Gerard Wagner: Through Color to Form
Jul 12, 2025—Aug 16, 2025
Location
Lightforms Art Center, 743 Columbia Street, Hudson, NY 12534
Cost Donations are welcomed!
Event Contact Lightforms Art Center | Email
Categories Art History, Creative Arts, Eastern Region US, Exhibit
EXHIBITION IN COLLABORATION WITH RUDOLF STEINER LIBRARY AND THE GERARD WAGNER FOUNDATION OF USA
The Gerard Wagner (1906-1999) exhibition will be on view at Lightforms Art Center, starting Friday, May 16, 2025, through August 2025.
Gallery hours for May: Thursday-Sunday, 1-5 pm
(Summer opening hours in June-August will be announced later)
- Gerard Wagner Opening Reception & Talk by Hans Schumm
Friday, May 16, 2025, at 6 pm
Click here for more information!
- Eurythmy Performances
Friday, May 23, 2025 at 7 pm
Saturday, May 24, 2025 at 4 pm
By Alicia Burns & Patrick Loughrey, with accompaniment by Laurie Portocarrero, Christina Porkert, and Sarah Stosiek
Click here for more information!
- Fire in the Temple
Saturday, July 12 at 7 pm
Sunday, July 13 at 4 pm
Two-person readings by Laurie Portocarrero & Glen Williamson
Click here for more information!
- Coming Up:
Painting presentations by Hans Schumm from the Gerard Wagner Foundation (TBA).
Through Color to Form is a rare large-scale public exhibition of the work of Gerard Wagner (1906-1999). Wagner, a German-born English painter, based his art on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of anthroposophy. This landmark exhibition features 39 of Wagner’s paintings spanning from the 1940s through the 1980s.
Wagner understood color as an “alphabet” and looked for objective principles in the encounter with the Being of color. His innovative, experimental methodology drew on his study of the Training Sketches, which were developed by Rudolf Steiner as a way to explore how color can lead to form. Wagner wrote in 1972: “…The Training Sketches can be regarded as the beginning of a new art of painting, which is in accordance with the development of modern consciousness.”
Wagner’s work is a testament to this exploration of color as an objective language—a medium through which both Steiner and Wagner sought to reveal the hidden rhythms and spiritual forces of the world:
“If one releases color from objects and lives with color,” Steiner wrote, “then it begins to reveal profound secrets, and the entire world becomes a flooding, surging sea of color” (Steiner, quoted in David Adams’ article, “The Goetheanum Cupola Reliefs,” Being Human, Summer 2013 from page 39 onwards).
MORE ABOUT GERARD WAGNER…
Goetheanum homepage:
https://goetheanum.ch/en/news/colour-symphony
Being Human magazine, Summer/2013 (from page 39 onwards):
https://issuu.com/anthrousa/docs/bh9-final-web
MORE ABOUT STEINER’S INFLUENCE ON 20TH CENTURY ART…
Gagosian quarterly:
https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024/02/27/essay-goetheanum-rudolf-steiner-and-contemporary-art/