Global Currents: The John Deere Art Collection
In 1965, William Hewitt, then chairman of Deere & Company, established an art collection to complement the company’s new modernist world headquarters in Moline, Illinois, which was designed by the renowned architect Eero Saarinen.
The organization of the Deere collection in the 1960s coincided with the growth of corporate art collections in the United States and includes works by such notable artists as Grant Wood, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall and Toulouse-Lautrec. With significant art originating from the United States, Latin America, Asia as well as Central and Eastern Europe, Deere has amassed an international collection that represents the diverse cultures in which the company conducts its worldwide business.
With such major ar tists as Sadao Watanabe from Japan and Magdalena Abakanowicz from Poland, the international thrust of the Deere collection anticipated the current trend towards cultural globalism and transnational movements within the contemporary art scene. For example, artist Yolanda Mohalyi, who was born in Rumania, later became a prominent painter and designer in Brazil and was a member of the radical Grupo 7. A number of the Spanish abstract painters in the collection, such as Francisco Farreras Ricart and Jose Guerrero, were active in post-war artistic communities in both Paris and New York.
Although many of Deere’s artworks represent international abstract trends, the most significant piece in the collection is Grant Wood’s 1931 painting Fall Plowing. One of Wood’s most iconic landscape images, Fall Plowing depicts the countryside of Iowa as a limitless vista of verdant rolling fields that have been neatly plowed and covered with orderly rows of corn shocks. Positioned prominently in the foreground is the self-scouring steel plow invented by John Deere, which allowed pioneering farmers to transform the barren plains into rich farmland.
During the Depression, Wood’s optimistic emphasis on order and plenty offered hope to Americans longing for a return to the social stability and prosperity of the past. Deere’s devotion to collecting both American Scene painting and international abstraction reflects the company’s grounding in regional values and traditions as it aimed to broaden its global perspective.
The Figge exhibition will be the first to showcase the broad scope of the company’s global art holdings and to provide access to important works that previously have been displayed only in Deere’s private corporate offices.
Learn more about 10 Things Not to Miss in this exhibition.
Free museum admission to John Deere employees and their families, and John Deere retirees through October 24, 2010.
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