Vance Kirkland: A Colorado artist’s legacy

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Herbert Hartel visits an inspiring collection of art in Denver

Artists’ homes and studios may not always have the best collections of their works, but they allow us a unique glimpse into the private world of inspiration and creativity.  A site of historic importance may become a rich and unique experience, history comes alive, and we feel a little closer to the artist.  Such is true for many artists, including Gustave Moreau, Eugène Delacroix, Rembrandt, Gustave Courbet, Paul Cézanne, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Thomas Hart Benton.  The Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art in Denver, Colorado, on the southern edge of the downtown area, is one of these charming portals into the life and work of an artist, in this case an under-appreciated modernist of the American West.

Vance Kirkland (1904–81) was born and raised in Ohio, where he also first studied art.  He moved to Denver in 1929, where he spent the rest of his life.  He devoted himself to teaching and this was how he earned a living.  He was the first director of the School of Art at the University of Denver and later founded his own art academy, the Vance Kirkland School of Art.  Having spent 52 years in the Mile High City, he became one of the standard bearers of modernist painting in the Rocky Mountains with his vibrantly colourful, richly textured paintings that show his engagement with Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Op art. 

In the 1920s and 1930s, he was a Regionalist who depicted the terrain and life of the Rocky Mountains.  In the 1940s, he worked in an abstract-surrealist mode inspired by the Western landscape and Surrealists such as Max Ernst.  In the 1950s, he developed his own interpretation of Abstract Expressionism even while remaining isolated from the New York School.  He experimented with unusual textural effects, including the challenge of combining oils and watercolours as well as dripping, pouring and splashing paint.  He was undoubtedly influenced by Jackson Pollock, a far more famous artist with roots in the West. 

In his late years, Kirkland did vibrantly coloured dot paintings that were influenced by Op art.  Today, these are probably his most distinctive works.  Even though he is one of the greatest modernist painters to live, work and draw inspiration from the Rocky Mountains, Kirkland remains little known, especially outside Colorado.  This is somewhat ironic since some of his paintings are in museums and private collections across the United States and several other countries.

The Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art and the Foundation associated with it were established in 1996 to preserve and promote the legacy of the artist.  In addition to housing many works by Kirkland, it actively exhibits, researches, records, authenticates, and publicizes him and his paintings.  It also owns paintings, sculptures, glass, metal ware, ceramics and furniture by many other artists, including Colorado painters such as John Thompson and Olson Spalding, and internationally famous artists, architects and designers such as Frank Lloyd Wright, George Rickey, Isamu Noguchi, and Frank Gehry. The museum building was opened in 2000.  It is physically connected and stylistically related to the studio where the artist worked during his 52 years in Denver, built in 1910 in a style based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School, Art Deco and the Southwest adobe mission style.  While some of the rooms maintain the look and feel of the artist’s original studio, others have been decorated with a restrained charm guided by the original decor of the building.

A visit to the Kirkland Museum allows for an intimate, reflective, and revealing experience of the vibrant, dynamic paintings of this Western Surrealist-abstractionist.  One can stroll from room to room and examine numerous key examples of Kirkland’s work, countless personal items, and his art supplies and equipment.  Some rooms are devoted to the paintings and decorative art objects made by other artists, many of them natives of Colorado with strong local reputations but little recognition outside the state.  The Museum is filled with simple, pleasant furnishings and decoration that allow Kirkland’s brilliantly colourful and tactile paintings to be viewed in their full glory.  We encounter the spectral wonder of Kirkland’s paintings and enjoy a sense of what it would be like for Kirkland himself to be there with us.