Lamar Dodd: Paintings and Drawings

Lamar Dodd — teacher, arts administrator, advocate and artist — rebuilt and revitalized the University of Georgia’s art department beginning in 1937. He was the most recognized artist of his generation from the state of Georgia and is considered the “godfather” of the Georgia Museum of Art. Reared in LaGrange, Dodd was an impassioned exponent of the local scene movement, and his works of the 1930s and 1940s featured southern landscapes, history, people and industry. He also served as an “ambassador of culture” for the U.S. State Department, as two-term president of the College Art Association and as a participant in the NASA Art Program. Believing that drawing was the “mother of the arts,” Dodd utilized the practice even as he moved from realism in the 1930s to cubism and abstract expressionism in the late 1940s and 1950s and later into a mature style.

Featuring 100 images, this special exhibition during the museum’s reopening year celebrated Dodd’s career and juxtaposed his drawings with many of his related watercolors and paintings. Ranging from the late 1920s, when he was at the Art Students League in New York, to the 1990s, the exhibition also included the first large-scale display of images from Dodd’s sketchbooks.

Curator