David M. Sokol, art history professor emeritus and director of museum studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will present a lecture titled “Otto Neumann and the Modern German Tradition of Art and Literature” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, in Room 130 of the Fine and Performing Arts Center on the campus of Western Carolina University.

Sokol’s lecture will trace Neumann’s artistic development and concentration on the human figure. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Neumann's “Figure in Space,” a monoprint on paper, 12 x 18 inches, 1960, is above right (image courtesy of Ann Long Fine Arts, Charleston, S.C.).

Neumann (1895-1975), a German expressionist artist, experimented throughout his life with a variety of art forms, including drawings, watercolors and various types of prints. From his earliest woodcuts, which relied heavily on expressionism, to a series of still-life watercolors that reflect the work of post-impressionists, to the stylized abstractions of the human form influenced by biomorphic surrealism, Neumann evolved as an artist until his death, leaving an artistic legacy rich in subjects, styles, and technical processes, according to Sokol.

Sokol, an extensively published art historian, earned his doctorate from New York University. In addition to his teaching and research career, he was founding curator of the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago and curator of the Otto Neumann estate, and is author of “Otto Neumann: His Life and Work.”

For more information, contact Martin DeWitt, director and curator of the Fine Art Museum at the Fine and Performing Arts Center, at (828) 227-2553 or mdewitt@email.wcu.edu.

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Last modified: Tuesday, April 15, 2008