"Agnes Pelton, Poet of Nature," Palm Springs Desert Museum, CA, Feb. 28 - Apr. 30, 1995 (circulated to: Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, N. Y., Dec. 3, 1995 - Jan. 14, 1996; Montclair Museum, Montclair, NJ, July 9 - Sept. 17, 1995)
"The Louise Noun Collection of Art by Women", University of Iowa Museum of Art, March 24 - May 13, 1990; DMAC, May 25 - August 5, 1990
"Abstract Paintings by Agnes Pelton," Desert Art Center, Cathedral City, CA, 1951
"Agnes Pelton Paintings," Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA, 1943
"Paintings by Agnes Pelton," Desert Inn Galleries, Palm Springs, 1938
"Paintings by Agnes Pelton," Desert Inn Gallery, Palm Springs, 1936
"Paintings by Agnes Pelton," San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, 1934
"An Exhibition of Paintings by Agnes Pelton, Drawings by Raymond Jonson, Watercolors by Cady Wells," Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, 1933
"Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists," California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1931
"Paintings by Agnes Pelton," Argent Galleries, N. Y., 1931
Salon of America, 1930
"Abstractions by Agnes Pelton," Montross Gallery, N. Y., 1929
"Decorative Flower Paintings and Abstractions by Agnes Pelton," Grace Nicholson Art Galleries, Pasadena, 1929
Published References"Decorative Flower Paintings and Abstractions by Agnes Pelton," Grace Nicholson Art Galleries, Pasadena, 1929, exh. cat. no.10
Salon of America, 1930, exh. cat. ill. no.313
"Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists," California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1931, exh. cat. no.47
"Paintings by Agnes Pelton," Desert Inn Galleries, Palm Springs, 1936, exh. cat. no.13, cover ill.
"Paintings by Agnes Pelton," Desert Inn Galleries, Palm Springs, 1938, exh. cat. no.11
"Agnes Pelton Paintings," Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1943, exh. cat. no.10
"Abstract Paintings by Agnes Pelton," Desert Art Center, Cathedral City, CA, 1951, exh. cat. no.1
U of I, 1990, Conklin, ed., p.72-73 (illustration)
Michael Zakian, "Agnes Pelton, Poet of Nature," Palm Spring Desert Museum, CA, 1995, exh. cat. ill. p.51
Gilbert Vicario, ed., "Agnes Pelton, Desert Transcendentalist", Phoenix Art Museum, 2019, pp. 79, 178
WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL, Vol.18, No.1, Spring/Summer, 1997, p.66
Karen Moss, "Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O'Keefe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce", Orange County Museum of Art and Merrell, 2009, color ill. pg. 120, index pg. 183
Canvas: 24 × 19 1/8 in. (61 × 48.6 cm)
Images (1)
Audio (1)
Agnes Pelton (American, born Germany, 1881 - 1961)
Untitled, 1928
Run Time: 2:29
Recorded by Jared Ledesma, Associate Curator / May 10, 2021
Hi there, I'm Jared Ledesma, Associate Curator and today I'm talking about Agnes Pelton. A few years ago, maybe around 2018, I came upon an article written by Christopher Knight in the LA Times and it was about Agnes Pelton and he refers to her as a lesbian. I immediately got excited because it's not common to find out-lesbian artists who lived during the early to mid 20th century. So not only is her work outstanding and beautiful but I was also very excited to find a queer artist from that period of art history. So I tried to find some type of supporting evidence, evidence of this and she was very private, she never married, she did not to our knowledge have a significant other or a partner which is unfortunate because we can't see for sure whether she was queer or not. And that's the case for many artists of the early to mid 20th century where there's this instinct that we have or a feeling or there's some evidence in their artwork that points towards LGBTQ themes or sexuality or gender but we're not quite sure. Pelton is known for a style that fuses abstract shapes and these kind of swooping forms with representational imagery, so in this case a flower that has been formed from, I love those, curving forms they are quite stunning. A lot of people compare Pelton to Georgia O'Keeffe, Pelton actually studied under some of the same teachers that Georgia O'Keeffe studied under. Our painting at the Art Center is called Ecstasy and Pelton describes it as capturing this moment when a flower, this flower, has just given off so much energy or just bursted with energy so much so that it kills itself in the process. So what we're looking at is the flower after it's died.
