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A wide-ranging retrospective of works by noted painter, printmaker, and sculptor Robert F. McGovern opens April 25 at the Art Gallery. Titled “Darkness and Light, Seen or Unseen,” the show features 50 years of drawings, paintings, woodcuts, statues, wall hangings and other works by the Narberth, Pa., artist, writer and professor emeritus of the University of the Arts.

McGovern’s works and designs, including wood, bronze and lead reliefs, carved oak and basswood murals, statues, altar furniture, lecterns, processional crosses, entranceways, windows and altarpieces are in places of worship throughout the Philadelphia area and across the nation.

The exhibit will encompass some 70 pieces selected by McGovern from his prolific output beginning in the early 1950s. A free public reception to meet the artist will take place Friday, April 25, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. in the gallery. Refreshments will be served. The exhibit, which continues to June 23, is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Among the wide breadth of art forms McGovern uses, the woodcut is the central expression of his work. The operative words in that creative process, he explained, are “resistance” and “subtraction.”

“Like life, carving is a distillation process, a shaving back. I like to work with surfaces that resist, that I need to lean against. Working with things that resist keeps your hands from getting ahead of your mind.”

McGovern’s life as an artist took shape under two vocational arts teachers at West Philadelphia High School and a crippling bout with polio at age 16.

More than 50 years ago McGovern was learning woodcut printing from Bolton Morris, who today lives in South Philadelphia and is regarded as dean of liturgical artists. “There was a directness about Bolton, an intensity. What he gave you was an invitation for you to do your thing. He didn’t tell you what to do; he was making a road.”

While taking away the use of McGovern’s legs, polio had its upside, too. “In 1949, they didn’t mainstream handicapped students. They encapsulated you. You were taught at home. Having my own teacher was the best thing that ever happened to me I had been educationally resistant. I hung back. But now I gobbled up books.” Years later, he would write on his own account.

In the meantime, he continued to draw. When a work was finished, his mother took it to school, where Seldon Cary, who had replaced Morris, would critique it by letter. “My ability to analyze my work came out of those letters from Mr. Cary.”
While religious institutions hold many of his works, McGovern does not consider himself a religious artist in the categorizing sense of that denominator. “For me,” he said, “an apple is religious. It is a gift, something that transcends the moment.”
The setting for one of his paintings, “Young Trees by the Master’s Porch”, is the New Hope, Pa., back yard of master furniture maker George Nakashima. Said McGovern, “What I strived to convey in the painting are the trees presenting themselves for involvement in the carpenter’s odyssey, as being ready for the adventure.”

“I’m interested in the mystery, the adventure, and of coming up with new expectations. I want there to be a sense of expanding the scene. What a terrific thing it is to create a work that opens an encounter, which takes the viewer to another level of expectation. If we were to address the uniqueness of each object, we would not be having the problems we are with the environment.”

Recently retired after 42 years at the University of the Arts, McGovern has had 16 one-person exhibits. The American Catholic Historical Society, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Franklin Institute, the Pope Pius XII Center in Rome, and numerous other institutions hold his art. Numerous articles he has authored include “Religious Art in the Twentieth Century – An Understanding,” “A Re-emergence of Religious Art in the Seventies,” “Contemplation and the Artist,” and “By the Gate of the Sacred.”

More information about the exhibit may be obtained by telephoning the Villanova University Art Gallery at 94612. Exhibited works may also be previewed on the Internet at www.artgallery.villanova.edu.