Gari Melchers Home and Studio at Belmont will loan The Open Door, a celebrated painting by Gari Melchers, to the Jewel City: Art of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which will open Saturday, Oct. 17 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
The painting, circa 1910, will be one of more than 200 works by major American and European artists on display through the close of the exposition on Sunday, Jan. 10.
Jewel City is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and commemorates the centennial of the 1915 World’s Fair, which marked both the opening of the Panama Canal and the reconstruction of San Francisco following the devastating earthquake of the 1906.
The World Fair showcased one of the most comprehensive art exhibitions ever presented on the West Coast, featuring modern American and European movements, including the first displays of Italian Futurism, Austrian Expressionism and Hungarian avant-garde painting. An unprecedented number of galleries in the original fair were devoted to a historical survey of contemporary art, including several mini-retrospectives of prominent American Impressionist painters. Gari Melchers was one of the stars, represented by an impressive 21 paintings.
“The sheer monumental scale of the original art display would be cost prohibitive today,” said Joanna Catron, curator of the Melchers memorial at Belmont. “The Open Door will stand as the sole representative of Melchers’ contribution to the original display. His art stood midway between the traditions of the past century and the radical new direction of modernity.”
For more information about the exhibit, visit http://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/jewel-city-art-panama-pacific-international-exposition.
