Rolling hills, old barns with character, sunlit pastures, snow hi-lighting trees, and idyllic scenes of bucolic lives depicted by the artists in Love of the Land demonstrate humanity’s affinity for country life and our connection to the earth. Gladys Lux was very clear about her attraction to farms, rural life, and Nebraska. As a promising young artist, she was often asked, “Why don’t you leave Nebraska and go to a large city where the art world is cultivated, vibrant, and growing?” Her response always was, that while she enjoyed cities and traveling widely, she preferred rural living. Ms. Lux always wanted to return home to the Nebraska prairie and farmland that she loved.

Gladys Lux is considered a Regionalist artist because much of her artwork depicts American life in rural settings. Her serigraph print titled Shocking, in Love of the Land, is of the Lux family farm near Wood River, Nebraska where Ms. Lux grew up. In the print, Ms. Lux is the figure in the foreground and other family members are in the background, all are gathering the cut wheat and stacking it in shocks. Artists Joe Jones, Peppino Mangravite, John deMartelly, and Thomas Hart Benton also created images of laboring in fields seen in Love of the Land. The prints by artists Samuel Margolies, Philip Kappel, Grant Wood, Martin Lewis, and Asa Cheffetz are contemplative portrayals of hushed and tranquil rural winter snow scenes.

The fore mentioned prints and others portraying Love of the Land may be seen in the LUX Print Gallery on the second floor of the LUX Center for the Arts from January 3 to May 7, 2019. The exhibition is curated by Susan Soriente, Curator of the Gladys Lux Print Collection.