1. 1311 Pearl Street. • Denver CO 80203 USA
303.832.8576 • kirklandmuseum.org
Museum Hours
Tuesday through Sunday
11am to 5pm
Docent tours offered
Call or visit our website for tour times
Please note that children under 13 are not permitted in the museum
due to the fragile nature of the collection and the intimate manner
of the displays. Ages 13 to 17 must be accompanied by an adult.
Friday, May 3 through Sunday, July 14, 2013
Co-curated by Hugh Grant, Founding Director & Curator, and
Christopher Herron, Collections Manager & Deputy Curator, with
Maya Wright, Exhibition Coordinator & Researcher
Damaged in Transit
(as we all have in our journey through life)
1981–84, casein tempera with oil glazes on board
30 x 24 inches, Collection of Phyllis Montrose
The Visitor
1965, oil on canvas, 12 x 10 inches
Collection of Kirkland Museum
Phyllis revealed, “This is my muse looking in on me and
bringing me thought bubbles.”
on the cover:
Phyllis Hutchinson Montrose in the early
1950s in a dress she designed and made.
Commented Phyllis, “The woman in the background is me
as I might have been in the Renaissance, which therefore
represents the past. The desert in the foreground is the
present, bleak and uninviting.”
the art of

2. Over dinner when Hugh Grant asked Phyllis Hutchin-
son Montrose why she thought there were so many
extraordinary surrealist artists in Colorado, she replied,
“Well Hugh! It’s the altitude; the thin air; the lack of
oxygen. We’re all loopy.” So what else could we do but
title her exhibition, In Thin Air. Phyllis is certainly one of
the greatest surrealist painters we have had in Colorado
and consequently she has made contributions to Ameri-
can art. She is a Colorado native, born in 1928. Kirkland
Museum is proud to mount a 54-year retrospective of her
career, with paintings and prints from 1946 to 2000—
with an accompanying catalog reproducing all 42 works
in the exhibition and 15 additional paintings, as well as 22
photos of Phyllis.
Phyllis began to paint seriously at a time when far more
men did that than women. There were numerous peo-
ple who looked amused or sometimes skeptical when
Phyllis would tell them that she was a painter. For exam-
ple, Phyllis recalled when art connoisseur Lily Halpern
arranged a date for her. The man asked what Phyllis did
and she replied she was a painter. He responded, “Oh
that’s a nice hobby but what do you work at?” Phyllis
thought to herself, “I was relieved that he didn’t ask
me to come and give an estimate to paint his house.”
Continued Phyllis, “My mother also pointedly said to
me that painting was a hobby and not an avocation, but
I just needed to paint for myself.” Fortunately, Phyllis
received encouragement to pursue a career in art from
her teachers Julio de Diego, Vance Kirkland and Angelo
di Benedetto. In her eulogy for Angelo in 1992, Phyllis
stated: “The first thing Angelo did was to encourage me
to paint, and the second was to encourage me to throw
off the limitations of my middle-class values and open
the door to exploration and personal freedom.”
Phyllis’s paintings affect
us in many ways by explor-
ing universal emotions
and experiences, expressed
with unusual and moving
images. Since many of Phyl-
lis’s paintings can be seen
as surreal, a brief discus-
sion about that artistic
movement is appropriate.
Surrealism portrays real,
actual things and scenes,
but then distorts, alters,
juxtaposes or eerily trans-
forms the images, or puts
things together in unnatural
ways so that scenes become
surreal. Dreams and fan-
tasy are combined with the
concrete world in paintings
for instance, so that reality
becomes sur-reality.
Phyllis mastered many different media including water-
color, oil, tempera, etchings, woodcuts, lithography and
drawings with ink, graphite and colored pencil. For her
hallmark style—taught to her by the important Colorado
artist, Angelo di Benedetto—she would prepare her
boards with eight to ten layers of gesso, sanding in be-
tween each layer. The initial painting was done in casein
tempera, followed by multiple layers of transparent oil
paint glazes, used to create depth and luminosity.
Although Phyllis is delightful and entertaining
in demeanor, her art works come from a certain
amount of psychological pain—which makes her
surrealist paintings that much more poignant and
understandable. Her mother and father divorced when
she was 12 years old in 1941. Her mother remarried
when Phyllis was 15, then divorced again when she was
about 18. Her brother, with whom she became close
friends—as well as forming an alliance with him to cope
with their domineering mother—died at 35 of melanoma
cancer. Phyllis has had two divorces. The greatest blow
was when she and her mentor and dear friend of over
40 years, artist Angelo di Benedetto, talked of getting
married only to have him die shortly afterward of cancer.
In 2010, the extraordinary massive mural at the Colorado
Judicial Building at 14th Avenue and Broadway in
Denver—one of the most important Colorado public art
works and one on which Phyllis and Angelo collaborated
on for over two years—was destroyed when the building
was demolished. Phyllis was able to contend with these
challenging events by immersing herself in painting.
Stated Phyllis: “I would have gone mad without being
able to paint. I have also found great comfort in my
book and music libraries.” Now glaucoma is making it
increasingly difficult for Phyllis to paint.
It is with this exhibition that we salute you, Phyllis,
for your courage and self reliance to overcome many
obstacles—particularly to persist with painting in the
face of your mother’s opposition to it starting in your
early teenage years—for retaining a sense of humor, for
your dedication to refining your painting techniques,
for your talent and wealth of ideas to produce a major,
unique body of work, and ultimately for your poignant,
meaningful paintings that have enriched us all.
A 63 page catalog, published by Kirkland Museum,
showing 57 Montrose works, 22 photos of her and
with extensive text is available for this exhibition.