An Exhibition of Drawings

April 27, 1956 - May 23, 1956

Drawing is not what one sees but what one must make others see. With this statement by Degas in mind one could ask: what are the differences between looking at nature and looking at a good drawing? Through selection and emphasis the artists is able to enhance qualities of nature which we ordinarily miss in looking at the world around us. What are these qualities of nature? Gesture and pose, fleeting in actuality, can be fixed by the artists and given a finality they lack in real life.  Structure can be singled out for emphasis by an artist and made visible to us. Space, wholly lacking in physical drawing itself, is made in the subtle cooperation between lines and tones. The plastic form of three-dimensional solids, suggested by modelling, separates the true draughtsman from the clever drawing master. Light, like space, is not in itself tangible, but the artist translates this quality into a drawing by relating objects to each other. As we follow the artists in this exhibition as they explore the richness of nature we are also carried along with their ideas–their sense of fact or fancy, of sensuous pleasure or intense emotion, of the impersonal vastness of landscape or the warmth of human relationships–in short the limitless gamut of feeling which is the ultimate subject-matter of all the arts.