Douglas Denniston (1921-2004) Southwest Artist and Educator

1945 started a new beginning for New Mexico, on July 16th was the first test detonation of the atomic bomb, and the state served as stage for young artists that were returning home from World War II.  The New Mexico mountains had always served as an inspiration and an artist mecca, now it would grow a new generation of artists. 

Douglas Denniston arrived 1945, attracted to the Taos School of Painting and the Transcendentalist Art concepts preached by Raymond Jonson, the University of New Mexico Art Professor. It was there Denniston got the opportunity to interact with now famed artists and instructors Agnes Martin, Enrique Montenegro, and Adja Yunkers. All four of these artists influenced and launched Denniston’s historic and varied six decade career in American Modernism and Abstraction. 

It was at the University of New Mexico that he shared exhibit space with noted artist Richard Diebenkorn. It was the 1951 Master Theses Show in the Fine Arts Building where the Gallery Director, Peter Walch selected some of Denniston’s work to contrast with Diebenkorn’s. Likewise, Raymond Jonson served as a curator for countless exhibits for the New Mexico Museum of Art. As Jonson’s protégé, Denniston was provided numerous opportunities to exhibit around the region.

It was in the late 1940s in New Mexico that Denniston created some of his most notable rhythmic non-objective paintings. It was the synthesis of his New York childhood, his instructors that were modernists and abstract expressionists, combined with the southwest, that produced artworks that were very geometric with an almost algebraic formula. They were all about line, shape, color, and texture, revealing mathematical spontaneity.  Paintings consisted of triangles, arcs, semicircles, ovals, all connected with the powerful use of line and sometimes an organic-biomorphic shape. 

In the painting below, the palette reveals the joyful thick impasto of primary and secondary sponsored colors in hue and value, then layered on a thin sepia veneer.  This painting was an early interpretation of "Hard-Edge" abstraction, one of the first produced in America, using artistic experimentation.  In this case Denniston was ahead of his time, complete his signature, and a 1947 date in the lower right hand corner. 

Douglas Denniston
Oil on Canvas - 1947
"Abstraction"
20" X 37"

After New Mexico, Denniston transferred to Denver where he taught at the Colorado Women’s College. The Denver Post archives along with the famed collection of Getty Images shows an observer looking at one of Denniston’s monumental canvases with the byline: “Painted With a Mop?”.  The painting, hanging in the Denver Art Museum, was photographed and featured in the newspaper on November 24, 1952. The photographed painting shows the influence by his famous abstract expressionist instructor, Adja Yonkers. It was at this point Denniston was at the apex of abstraction. 

In 1959, Denniston moved from Denver to Tucson, (University of Arizona). The sun filled desertscapes, pale saguaros and mountains provided a new view of the southwest. The Arizona landscape and culture altered his life-long relationship with modernism and abstraction. Soon, his Arizona paintings became a cross between his new version of abstraction that merged with loose realism, developing a new style, which could be called: figurative expressionism. During his tenure at the University, his work included Arizona landscapes, saloons, oriental rugs and nudes. He retired in 1983 and was named Professor Emeritus. During his last 20 years of his life, he was free to create, dying in 2004. 

Selected Information:

Born:
Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY, Nov. 19, 1921

Education:
Two-year certified Richmond Prof. Inst., College of William and Mary, 1942
Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of New Mexico, 1945
Master of Arts, University of New Mexico, 1948

Academic Career:
Instructor, Univ. New Mexico, 1947-1948
Instructor, Texas Western College, El Paso, Summer 1949
Instructor, Colorado Women's College, Denver, 1948-1959
Instructor, U. Nevada, Reno, summer 1967
Professor, U. Arizona, Tucson, 1959-1983
Named Professor emeritus, U. Arizona, Tucson, 1983 

Collections:
Tucson International Airport
Tucson Museum of Art,
Whitney Museum of Art
University of Arizona Museum of Art
Virginia Museum of Fine Art
Denver Art Museum
Fremont Center for the Arts, Canon City, CO

Exhibits:
College Prints 1954, Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, OH (Exhibited toured)
13th Southwest Exhibition of Prints and Drawings, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1963,
Andrews Gallery, 1976 Watercolor Exhibit, William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
The 1995 Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art
Douglas Denniston: 42 Years in Tucson, Tucson Museum of Art, 2001
Douglas Denniston: Early Works 1946-1952, In conjunction with a 2007 exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery.

Painting Tags:

 Partial Tag
Museum of New Mexico Exhibitions - State Museum
The requested label price $200

References:

• Jaques Cattell Press, Who's Who in American Art, 16th Edition, 1984, RR Bowker Co.,  New York and London
• Wesley Pubkka, Albuquerque Journal, Show Reflects Diebenkorn's Brilliance, 8/19/2007
• Denver Post Archives, Painted with a Mop, 11/24/1952
• R. M. Quinn, Douglas Denniston 42 years in Tucson, 2001, Tucson Museum of Art
• Prabook Website:  Douglas Denniston, American Artist, Educator  
• Joseph Traugott, New Mexico Modernists, Southwestern Art, Nov. 1999, Pgs. 86-91

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©2019.  Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Art is a research collaborative, working to track artists that got lost and overlooked due to time, changing styles, race, gender and/or sexual orientation. Our frequent blogs highlight artists and art movements that need renewed attention with improved information for the researcher and art collectors.  These photos were created by Mr. Waller and all materials are used under the Fair Use Section 107, Copyright Act, unless otherwise noted.  #waller-yoblonskyblogspot  #DouglasDenniston