Back home: After two traveling exhibitions, UNM Art Museum reunites the works of 'Pelton & Jonson'

Sep. 3—Fresh from two traveling exhibitions, the contemplative paintings of Agnes Pelton and Raymond Jonson have returned to the University of New Mexico Art Museum.

UNM curators have paired the two artists' work in the show "Pelton & Jonson: The Transcendent 1930s." The ongoing exhibit illustrates the aesthetic achievements and personal connections between the pair.

Long nationally ignored or unknown, a new generation of art historians and curators has rediscovered the pair, said UNM Art Museum director Arif Khan.

Not so long ago, the work of Pelton and Jonson was dismissed as "regional."

No more.

The exhibit builds on the growing recognition surrounding these artists in notable shows such as New York's Whitney Museum of American Art's "Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist," the first major exhibition of her work, and "Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, 1938-45" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

"Because of that, these artists have been receiving attention in the larger art world," said Khan said. "All four of (Pelton's) paintings will be together, and we're not even sure the last time that happened."

Inspired by the abstract beauty and mystery of the American Southwest, Pelton was born in Germany and moved to the U.S. as a child. Her figurative and landscape work changed dramatically following a visit to Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos in 1919. Touching on Surrealism, her work blended theosophy, Buddhism, astrology and the occult with levitating motifs, subtle colors, effusions of light and transparent space.

Pelton's exquisitely finished, otherworldly abstractions teem with mysterious shapes and distant horizons, glowing vessels, flowers, several kinds of stars and other celestial events. They are the stuff of dreams, visions and mirages; they often came to the artist while she slept or meditated.

Jonson's life changed when he visited New Mexico in 1922 while teaching in Chicago. The sights from this short visit to Santa Fe convinced Jonson to move here in 1924. In Santa Fe, he founded the Atalaya Art School.

In 1934, Jonson began teaching art at the University of New Mexico.

"He did have a history in art circles and his being at UNM helped attract students," Khan said.

By 1950, the Jonson Gallery was established at UNM.

"He organized some of the earliest art exhibitions on campus and had a painting studio," Khan added. "He did salon-style critiques of students."

Jonson donated his archives and more than 600 paintings by himself, his students, Pelton and other members of the Transcendentalist Group to UNM. He moved from an academically-trained figurative style and an early career in stage design to increasingly abstract and non-objective subjects. His exacting experiments in color, texture and media set him apart as an important contributor to modernism. Often inspired by music, his work expressed a galaxy of emotions.

"Technically, as a painter, he was amazing," Khan said. "They still look fresh and new.

"The work is back home, and we wanted to put our spin on these artists."