Artists Around a Table

Presenting rollicking depictions of artists gabbing, preening, debating, smoking, and drinking in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

“Artists Around a Table” presents works on paper made by a vibrant social network of artist-printmakers who moved between New York City, Woodstock, Paris, and beyond in the first decades of the 20th century. Drawing on a wealth of prints from Iowa collections including the Art Center, the Stanley Museum of Art, the Figge Art Museum, and private individuals, this exhibition presents rollicking depictions of artists gabbing, preening, debating, smoking, and drinking in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

“Artists Around a Table” explores a group of artists, friends, and lovers who constructed figurative works of art inflected with humor and merrymaking. They depicted scenes from their own lives as well as those illustrating the various locales in which they lived and worked.

This exhibition will feature works on paper made by Peggy Bacon, Alexander Brook, John Carroll, Adolf Dehn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Jules Pascin, in addition to a film with dancers Mura Dehn and Roger Pryor Dodge, archival photographs of artist parties from the early 20th century, and Bacon’s bestselling satirical book “Off With Their Heads!”

John Carroll (American, 1892 – 1959)
Artists Around a Table, 1928
Lithograph on paper
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Carl Weeks, 1954.109