Louis Bunce
In Tracing A Legacy, the Russo Lee Gallery reexamines the work of Louis Bunce, who was a pillar of the art community in Portland through much of the mid 20th century. Starting as a printmaker and painter in the 1930’s, exploring Surrealism and Cubist conventions, Bunce became a Northwest legend, influencing generations of artists through his teaching at the Museum Art School (now known at the Pacific Northwest College of Art). With drawings and paintings spanning decades, this exhibition is a compliment to the concurrent retrospective of Louis Bunce at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
One of the Northwest's most well-known artists, Louis Bunce studied at the Arts Student League in New York during the 1920's where he was influenced by the major pictorial styles of the 20th century. He began exhibiting in 1937 on both the east and west coasts and was honored in 1979 with a retrospective at the Portland Art Museum. In the 1950’s, he completed a major mural for the Portland International Airport, which is still installed today. As a teacher at the Pacific Northwest College of Art from 1946-1972 Bunce had a strong effect on the region’s painting and many of the young artists who came out of the school. His work is in numerous collections including the National Gallery in Washington D.C., the Whitney Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum, the Newark Museum in New Jersey, the Victoria Museum in B.C., the Seattle Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.
"Would like to hear from you Lou wish you hadn't left New York," Jackson Pollock wrote to his friend and fellow artist Louis Bunce in 1946.
Like Pollock, Bunce was originally from Wyoming, moving with his family to Portland when he was 13. At the time of Pollock's letter, one of many the two artists exchanged after meeting at the Art Students League of New York, Bunce was debating whether to stay in Portland or move back to New York, then the definitive center of the international art world. Bunce chose Portland, altering the trajectory of his career and making a lasting impact on art, artists and collectors in the Northwest.
And the invaluable Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem has opened Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism, a retrospective on the late Oregon artist, who Paul Sutinen, in his ArtsWatch review of the show, identifies as a key figure in the city’s cultural life, the catalyst for making Portland a city of modern art. “It is an important show,” Sutinen declares. “It is a great show. It is accompanied by a monograph on Bunce by Roger Hull. It is important. It is great.” And then he explains why. See the sort of thing that the Savonarolas of the federal purse are eager to upend.
The Russo Lee Gallery is featuring more drawings and paintings by Bunce (1907-83) spanning several decades, plus new work by the meticulous, imaginative, and always fascinating Eric Stotik.