Herman Maril The Strong Forms of Our Experience

Organized by the University of Maryland Art Gallery in collaboration with the Arkansas Arts Center, Herman Maril: The Strong Forms of Our Experience follows the career of painter and former University of Maryland art professor Herman Maril (1908-1986) from his emergence as a precocious cubist in Baltimore in the 1920s, through the maturation of his modern style in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and into his mature modernism of the 1970s and 80s. This exhibition will focus exclusively on his works on paper. Maril came to national prominence in the 1930s through the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and later New Deal projects. Furthermore, Maril made his New York debut in 1934 as part of a PWAP exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. In these same years modernist collector and museum founder Duncan Phillips began acquiring and promoting Maril's art and also earned the respect of prominent artists of the time, including his friends Milton Avery and Mark Rothko.