Publisher's Synopsis
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Eugene Ludins: An American Fantasist, which presents a retrospective view of the seventy-year career of Eugene Ludins. Ludins was a Woodstock painter and draftsman of realist and fantastical landscapes, provocative political allegories, insightful portraits, and whimsical drawings. Beginning with his early residency at the Maverick colony in Woodstock in 1929 and until his death 1996, Ludins was a leading member of the Hudson Valley arts community. He was also the Ulster County Director of the Federal Arts Program of the WPA and an avid baseball player, whose twenty years of teaching at the University of Iowa gave depth and breadth to his work as an American painter. Sixty paintings, thirty drawings, sketchbooks, photographs and memorabilia, and three sculptures by sculptor Hannah Small, Ludins's wife, elucidate the life of an artist who was at once unique and emblematic of his time. The exhibition was curated by Susana Torruella Leval, a well-known art historian and museum consultant.
