Arts and Entertainment

'Minna Citron after Atelier 17' on view at the Palmer Museum of Art

Minna Citron, "Plato’s Cave," 1959, etching and aquatint with collagraphic relief. Gift of Christiane Citron, 2015. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Palmer Museum of Art will present a new exhibition, "New Acquisitions: Minna Citron after Atelier 17," from Sept. 5 through Dec. 10.

Minna Citron began her professional career as a member of the Fourteenth Street School, a loose confederation of artists — among them Reginald Marsh, Isabel Bishop, Raphael Soyer, and Kenneth Hayes Miller — whose paintings and prints regularly depicted the daily activities they observed in and around Union Square, in lower midtown Manhattan.

In the mid-1940s, though, after nearly 15 years of successfully representing urban America, she shifted decidedly toward abstraction. The impetus was Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter’s experimental printmaking workshop, originally located in Paris but transplanted to New York at the start of World War II. While working at the studio, Citron experienced the full force of European modernism. She became particularly interested in automatism, a technique Hayter adopted from the Surrealists, which she began to employ in her work in order to allow the unconscious to play a greater role in its realization. By the time Hayter returned to Paris to reopen his studio in 1950, Citron’s efforts, by her own account, had begun to fall firmly within the realm of Abstract Expressionism.

This exhibition presents four decades of Citron’s printmaking, following the completion of her studies with Hayter. The 16 intaglios, the majority selected from two groups of prints recently gifted to the Palmer Museum of Art by Christiane Citron, the artist’s granddaughter, demonstrate how Minna Citron continued to probe the expressive possibilities of abstract line and form, an approach that was central to the Atelier 17 aesthetic, for the remainder of her career.

Jo Megas, curatorial assistant, will lead a Gallery Talk titled "Minna Citron after Atelier 17" at 12:10 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 8, in the exhibition gallery located on the museum’s second floor.

All programs are held at the Palmer Museum of Art and are sponsored by the Friends of the Palmer Museum of Art unless otherwise noted.

Also on view at the Palmer Museum of Art this fall are "Asher B. Durand: To Begin Again," Sept. 5 through Dec. 10; and "BIG Deal: Sizeable Paintings from the Permanent Collection," Sept. 5 through Dec. 17.

The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State is located on Curtin Road and admission is free. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays and some holidays. The museum will have modified hours of noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18, through Sunday, Nov. 26; and Saturday, Dec. 16, through Thursday, Dec. 21. The museum will be closed Thursday, Nov. 23; Friday, Nov. 24; and Friday, Dec. 22, through Monday, Jan. 1, 2018.

The Palmer Museum of Art receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Last Updated September 5, 2017

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