Bo Bartlett Center to host Lennart Anderson retrospective beginning Feb. 1

January 2, 2024

Beginning Feb. 1, Columbus State University’s Bo Bartlett Center will host one of the largest surveys of work to date by American painter Lennart Anderson.

"Lennart Anderson: A Retrospective" will include more than 40 works from both private and public collections, including the Center for Figurative Painting, Brooklyn Museum, Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Lennart Anderson estate and Leigh Morse Fine Arts, and it originates from the New York Studio School.

“Anderson’s paintings reveal the things we often overlook, and he does it with the tenderness and humor of a haiku poet,” explained Mike McFalls, director of the Bo Bartlett Center and a professor in the university’s Department of Art. “Anderson worked from observation during the height of non-objective painting. His paintings and drawings are unapologetically humble; they are a search for an elusiveness of light and the nobility in uncomplicated subjects.”

An 84-page hardcover catalogue of Anderson’s work will accompany the exhibition. Various essays by leading contemporary painters and art historians will complement the 50-plus color reproductions of the artist’s work contained in the catalogue.

"Hydra, Greece, House on a Hill (aka "Italian House on a Hill)," 1959 by Lennart Anderson, oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 22 1/8 in., © Estate of Lennart Anderson

The Bo Barlett Center will hold a public reception on Thursday, Feb. 22 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The exhibition will be available for viewing until April 12.

The Bo Bartlett Center appreciates the individual and corporate support that has made this exhibition possible. Supporters include AHA Fine Art, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, the Center for Figurative Painting Inc., the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Eliza Anderson, Patricia & John Jacoby, Alina Lundry, Ippolita Rostagno, Richard Spurzem, Blair & Chris Woodruff, and anonymous donors.

ABOUT LENNART ANDERSON

American painter Lennart Anderson (1928-2015, pictured; source: Facebook) was renowned for his deceptively complex paintings that transform common delicacies, mundane objects and a sitter’s calm interiority into phenomenological meditations on light, form and time. 

The center’s namesake and American realist painter Bo Bartlett reflected on Anderson’s artistic influence through the lens of Anderson’s “Portrait of Barbara S (pictured, source: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts).”

“When I was a student at The Pennsylvania Academy in the late 1970s and early 80s, Lennart Anderson was a major influence on the students there. [‘Portrait of Barbara S’] changed the way [many of my fellow students and I] approached painting. It seems almost quaint now that such a direct painting could shake a student’s world. It was after all just a straight-forward portrait of an ordinary sitter in contemporary garb,” Barlett recalled.

“But, Anderson’s obvious grappling with the composition, drawing, tonalities, mood and expression lent the work a sense of honesty, earnestness and verisimilitude that was rare in art at the time,” he continued. “These qualities inspired the students, liberated them, encouraged them to pursue their own truths and avenues of expression.”

ABOUT THE BO BARTLETT CENTER

Columbus State University’s Bo Bartlett Center is a dynamic, creative learning laboratory that is part gallery/museum, part experimental arts incubator, and part community center. Located in Uptown Columbus and part of the Columbus State University RiverPark Campus, its 18,000-square-foot interactive gallery space hosts six to eight rotating exhibitions of regional, national and international acclaim each year. It also permanently houses The Scarborough Collection — 14 monumental paintings by the center’s namesake, artist Bo Bartlett — as well as the complete archive of sketchbooks, correspondence, journals, recordings, photographs, artistic notes, memorabilia and objects relevant to the production of Bartlett’s work.

Except when closed for holidays, the Bo Bartlett Center is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit bartlettcenter.columbusstate.edu.

Pictured at top is "Street Scene," 1961 by Lennart Anderson, oil on canvas, 77 x 99 in., from the Collection of BNY Mellon

Media contact:
Joshua Newbend, Bo Bartlett Center gallery coordinator, 706.569.4099, newbend_joshua@columbusstate.edu