Robert Henri and "My People" A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

Robert Henri was raised in Cozad, Nebraska. With the exception of Jackson Pollock, Henri was arguably the most influential American artist of the Twentieth Century. It is hard to imagine today, how revolutionary it was, this philosophy of Henri that changed the landscape of American art for all time: the idea that the proper subject of art was not privileged lives, but, the steely gaze of a lower class working man, or a view of a steel derrick on the edge of an urban river.

The aesthetic roots of this vision, a darker, more neutral palette, a preoccupation with the drama of dark and lights, an intense focus on the personality, the psychological essence of the subject--these can be traced to his exposure to the Dutch and Spanish Baroque masters during his various stays in Europe. Frans Hals uncanny genius of conjuring personality in quick, deft, brushstrokes; Rembrandt's dramatic, telling lighting of the features of the head, Velasquez' virtually transparent, jarring, psychological exposure of his sitters. These and other influences made their impact on Henri.

But the spiritual roots of this preoccupation with our humanity, began, I would maintain, here, in his childhood and adolescence in Nebraska. Here it was, that his father, preeminent in his filed as a gambler, land promoter and entrepreneur, attracted, some might say lured, hundreds, thousands of settlers to the town he created, Cozad, Nebraska. Cozad teemed with a full panorama of the world's humanity: farmers, merchants, gamblers, drinkers, ranchers, Chinese, Mexicans, native Americans, teamsters, railroad crews, Bohemians, Swedish, the strong, the weak, on and on. I would suggest to you Henri needs a biographer who acknowledges the young Robert Henri Cozad' debt to his years in Nebraska living naturally and knowingly with all manner of humanity.

"The people," he writes, in The Art Spirit, " I like to paint are 'my people', whoever they may be, wherever they may exist, the people through whom dignity of life is manifest, that is, who are in some way expressing themselves naturally along the lines nature intended for them. My people may be old or young, rich or poor, I may speak their language or I may communicate with them only by gestures. But wherever I find them. . . .my interest is awakened and my impulse immediately is to tell about them through my own language." A language I believe, Henri first found voice, here in Nebraska.