JOHN HEINTZMAN

“This second exhibited selection of work from the collection of John and Jeff Heintzman brings together meditative, spiritual and playful qualities of the gesture, marks made and accentuated by the artist’s hand. These works not only perpetuate the impulse to seek various forms of artistic honesty, but serve as an encyclopedic examination of human mark-making.”

— Bill Conger, Chief Curator, Peoria Riverfront Museum

The Peoria Riverfront Museum is currently exhibiting “Marks by Modern Masters” from the John and Jeff Heintzman Collection. This exhibition features works by 15 of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. We began collecting modern and contemporary art while we were at the University of Iowa. Our collection represents a promised gift to the Riverfront Museum where it will become part of its Permanent Collection.

We hope what strikes you as you enter the Owens Gallery are the marks by artists on a plate, a stone, or paper to express emotions and ideas in a most personal way. These gestures are the voices of a stable of artists we have had the good fortune to collect over the years.

This is the second installment of our collection and the curatorial staff has brilliantly done just that, installed these 17 works to create a novel conversation among a group which shares passion and insight from its lives to ours. The artists are true expressionists by name and character.

Jean Michel Basquiat, Fresh Tar, 1982, Drawing on paper

A series of drawings represents the theme of this exhibition so well. Jean Michel Basquiat, James Brown and Rashid Johnson represent three generations of expressionists who instill in us their values that have affected humankind through mark-making. Basquiat is a frenetic, energized, brutal wordsmith who defied the norms of a staid affluent art world and became the single most influential and sought after artist of the 21st century. His older compatriot James Brown, like Picasso, sought inspiration from primitive and tribal relics. Then comes Contemporary artist Rashid Johnson’s repetitive portraits of “Anxious Man.” He has entrenched strength through his explosive marks that are not looking for a representational spirit but for one that demands exploration.

Agnes Martin’s graphite and ink drawing is a vulnerable work from a modern master whose abstract expressionist’s tenor added calm to chaos. Martin suffered from mental illness — a very contemporary concern in today’s world. Her bouts of schizophrenia and struggling with contradicting voices from within resulted in methodical, patient rendering of solace and reflection. Another drawing from this series is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It is also in the digital catalogue raisonne of the artist.

Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled #6, 1993. Two color lithograph

Richard Diebenkorn’s lithograph is from the last series of prints he completed at Gemini, G.E.L. before he died. His signature Ocean Park-style of hard edge lines, erased with ghostly pentimento shadows and evidence of change gives us a space divided, united and, somehow, creatively challenges us to determine our own escape.

When we began to collect art, it was not for personal gain, but rather as stewards assuming responsibility for objects d’arte for the future — ours and yours. Our collection is your collection. Come and spend time with it and allow these artists to share their stories, their struggles, their passion for life with you personally.

Access to the arts is paramount to the success of our endeavors to collect artwork that gives all of us pause to reflect on our own experiences. The Museum has committed to incorporate works from the collection into other exhibitions and programs that will support its efforts to educate the public and support its curatorial efforts.

Also included in this exhibition is another work from a friend’s collection that is integral in understanding contemporary and modern art. “One Cent Life” is an accumulation of lithographs by almost every notable artist in the 20th century. Without this book, there would be a void in recognizing artists who have represented every avenue of expression through incredible images that are honest, clever and always expanding the appreciation of creativity and expression.

The exhibition will remain up until summer 2023. The Peoria Riverfront Museum is located at 222 SW Washington Street. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday

10 am until 5 pm. Sunday, it is open from noon-5pm.