Exalted Nature: The Real and Fantastic World of Charles Burchfield Coming to Brandywine River Museum of Art

The collaborative efforts of the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Burchfield Penney Art Center will be unveiled later this summer in an important exhibition opening August 23, 2014: Exalted Nature: The Real and Fantastic World of Charles Burchfield. - See more at www.questroyal.com.

Featuring more than fifty examples of Burchfield’s imaginative paintings loaned from museums and private collections, Exalted Nature highlights the entire span of the artist’s career and will explore his stylistic evolution through his vibrantly colored landscapes. Expressive examples of his early work, such as Untitled, (Gothic Window Trees), demonstrate a modernist influence stemming from his preliminary years as a student at the Cleveland School of Art, while later pieces reveal a shift in style that embraced abstracted and organic forms that were inspired by his immediate surroundings.

“To spend even a moment with one of Charles Burchfield’s hallucinatory watercolors is to experience the artist’s visceral response to nature. Over a period of six decades, he explored the lyrical and technical potential of watercolor, becoming one of the most brilliant practitioners in the history of American art,” said Thomas Padon, director of the Brandywine River Museum of Art. This is the first time that Burchfield’s work will be shown at the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the mystical, otherworldly qualities of his paintings will transport audiences into the realm of the artist’s inner psyche, offering a rare glimpse into the sights, sounds, and emotions that inspired his most stirring pieces.

Chelsea DeLay is a Researcher at Questroyal Fine Art. Chelsea earned her MA in art business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York, and her BA in art history and classical studies from Purdue University. Her interest in American paintings first began while working at an auction house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and has multiplied exponentially since joining the Questroyal team. - See more.