Continuum: 1808 to 2017 Goya to Erdreich

Birmingham artist Beverly Erdreich has worked primarily as a painter, mostly in an abstract, lyrical style for most of her career, which began in the mid-20th century. Born in Dothan, she attended Newcomb College in New Orleans, graduating with a degree in art history, before moving to Birmingham in 1961. She pursued her passion for painting abstract canvases up until 2001, when the violence and destruction visited upon the United States and its people had a profound effect on her art. Once the Pandora’s box of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man opened for Erdreich, she felt compelled to make art that addresses the social malaise characteristic of our world today.

Erdreich’s latest series of work was inspired by her abiding interest in art history, and specifically the relationships between her contemporary concerns and that of artists of the past. In this installation, the Museum will present a group of her drawings that were conceived as variations of compositions by the great Spanish painter/printmaker Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828). Between 1810 and 1820, he created a series of etchings now known as The Disasters of War, inspired by the terrible violence that accompanied the Peninsular War of 1808­­–1814.

Erdreich’s drawings are created atop reproductions of these powerful compositions, bringing the stinging brutality of Goya’s interpretation of nineteenth-century atrocities into a modern context. Compositions address the international problems of extrajudicial executions, terrorist actions, and violence against women.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website