Imagined Realism
Fort Worth
cartermuseum.org
Through January 9, 2022
(modified c. 1986), graphite, opaque and transparent watercolor on paper, 29 3/8 x 21 1/2 in., private collection of T. Brent Rowan Hyder
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art is going “all in” on the careers of Stuart Gentling (1942–2006) and Scott Gentling (1942–2011), talented twins who came to Fort Worth at age 5 and spent their lives there creating art long admired in Texas yet little studied elsewhere.
“Imagined Realism” is their first retrospective, encompassing more than 160 sketches, etchings, watercolors, and oil paintings.
This year also sees the establishment of the museum’s Gentling Study Center and research fellowship devoted to them and other underappreciated American artists, as well as a new Gentling book. The driving forces behind this initiative are local arts patron Edward P. Bass, curator/archivist Jonathan Frembling, and curatorial assistant Janelle Montgomery.
Blessed with a steady income via portrait commissions, including one of President George W. Bush, the brothers evolved artistically in the realm of historicism and hyperrealism. Their subject matter included romantic landscapes, 18th-century clothing, natural history, visualizations of the Aztec empire, and, most visibly, the 80-foot mural that adorns Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall.
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