Isobel Steele MacKinnon Weimar Portraits Riviera Landscapes

Press Release

Isobel Steele MacKinnon’s adventures as an American artist living and working in Europe echo those of many other expatriates of the epoch. What the couple encountered from 1925 to 1929 in the studio of German artist Hans Hofmann would rock the impressionist foundations of their artwork and transform them into committed modernists. In Chicago, MacKinnon’s approach had been relatively conventional, but under Hofmann she took to the new ideas with startling ease, absorbing his “push and pull” spatial concept and his deep investigations of the compositional consequences of hot and cold colors.

The exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey is drawn from the work MacKinnon produced during this exceptional period. It includes portraits, charcoal figure drawings, and the bright landscapes of Capri and St. Tropez painted during MacKinnon’s summer travels with Hofmann.

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