(Woodstock, NY) - The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum presents a one-person exhibition in the Phoebe and Belmont Towbin Wing featuring the abstractions of Woodstock artist, Agnes Hart (1912-1979) opening March 17th and continuing through June 10th, 2018, with an opening reception on Saturday, March 24th from 4-6pm. The reception is free and open to the public.

Agnes Hart (1912-1979): A Journey Towards Abstraction, features a selection of the late abstract paintings by Woodstock artist Agnes Hart. The exhibition includes several of Hart’s large,colorful abstractions, many painted in oil with the addition of sand, along with a selection of earlier paintings and works on paper that prefigure her development towards a fully abstract voice. The twenty-two paintings in the exhibition are drawn from WAAM’s Permanent Collection, private collections and from the estate of the artist.

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The exhibition includes an early gouache on paper, done while the artist was living in New York City, where Hart’s inclinations towards abstraction are evidenced in an urban scene that depicts a fractured space composed of animated pipes and smokestacks. In later still life compositions, the recognizable forms of plants, bottles, and tabletops are abstracted and reduced to a lyrical line that delineates forms amidst a field of color and shape. Eventually, Hart would incorporate fabric and sand into her paintings to create large-scale compositions of organic forms with references to rocks, sand and ocean.

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Agnes Hart was born in Meriden, CT and studied art with Lucile Blanch at the Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, Florida. She married the painter Josef Presser in 1941 and moved to Woodstock where they set up studios on the Maverick Art Colony. In Woodstock, Hart served on the board of the WAAM (1955-57) and taught at the summer program of the Art Students League from 1965 until her death in 1979.

Agnes Hart (1912-1979): A Journey Towards Abstraction is comprised of twenty-two paintings and works on paper with a particular emphasis on Hart’s large-scale abstractions. A catalog will accompany the exhibition with color reproductions of Hart’s paintings, and a biography and an essay by independent curator and gallerist, Raymond E. Tubbs.