20 North Gallery visits Lynchburg, Virginia exhibition, that includes seven privately-collected artworks by Adam Grant
Gallery celebrates the work of represented artist on view in “The Feminine Spirit: American Works from Sue Ott Rowlands’ Private Collection” at Riverviews Artspace
On May 2, 2025, 20 North Gallery attended the Opening Reception of The Feminine Spirit: American Works from Sue Ott Rowlands’ Private Collection at Riverviews Artspace (Lynchburg, Virginia), an exhibition including seven artworks by the late Toledo, Ohio artist Adam Grant. The exhibition will continue through August 6, 2025.
The Feminine Spirit, an exhibition exploring grace, strength and modern perspectives of the evolution of figure painting & depictions of women in art, presents a selection of works from the private collection of Sue Ott Rowlands. Rowlands, President of Randolph College (Lynchburg, Virginia), has been collecting fine art of the female figure from around the world since the 1990s. She states, “The Feminine Spirit captures what I consider to be the soul of the American pieces in the collection.”
20 North Gallery Owner Eric Hillenbrand and Art Director Condessa Croninger joined Rowlands at the Opening Reception for The Feminine Spirit on May 2. Reception attendees viewed curated paintings, including Adam Grant’s complete Ala Series.
The Ala Series began with the ink on artist board Ala I, Renewed Hope Series, created from 1945 – 1949 while Grant was in a displaced persons camp in Regensburg, Germany. The body of work Grant started at this time conveyed the optimism he began to feel as he built his new life. Grant’s figure paintings would continue on to iconically embraced the female form as a metaphor for joy and rebirth.
20 North Gallery Art Director Condessa Croninger states, “We are thrilled to have Adam’s work in the Feminine Spirit exhibit. We have been delighted to work for many years with the distinguished collector Sue Ott Rowlands, a dear friend of the late Peggy Grant, Adam’s Grant’s widow and artistic executrix.”
Other figure works by Grant on view in The Feminine Spirit are The Red Rug (1978), The Greatest Show (1978), Girl in the White Camisole (ca. 1980s) and The Phrenologist (1988), the latter of which was published on the cover of the exhibition catalogue. Also in the exhibit is Martha Gaustad’s oil on canvas, Transparent, which formed part of the Divine Dimensions exhibition at 20 North Gallery in 2019.
Print copies of The Feminine Spirit exhibition catalogue are available for purchase through Riverviews Artspace. Visit riverviews.net for more information.
Adam Grant (b. 1924; Warsaw, Poland – d. 1992; Toledo, Ohio)
Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924, Adam Grochowski was discouraged by his family from pursuing a professional art career. In his teens, Adam was sent to the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Mauthausen, where he traded his art for bread, enabling him to survive. After the liberation, Adam spent 5 years in a refugee camp. He emigrated to the United Sates in 1950, securing a job with the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit (Michigan), that had begun to produce the now-legendary Paint By Number kits. There, Adam met fellow designer and future wife, Margaret “Peggy” Brennan. Americanizing his name, the new Mr. and Mrs. Grant moved to Toledo (Ohio), where Peggy managed his fine art career and Adam painted until his death in 1992.
During his lifetime, Grant’s fine art was widely exhibited in galleries and museums, as well as juried and solo exhibits throughout the world, frequently garnering prestigious awards, including the American Painters in Paris Exhibit; numerous top honors in the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition and the Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio) Roulet Medal. Later, his widow, the late Peggy Grant, as the executrix of his artistic estate, organized and facilitated exhibits of his work in Ohio, Indiana, Poland and Saudi Arabia.
Grant’s work is part of numerous prestigious private, corporate and public collections, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; Collegium Maius Museum-Krakow, Poland; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana; The University of Toledo; the Polish Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Auschwitz Museum, Poland. In 2011, Grant’s work was accepted as a part of the permanent collection at the inauguration of the Polish History Museum in Warsaw, forming the symbolic return of Adam Grochowski-Grant to his native city. 20 North Gallery is honored to have been selected by Mrs. Grant to serve as the estate representatives for Adam Grant’s artistic legacy.
The Feminine Spirit: American Works from Sue Ott Rowlands’ Private Collection will continue at Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg, Virginia through August 6, 2025.