Exhibition

“Earl Cunningham’s America” examines the paintings of Earl Cunningham (1893–1977), a landscape artist who worked in the tradition of memory painting. This retrospective, accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog, presents the artist as a folk modernist who used flat space and brilliant color to create sophisticated compositions with complex meanings about the nature of American life. The exhibition features 50 of the more than 400 canvases Cunningham painted during his life and places his work in the context of the folk art revival that brought Edward Hicks, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, Horace Pippin, and other folk masters to national attention.

Cunningham’s imaginary landscapes are marvels of the unexpected and the unlikely: pink flamingos dot the shoreline of the Maine coast, New England cottages sit at the edge of Florida swamps, Viking ships float in harbors with schooners, and Seminole Indians wear feathered headdresses. In this make-believe world, Cunningham presents a nostalgic view of the past in which life is simple and elements of modern life are absent. His fascination with the past was in line with a larger national revival of interest in vernacular culture and American folk art in the 1920s and 1930s.

Organized by Virginia Mecklenburg for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.