Three hundred and forty-six combined years of artistic experience and influence will be honored when the Museum of Ventura County presents Four Masters - Four Legends, a retrospective exhibition of work by Carlisle Cooper, William McEnroe, Norman Kirk and Gerd Koch, opening February 26. The exhibit’s free public opening reception will be held on Friday, February 25 from 5:30 -7:30 p.m. The exhibition continues through April 24.

A panel discussion with the four artists, moderated by artist and exhibit curator Hiroko Yoshimoto, will be held at the museum that same weekend, on Sunday, February 27 at 3:00 p.m. Admission to the Sunday event is $5 general public, museum members free. The following Thursday, March 3, 7:00- 8:30 p.m., Donna Granata will present a multimedia reflection on the honored artists, selected from Focus on the Masters’ archives. Thursday's presentation is $10 general public, $5 museum members. To attend either event, call 653-0323 x 315, as space is limited. Admission to galleries is included in event prices.

“These four masters have profoundly influenced and continue to shape art and culture in Southern California,” said colleague Yoshimoto, who has chosen selected works that represent the range of their careers. The exhibition will also explore the artist’s 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 1984 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.