Major painting by Witek acquired by the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

*Joan Witek “That He Be Known and Loved and Imitated,” 1984, Oil stick and graphite on canvas, 72 /34 x 114 3/4 in (184.8 x 291.5 cm)*

Acquisition News – The studio of Joan Witek in collaboration with Artist Estate Studio, LLC, announce the acquisition of a major painting from 1984 by Joan Witek titled, “That He Be Known and Loved and Imitated.”

Evelyn Hankins, Head Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, was instrumental in selecting this work which marks the first painting to enter into a major collection in Washington, DC. Of the acquisition Hankins writes:

The first work by Joan Witek to enter the Hirshhorn’s collection, “That He Be Known and Loved and Imitated [P(S)-22],” 1984, is a stellar example of the artist’s most significant series, which was featured in her 1984 monographic show at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. This exceptional gift from the artist, in celebration of the Hirshhorn’s 50th anniversary, enables the Museum to share with its audiences a broader understanding of Witek’s work. The Hirshhorn is proud to have Witek’s distinctive exploration of the possibilities of black represented by a painting that, despite its monumental scale, evokes deeply personal emotional resonances through its subtleties of texture, gesture, and form created with oil stick and graphite.

Witek was inspired by a variety of sources from historic texts, film, theater, and news clippings. Open to all forms of religious scholarship and contemplations, in this painting Witek meditated on a quote by St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) the Franciscan bishop, cardinal, scholastic theologian and philosopher. In revisiting the teachings of the bible, St. Bonaventure wrote several excursus offering contemporary perspectives on the teaching inspired by the word of God. Specific to Witek’s interest was the crossover of this theological study and art.

In her studio notes, Witek references Leo Steinberg’s article The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion published in October Magazine in Summer 1983:

“Every right-thinking Christian, whether Latin or Greek, artist or otherwise, confessed that the pivotal moment in the history of the race was God’s alliance with the human condition. But celebrating the union of God and man in the Incarnation, Western artists began displacing the emphasis shifting from the majesty of unapproachable godhead to the being known, love, and imitable.”

This discussion was rooted in a formula proposed by St. Bonaventure, as quoted in Excursus VII: “That he might be known and loved and imitated.”

According to the artist's studio notes, this work was started January 22, 1984 and finished April 25, 1984. It was first exhibited at the Rosa Esman Gallery, 70 Greene Street, New York, in Witek's solo exhibition in March 1985. This is the fifth largest painting by the artist and is numbered twenty-two among those first works placed on stretchers (Witek had an early experimental period of working and displaying paintings unstretched).