Title: Exhibition of Contemporary Religious Art by California Artists
Description: In the art of the nineteenth century, Christ, formerly the tortured Hero or the triumphant Lord, had become a meek man, well groomed but without strength and true dignity. The stark and stirring realism of the old masters' Passion scenes, which touches the very heart of the beholder, had given way to conventional presentation, feeble in spirit and saccharine in concept. Architecture, too, had become stereotyped and uninspired. In recent years only, a reaction, or better, one should say, a re-inspiration has set in. Artists of all kinds, architects, painters, sculptors and craftsmen have, in ever increasing numbers, devoted themselves to work related to religion: to the building of churches and temples and their adornment or to the rendering of holy themes. Quite naturally many of them have sought inspiration and even found models in the profound and powerful art expressions -- often wrongly called "primitive" -- of the Middle Ages rather than in the insipid productions of their immediate predecessors. If now some of the works in this exhibition should strike visitors as "unusual," it seems advisable that they would refrain from adverse criticism before attempting to appraise the artists' intention. The sincerity of most of them can hardly be questioned. - Walter Heil, in Foreword.