New Acquisitions from the George Cress Estate

New Acquisitions from the George Cress Estate
May 16-July 29, 2022

The ICA presents its summer 2022 exhibition, New Acquisitions from the George Cress Estate—on view from May 16 to July 29. The ICA will hold summer hours from Mon - Thurs, 11am-3pm. Additional viewings may be requested and arranged by appointment.

George Ayers Cress (American, 1921-2008) was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1921 to parents to Glen H. Cress, Sr. and Lola Ayers King, and he was raised primarily in NE Georgia.  He earned a BFA and MFA from the University of Georgia, where he studied under fellow Southern contemporary artist Lamar Dodd who provided his early foundation and academic understanding of the study and practice of artmaking. Cress also studied journalism at Emory University and art at American University. Cress served in the United States military from 1942-45 and was stationed in Europe.

Cress moved to Chattanooga in 1951 to join the faculty of the University of Chattanooga—later renamed the University of Tennessee Chattanooga—where he taught for 56 years. He served as chair of the Department of Art and was Guerry Professor Emeritus of Art. He was a central figure in Chattanooga's arts community and served as President of the Tennessee Arts Council and sat on the board of the Hunter Museum of Art. 

George Cress’ work became increasingly abstract over his career, always informed by travels and time spent in nature, frequently searching for “the feel of the scene.” Cress painted his favored Appalachian landscapes of NE Georgia and eastern Tennessee by employing abstracted geometric forms and saturated colors through direct observation within nature. The Hunter Museum hosted his retrospective, George Cress: 50 Years of Painting, in 1990, and his monograph George Cress: Paintings & Drawings 1953 to 2005 was published by Pennyroyal Editions in 2006.

Cress outlined plans for his artistic legacy in his will, and the Hunter Museum was the beneficiary of Cress’ massive archive and artwork holdings: the George Cress Estate. In 2021, the ICA and the Hunter Museum worked to transfer 304 objects from the George Cress Estate—7 paintings, 27 watercolors, 86 drawings, 172 sketches, 1 print, and 11 archival photographs—to the permanent collection of fine art at UTC, housed in our university’s library. This gift meaningfully expands UTC’s ability to tell George Cress’ significant artistic history and story, both as related to our academic institution, and to the history of artmaking in the southeast. The gift includes archival images of Cress at work, as well as a significant number of early works from the 1940s and 1950s, during and after his military service.

The ICA galleries were prior named the Cress Gallery of Art, which were officially named in Cress’ honor in 2000 and operated as such until 2020. Cress remained active in his support of the Gallery and its programs throughout his career at UTC.

New Acquisitions from the George Cress Estate celebrates and highlights a selection of these recent gifts to UTC, on public view for the first time.