Brian Gross Fine Art is pleased to announce Project: Robert Hudson Drawings, opening Saturday, September 7, 2019, with a reception from 4–6pm. On view will be a series of new works on paper that combine the use of collaged elements with Hudson’s trademark palette of bright colors. The exhibition will be on view through November 2, 2019.
From the beginning of his career, the inclusion of found objects and imagery in his sculptures, paintings, and drawings has been a primary element of Robert Hudson’s work. In this recent group of drawings, the sources of Hudson’s appropriated images are wide ranging, including Victorian era book pages, vintage advertisements, and old topographic maps. Alongside these elements, Hudson has placed found materials such as lace doilies, dried leaves, and, in one instance, a children’s fairytale tableau done in high relief. In each composition, Hudson masterfully combines these disparate materials with passages of bright, polychrome acrylic paint and textural patterns rendered in charcoal to form dynamic compositions that move the viewer’s eye across their surfaces.
Robert Hudson grew up in Richland, Washington, and received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1963. Recognized for his talent while still a graduate student, Hudson, along with his contemporaries, Robert Arneson, Joan Brown, Roy De Forest, William T. Wiley, and others, was included in Peter Selz’ historic exhibition, Funk, at the Berkeley Art Museum in 1967. He has taught at art schools and universities, including the San Francisco Art Institute, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Davis, and California College of Arts and Crafts. In 1985, Hudson was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at SFMOMA, which traveled to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, FL; and the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
Hudson’s polychrome steel sculptures, ceramic sculptures, paintings, and drawings are in major museums and collections throughout the United States and Europe, including The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; SFMOMA; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Yale University Art Gallery; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Honolulu Museum of Art; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Oakland Museum of California; di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; Anderson Collection at Stanford University; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.
In 2014, Robert Hudson was awarded the prestigious Lee Krasner Award in recognition of his lifetime of artistic achievement. This is his third exhibition with Brian Gross Fine Art.
