Art historian Michele Corriel will lecture about Gennie DeWeese and Bill Stockton, two of the first-generation Montana modernist artists, at a free lecture scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28, at the Museum of the Rockies. A reception will follow.

 

Corriel’s thesis for a doctorate in American Studies in the Montana State University College of Letters and Science documents the modernist art movement in Montana. Corriel will look at the concept of place in context of slides of work by Stockton and DeWeese, who she said were overlooked artists working in the 1950s, and discuss how DeWeese and Stockton’s work helped change the way Montana artists thought about their role in a postwar society.

 

“Both have been referred to as the ‘Rural Avant-Garde’ regarding their radical departure from mid-century norms and regional expectations, challenging the dominance of romanticized illustrator art in Montana,” Corriel said.

 

Corriel’s lecture is presented by the Bozeman Art Museum, a nonprofit organization dedicated to art education and outreach.