Line, Color, Shapes, and Other Stories

This exhibition features a selection of works from the museum's collection of modern and contemporary art that explores abstraction as a central theme. Although non-figural, these works contain a multiplicity of stories about art making, each one revealing the artist’s vision, process, experience, and the historical context in which they worked. When considered together, the selection speaks to the heterogeneous approaches to abstraction and their art historical significance. Works by Monir Farmanfarmaian, Carmen Herrera, Doris Leeper, Jakow Telischewski, and Larry Zox, among others, emphasize the universal appeal of the structural elements of representation: line, color, and shape.

The exhibition establishes a dialogue with From Chaos to Order: Greek Geometric Art from the Sol Rabin Collection on view in the adjacent gallery, which examines the idea of geometry and balance as signifiers of beauty and harmony in ancient Greece. Line, Color, Shapes, and Other Stories includes works in various media—paintings, prints, and sculptures; the installation highlights the output of creators who prioritized the non-representational in favor of a pure and direct experience with material and form. This exhibition is organized by the Rollins Museum of Art.