One of Ƶ’s most celebrated alumni artists is featured this fall in a major exhibition at Elder Gallery in Ƶ’s Rogers Center for Fine Arts.
“Dorothy Antoinette LaSelle: Space Movements” opens September 5 and runs through December 14.
Toni LaSelle grew up in Beatrice, Neb., graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan in 1923, then earned a Master of Arts in art history from the University of Chicago in 1926. She traveled and studied in Europe before WWII, starting lifelong friendships and collaborations with the likes of abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann and Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy.
LaSelle developed her own unique style of geometric abstraction in the 1950s, characterized by bold color and enthusiastic paint application. By the 1960s, she increasingly worked on paper in series featuring oil pastel, watercolor and ink.
The prolific painter and dedicated art professor taught in Texas into the 1970s and was broadly exhibited in her lifetime. Since her death at 100 in 2002, her work has continued to garner respect and attention.
Her first solo exhibition at Ƶ was in 1967. She said then, “If students ask about the nature of my paintings, I say: ‘Do not look for things, take a journey on the shapes. Keep moving with your eyes—these are not designs—stay in action. Go with the directions of the color planes.’”
This exhibition is made possible by the Dorothy Antoinette LaSelle Foundation, Inman Gallery, Leah Bennett and Marlene Marker.
Elder Gallery is in the Vance D. Rogers Center for Fine Arts at 50th and Huntington on the campus of Ƶ. The gallery is free and open to the public. Elder Gallery’s hours are 1-4 p.m., Friday through Sunday, and by appointment.