed, protested the conservative nature of the selection process for the show in a letter published by the New York Times. When the Irascibles were pictured in Life magazine in 1950, Bultman was in Italy studying bronze casting techniques, so he missed the photography session. The artist has never really been given the same credit as such contemporaries as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, or his mentor, Hans Hofmann. The publication highlights Bultman's collages, which were influenced by Henri Matisse's cut-paper technique. Exhibition Dates: November 1, 1997-January 18, 1998 Essays by Evan Firestone; Donald Windham