(Above: An untitled monograph by Maude Kerns, an early and accomplished non-representational artist who studied and showed her work widely and is honored as the namesake of the Maude Kerns Art Center)

By Randi Bjornstad

Maude Kerns (courtesy of Maude Kerns Art Center)

Whether considering her artwork or her personal and employment history, Maude Kerns truly was a woman well before her time.

Here’s how the Maude Kerns Art Center describes her in an announcement of its latest gallery show, “The Pursuit of Pure Form: Work of Maude I. Kerns,” which opens with a reception at 6 p.m. on Friday, April 13, and will be on display through May 11:

Kerns experimented with a variety of styles, including realistic landscapes and portraits as well as non-objective explorations of color and form. Over the course of her long career, she studied with some of the most well-known modernist artists, including Hans Hoffman, Rolph Scarlett, and Alexander Archipenko. She travelled extensively both in Europe and Asia, and was influenced by European modernism and Asian art.

Not only that, Maude Kerns became the first department head — not just the first woman department head — of the Art Education Department at the University of Oregon, a position she held from 1921 to 1947, the year she turned 71.

That was not the end of her career, however. Kerns continued to show her work regularly in high places such as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York City — now known as the Guggenheim Museum — until 1951.

She lived to be 89.

Kerns was born in Portland on Aug. 1, 1876. She graduated from the University of Oregon in 1899, studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco in 1901, and then graduated with a double major in fine arts and education from Columbia University Teachers College in New York City in 1906.

Maude Kerns used art to explore the visual expression of the spiritual condition

As a painter, she embraced the concept of “non-objective” art in part to explore a visual rendering of what she perceived as the spiritual condition, using abstract forms and colors that express a state beyond usual sensory perceptions.

That concept leads to the name of the new exhibit of her work, “The Pursuit of Pure Form,” sponsored in conjunction with the art center that bears Kerns’ name by Eugene artist Nancy Pobanz and her husband, attorney David Wade.

The show is the first time in eight years that Kerns’ work has been shown at the eponymous Maude Kerns Art Center. The center’s “Duchess Committee, which dedicates itself to perpetuating Kerns’ legacy, assembled the show. It primarily features work from the estate of the artist’s great-niece, Leslie Brockelbank, who is no longer living, as well as works on paper from the center’s collection. In total, more than 50 works are on display, many of which have never been shown publicly before.

The Pursuit of Pure Form: The Work of Maude I. Kerns

When: April 13 to May 11; opening reception 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 13

Where: Maude Kerns Art Center, 1910 E. 15th Ave., Eugene

Gallery hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday

Information: 541-345-1571 or online at mkartcenter.org