Artists of the American West, 1830-1940. To the tercentenary of St Petersburg

Many talented artists, who worked in different techniques, introduced their own understanding of the American West, the formation of which evoked significant response in their creative conception and imagination. Full of romantic dreams and harsh reality, the American West excited dozens of generations with a dream about an escape from reality into the unknown world of frontier inhabitants. Aureole of peculiarity and mystery was then changed to an image of the heroic and adventurous "Wild West", socialization of which led to the fact that by the middle of the XX century the American West had little or even nothing in common with that unexplored vast country which appeared once before the first European settlers. And though the American West still attracts and amazes the USA artists, works of painters of 1830-1940 appear as unexpected and original as at the time of their creation. Organizations which provided material for the exhibition are the following: Joslyn Art Museum and its Margre H. Durham Center for Western Studies, Stark Museum of Art, Gilcrease Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Phoenix Art Museum, Crocker Art Museum, The Santa Fe Art Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A catalogue for the exhibition has been published.