UC San Diego Libraries
Show ‘Hidden Treasure:’
Rare California Impressionist Drawings.

March 23, 2007

By Paul K. Mueller

A selected exhibition of nearly 60 drawings from the personal archive of artist Maurice Braun (1877-1941) will open on April 14 in the Mandeville Special Collections Gallery of Geisel Library at UC San Diego. Only a handful of Braun drawings have been exhibited or published to date.

A special opening reception for the exhibit, “Maurice Braun: The Hidden Treasure,” will be held 3-5 p.m. that afternoon in the gallery.

The public is invited to attend, and media coverage is welcome.

The rare exhibit presents highlights of the San Diego artist’s long career, which includes nearly 350 drawings – most of them landscapes, but also “exquisite portraits” of his wife Helen.

According to Lynda Corey Claassen, director of the Mandeville Special Collections Library, the exhibition offers the public an unprecedented opportunity to view drawings by the leader of the San Diego plein-air landscape painting movement.  “In Braun’s drawings,” she said, “the myth of Southern California as an Edenic paradise intertwines with the hybrid mysticism of the international Theosophical movement.”

Braun’s work, which has remained in his family, is currently on loan to Nicole Holland, a Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego and advanced-placement art history instructor at The Bishop’s School.

Under Holland’s direction, a team of Bishop’s students has catalogued the fascinating drawings, which are executed in a variety of media, from quick pencil notation and pen-and-ink to finished, color crayon-pencil works.

The purpose of the exhibition, Claassen said, is to give the public a first look at a selection of drawings centering on themes chosen by Holland’s students. “It’s also been a splendid collaboration between the university and a group of dedicated high-school students who are doing primary research on original works of art.”

Media Contact: Paul K Mueller, 858-534-8564