Neil Welliver’s watercolor and pencil on paper work “Study No. 2 for Trout and Reflections” (1982) is this week’s selection for the “50 Works 50 Weeks 50 Years” anniversary exhibition in the atrium of the Arkansas Arts Center.
The work was purchased for the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation by the Memorial Acquisition Fund in 1983. Virgil Lawrence, Artmobile Specialist, chose the work for the atrium.
From a New York Times article about the artist:
Mr. Welliver came of age as an artist in the late 1950’s and 60’s, at a time when nonrepresentational styles of painting like Abstract Expressionism and, later, Color Field and Minimalism were accorded the highest critical prestige. Along with artists like Larry Rivers, Alex Katz and Philip Pearlstein, Mr. Welliver strove to paint representational images without sacrificing the formal innovations that the Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning had introduced to modern painting.