Renowned Artist Charley Harper Gets Exhibition in Cincinnati

The vibrant colors and geometric shapes create playful patterns, and it only takes a flash until your brain assembles the pieces to recognize the image at hand. Whether it’s a beagle stopping to sniff some twigs or an impala looking at the viewer unaware of the piercing yellow eyes behind it, Charley Harper’s art focused on his love for and fascination with the wildlife of the world.

Harper, who settled in Cincinnati after attending art school there, gained notoriety for his minimal-realism nature illustrations that appeared in Ford Motor Co.’s Ford Times travel magazine in the 1950s. He also did commissions for the National Park Service during the 1970s and ’80s, when he created posters depicting wildlife at locations stretching from Glacier Bay, Alaska, to the Atlantic Barrier Islands in his inimitable style. 

“[He was] getting ideas about how he might take natural forms and create designs with them that would tell you something about the animal at the same time,” says Julie Aronson, curator of American paintings, sculptures and drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum. “He starts looking to nature in ways that he can abstract it, and they become these really charming, wonderful, ingenious designs.”

This fall, the Cincinnati Art Museum hosts “The Art of Charley Harper: Creatures Wild and Tame,” presented in conjunction with the Cincinnati-based Charley Harper Art Studio. This first full-scale exhibition of Harper’s art opens Oct. 16 and runs through March 7, featuring 150 original works from throughout his career.

Harper grew up in rural West Virginia, where he learned to love nature and spent years working his family’s farm. After attending the Art Academy of Cincinnati and working at a design firm that had clients such as Proctor & Gamble, Harper’s art evolved from commercial to conservation. 

Coinciding with this exhibition, Cincinnati’s Taft Museum of Art hosts “Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play,” an exhibition of artwork by Harper’s wife, which runs Oct. 17 through Jan. 24.

953 Eden Park Dr., Cincinnati 45202, 513/721-2787, cincinnatiartmuseum.org

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