Carlisle Cooper, William McEnroe, Norman Kirk and Gerd Koch will be honored for their 346 combined years of artistic experience and influence, when the Museum of Ventura County presents Four Masters- Four Legends, a retrospective exhibition opening February 26 and continuing through April 24, 201l.

“These four masters have profoundly influenced and continue to shape art and culture in Southern California,” said artist and colleague HirokoYoshimoto, the exhibit’s curator, who has chosen to feature a small yet significant retrospective collection of work by all four artists. The exhibition will also explore their seminal involvement in arts organizations in Ventura County, and their teaching careers at Ventura College, where they have influenced and nurtured generations of artists, from the 1950s to today. The four men were all born within a ten-year span of each other.

Carlisle Cooper (b.1919) is a figurative painter who explores the human condition as it concerns man’s relationship to truth. He describes his figures as symbolic of the progress mankind has made in developing art, religion, philosophy and science.

William McEnroe (b.1922) experiments continuously with the process of painting. An active painter, pastelist, teacher, art historian, stage set designer and poet, his book “La Grande Livre,” published in 2010, features his most recent pastels and poems.

Norman Kirk (b. 1924) is best known for his watercolors, which are in the collections of major museums in Southern California. He is a Signature Member of the National Watercolor Society, Watercolor West and the Gold Coast Watercolor Society (now part of the Buenaventura Art Association). Kirk painted the Lake Casitas event for the ’84 Olympics, and cover illustrations for the Ventura County Design House tour.

Gerd Koch (b. 1929) paints expressionistic abstractions and stylized interpretations of nature. Initially inspired by the chaparral around the artists’ commune he organized during the 1960s, his interests expanded to include the mystical, mythological and metaphysical character of nature in ethnic and primitive as well as Greek and Egyptian cultures.

The Museum of Ventura County is located at 100 East Main Street in downtown Ventura, California. Open from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, admission is $4 adults, $3 seniors, $1 children 6-17, free for members and children under 6. For more museum information go to www.venturamuseum.org or call 805-653-0323.