American Art Archives – Daily Art Fixx

Grant Wood: 1891-1942

February 13, 2020 By Wendy Campbell

Born on February 13, 1891, in Anamosa, Iowa, Grant Wood was an American artist best known for his paintings of the rural American Midwest. Wood studied at the State University of Iowa, the Minneapolis School of Design, and the Academie Julian in Paris. Aside from painting, he worked in a variety of media, including lithography, ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects.

In the 1920s Wood traveled to Europe four times, visiting Paris, Italy, and Germany. He was impressed by the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement in Germany as well as the primitive Flemish and German painters. Specifically, he admired their depiction of mythological and biblical stories in contemporary costumes and settings, making them relevant to the viewer. Wood then applied these ideas in his own paintings of ordinary life.

Wood first gained recognition 1930, when his painting “American Gothic” won a medal from the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting received a great deal of public and critical attention and Wood quickly became known across the United States. In 1934 he was hailed by Time Magazine as the “chief philosopher” of Regionalism.

“American Gothic” depicts a farmer and his spinster daughter posing before their house, whose gabled window and tracery, in the American gothic style, inspired the painting’s title. The models were actually Grant’s sister Nan and their dentist. Wood was accused of creating this work as a satire on the intolerance and rigidity that the insular nature of rural life can produce; he denied the accusation. American Gothic is an image that epitomizes the Puritan ethic and virtues that he believed dignified the Midwestern character.”

In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to help artists get through the Great Depression. He became a great advocate of Regionalism, and gave lectures throughout the United States on this art movement.

Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa’s School of Art from 1934. During that time, he continued to produce his own works as well as supervising mural painting projects, and mentoring students.

Grant Wood died of liver cancer on February 12, 1942 – the day before his 51st birthday.

Sources: Art Institute of Chicago, Met Museum, Wikipedia,

Jackson Pollock: 1912-1956

January 28, 2020 By Wendy Campbell

Born on January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, Paul Jackson Pollock was a key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Pollock grew up in Arizona and California and began his painting studies at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles in 1928. In 1930, he moved to New York where he studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. During this early time in his studies, Pollock was influenced by the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. From 1935 to 1942, Pollock worked on the WPA Federal Art Project as a mural assistant to David Alfaro Siqueiros, and as an easel painter.

Pollock’s paintings during this time were inspired by Navajo sand painting, Asian calligraphy, and personal revelations stemming from four months of Jungian psychotherapy to treat his alcoholism. “This resulted in an obsessive exploration of his unconscious symbolism, mediated through the stylistic influence of Picasso, Orozco, Joan Miró and the theories of John Graham. The works he created parallel to his psychotherapy contain the elements of what became a personal iconography.”

By 1947, Pollock was creating densely layered compositions that brought both praise and criticism. Some critics viewed them as “meaningless and chaotic”, while others saw them as “superbly organized, visually fascinating and psychologically compelling.”

Pollock’s first solo show was held in 1943 at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in New York. Guggenheim gave him a contract that lasted through 1947, allowing him to devote all his time to painting. Prior to 1947 Pollock’s work was influenced by Pablo Picasso and Surrealism, and in the early 1940’s, he participated in several Surrealist and Abstract art exhibitions.

In 1945, Pollock married artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy. In the fall of that year, the couple moved to what is now known as the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Long Island, New York.

From 1947 to 1952 Pollock created his most famous “action paintings“. “Pollock’s technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term action painting. With this technique, Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating art, the paint now literally flowing from his chosen tool onto the canvas. By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension, literally by being able to view and apply paint to his canvases from all directions.” These works were also larger in scale and were given numbers instead of titles.

A profile in the 8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine introduced Pollock’s art to Americans and secured his growing reputation as one of the foremost modern painters of the time. During this intensely creative time, Pollock was treated by a doctor who substituted his drinking with tranquillizers. In 1951, he began drinking heavily again.

In 1952, Pollock’s first solo show in Paris opened at the Studio Paul Facchetti and his first retrospective was organized by Clement Greenberg at Bennington College in Vermont. His work was shown in many group exhibitions, including the Whitney Annuals, the Museum of American Art, New York, from 1946 and the Venice Biennale in 1950. Although his paintings were widely known and exhibited internationally, Pollock never traveled outside the United States.

By 1955, Pollock’s alcoholism and depression had overtaken his life and he stopped painting altogether. He was also becoming increasingly estranged from his wife and in the summer of 1956 she traveled to Europe to re-evaluate their relationship.

On August 11, 1956, Jackson Pollock died in an automobile accident. Driving drunk, he overturned his convertible, killing himself and an acquaintance, and seriously injuring his other passenger. After Pollock’s death, Krasner, managed his estate and ensured that his reputation remained strong. They are buried together at Green River Cemetery in Springs, Long Island.

Sources: Ciudad de la Pintura (images), Wikipedia, Guggenheim Collection, MoMA, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center

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Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1960-1988

December 22, 2019 By Wendy Campbell

Born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a successful graffiti and Neo-Expressionist artist who continues to influence contemporary artists today.

Basquiat showed a passion for art at a young age and was encouraged by his mother who had an interest in fashion design and sketching. Early influences included cartoon drawings, Alfred Hitchcock films, cars and comic books. An avid reader who spoke three languages, Basquiat was also inspired by French, Spanish, and English literature.

From 1976 to 1978, Basquiat created ‘Samo’ (Same Old Shit), a fictional character who earned a living selling ‘fake’ religion. He also collaborated with his close friend and graffiti artist Al Diaz. Basquiat and Diaz’s graffiti took the form of spray-painted messages that were seen around Lower Manhattan. In 1978, SAMO gained some recognition when a positive article was printed in the Village Voice. The collaboration ended in 1979 and “Samo is dead” was seen on walls in SoHo.

In the late 1970s, Basquiat met artists and musicians in various clubs. This led to his introduction to New York art collectors and dealers. During this period, Basquiat created postcards, collages, drawings, and t-shirts that depicted events such as the Kennedy assassination and themes such as baseball and Pez candy.

Basquiat’s first public exhibition was in the group The Times Square Show alsongside David Hammons, Jenny Holzer, Lee Quinones, Kiki Smith, and others. By 1982, he was showing regularly and became part of the Neo-Expressionist movement. That same year, he began dating the then unknown Madonna and met Andy Warhol, with whom he collaborated and formed a close friendship. Basquiat’s first solo exhibition was also in 1982 at the Annina Nosei Gallery in New York.

Basquiat’s art was influenced by imagery and symbolism from African, Aztec, Greek, and Roman cultures, as well as that of his own Puerto Rican and Haitian heritage, and Black and Hispanic cultures. The crown was Basquiat’s signature motif. In some paintings, the crowns are placed on top of generic figures. More often, he crowned his personal heroes including jazz musicians, such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and athletes, such as Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Hank Aaron.

Basquiat began many paintings by pasting his own drawings or photocopies of them onto the canvas. He also used words to elaborate his themes often repeating the same words over and over again creating a hypnotic effect.

In 1984, Basquiat began using a new layering technique using silkscreens. His drawings were transferred onto screens and printed onto the canvas. He then painted, drew, and added more silk-screened images to build the piece into a multi-layered composition.

In the mid-1980s Basquiat began using heroin, and much of his artwork appeared unfinished and repetitive. The death of Andy Warhol in 1987 had a profound affect on him. His grief turned into creativity and his painting displayed a new confidence and maturity. Many of his works during this period make references to death.

Following an attempt at rehabilitation, Basquiat died on August 12, 1988 of an accidental drug overdose. He was 27 years old. Several major retrospective exhibitions of Basquiat’s works have been held since his death, in the United States and internationally. The Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland held a retrospective from May to September, 2010 to mark what would have been Basquiat’s fiftieth birthday.

For more information about Jean-Michel Basquiat, visit the source links listed below.

Sources: Brooklyn Museum, Wikipedia, MoMA

Ansel Adams: 1902-1984

February 20, 2017 By Wendy Campbell

Born in San Francisco, California on February 20, 1902, Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist known for his technical expertise and his stunning black-and-white photographs of the American Southwest, Yosemite National Park, and the California coast.

Considered a hyperactive child, Adams was unsuccessful in the schools he had attended and as a result, his father and aunt tutored him at home. Leading a somewhat solitary childhood, Adams spent much of his time in nature, exploring the beaches and the heights facing San Francisco Bay.

At the age of twelve Adams taught himself to play the piano and read music. Soon after, he began lessons and for the next twelve years he studied piano, intending to make his living as a concert pianist. Adams ultimately gave up piano for photography but these early studies “brought substance, discipline, and structure to his frustrating and erratic youth. Moreover, the careful training and exacting craft required of a musician profoundly informed his visual artistry, as well as his influential writings and teachings on photography.”

In 1916, Adams visited Yosemite National Park with his family. His father gave him a Kodak Brownie box camera with which he took his first photographs. The next year, Adams returned to Yosemite with a better camera and a tripod. That winter, he worked part-time for a San Francisco photo finisher where he learned basic darkroom techniques. Adams explored the High Sierra, in summer and winter, developing the stamina and skill needed to photograph at high altitudes and in difficult weather.

When he was 17, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to “preserving the natural world’s wonders and resources”. He was the custodian of the organization’s headquarters at Yosemite, for four years. Adams retained his membership throughout his lifetime and served on the board for 37 years.

Adams’ first photographs were published in 1921 and Best’s Studio in Yosemite Valley began selling his prints in 1922. In the mid-1920s, he experimented with soft-focus, etching, Bromoil Process, and other techniques of the pictorial photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz who attempted to produce photography on an equal artistic plane with painting by trying to mimic it. Adams eventually rejected the pictorial method for a more realist approach which relied on sharp focus, heightened contrast, precise exposure, and darkroom craftsmanship.

In the late 1920s, with the promotion of an arts-connected businessman Albert Bender, Adams’ first portfolio was a success and he began receiving commercial assignments to photograph the wealthy patrons who had purchased his portfolio. In 1928, Adams began working as an official photographer for the Sierra Club.

In 1930, Taos Pueblo, Adams’ second portfolio, was published with text by writer Mary Austin. Through a friend with Washington connections, Adams was able to hold his first solo museum exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in 1931.

In 1932, Adams and other photographers, including Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston, founded the group f64, (a very small aperture setting that gives great depth of field), which maintained an interest in the technically perfect photographic print.

Adams developed the “zone system” as a way to explain exposure and development control and published his first book on how to master photographic technique in 1935. Over the next several years, Adams published a number of books and articles including “The Camera and the Lens” (1948), “The Negative” (1948), “The Print” (1950), “Natural Light Photography” (1952), and “Artificial Light Photography” (1956).

In the 1930s, Adams began to use his photographs to promote the cause of wilderness preservation. In 1938, he published “Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail”, with the Sierra Club, in an effort to secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks. The book and his testimony before Congress played a vital role in the success of the effort, and Congress designated the area as a National Park in 1940.

In 1940, Adams organized “A Pageant of Photography”, the most important and largest photography show in the West to-date, attended by millions of visitors. Adams completed a children’s book with his wife Virginia Best and the “Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley” during 1940 and 1941. Adams also began teaching in 1941 at the Art Center School of Los Angeles and in 1945, he was asked to form the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts. In 1952, Adams was one of the founders of the magazine “Aperture”, a journal of photography showcasing its best practitioners and newest innovations. In June 1955, Adams began annual workshops, teaching thousands of students right up until 1981.

Until the 1970s, Adams was financially dependent on commercial projects. Some of his clients included Kodak, Fortune magazine, Pacific Gas and Electric, AT&T, and the American Trust Company. In 1974, he had a major retrospective exhibition at the “Metropolitan Museum of Art”. During the 1970s, much of his time was spent curating and re-printing negatives to satisfy the demand of art museums which had created departments of photography. He also spent a lot of his time writing about environmentalism, focusing mainly on the Big Sur coastline of California and the protection of Yosemite. President Jimmy Carter commissioned Adams to make the first official portrait of a president made by a photograph.

Ansel Adams died on April 22, 1984 from heart failure aggravated by cancer. “Adams’ lasting legacy includes helping to elevate photography to an art comparable with painting and music, and equally capable of expressing emotion and beauty. ” The Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed the Ansel Adams Wilderness in 1985 in his honor. Mount Ansel Adams, an 11,760 ft (3,580 m) peak in the Sierra Nevada, was named for him in 1985.

Sources: Ansel Adams Gallery, Wikipedia, Museum of Contemporary Photography

Norman Rockwell: 1894 – 1978

February 3, 2017 By Wendy Campbell

Born on February 3, 1894, in New York City, Norman Rockwell was one of the most popular and recognized American artists of his time.

Rockwell had an interest in art early in life and at age 14, he enrolled at The Chase School of Art (currently The New York School of Art). In 1910, he left high school and studied art at The National Academy of Design and then transferred to The Art Students League of New York.

Rockwell achieved success quickly and while still in his teens, was hired as the Art Director of “Boy’s Life” Magazine (Boy Scouts publication). When he was 21, Rockwell and his family moved to New Rochelle, New York where he shared a studio with cartoonist Clyde Forsythe and worked for magazines including Life, Literary Digest, and Country Gentleman. In 1916, Rockwell created his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post. During his early career, Rockwell was influenced greatly by popular illustrators including N.C. Wyeth, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish and Howard Pyle.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Rockwell developed further depth and character in his paintings and illustrations. “His use of humor became an important part of his work. It was a technique he used effectively to draw the viewer into the composition to share the magic. Rockwell was constantly seeking new ideas and new faces in his daily life. He painted not only the scenes and people close to him but, in a quest for authenticity, would approach total strangers and ask them to sit for him. His internal art of ‘storytelling’ became integrated with his external skills as an artist. What emerged was what we know today as an incredible facility in judging the perfect moment; when to stop the action, snap the picture…when all the elements that define and embellish a total story are in place.” (NMAI)

The 1930s and 1940s are considered the most successful decades of Rockwell’s career. In 1930 he married Mary Barstow, a schoolteacher, with whom he had three sons, Jarvis, Thomas, and Peter. In 1939, the family moved to Arlington, Vermont and Rockwell began to produce full canvas paintings depicting small-town American life.

During World War II, Rockwell became involved in the war effort to help boost the sale of savings bonds. The result was his extremely popular The Four Freedoms, at first rejected by the U.S. Government but then printed as posters to sell war bonds. “The works toured the United States in an exhibition that was jointly sponsored by The Post and the U.S. Treasury Department and, through the sale of war bonds, raised more than $130 million for the war effort.”

Unfortunately in 1943, a fire in Rockwell’s Arlington studio, destroyed numerous paintings and his collection of historic costumes and props. Rockwell would spend countless hours searching for the costumes and items to create his scenes, and the loss of this collection was particularly painful for the artist.

In the late 1940s and 1950s Rockwell continued to be one of the most prolific and recognized illustrators in the country. In his 47 years with The Saturday Evening Post, he created 322 covers. He also produced work for Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, Literary Digest, and LOOK magazine.

In 1953, the Rockwells moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Six years later, Mary Barstow Rockwell died unexpectedly.

In 1960, Rockwell (in collaboration with his son, Tom), published his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator. The Saturday Evening Post published parts of the best-selling book in a series of excerpts.

In 1961, Rockwell married Molly Punderson, a retired teacher. Two years later, he ended his 47-year affiliation with The Saturday Evening Post and began to work for Look magazine. During his 10-year relationship with Look, Rockwell’s work addressed American social issues including civil rights, poverty, and the exploration of space.

In 1962, Rockwell told Esquire magazine: “I call myself an illustrator but I am not an illustrator. Instead, I paint storytelling pictures which are quite popular but unfashionable. No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations. He’s got to put all of his talent, all of his feeling into them. If illustration is not considered art, then that is something that we have brought upon ourselves by not considering ourselves artists. I believe that we should say, ‘I am not just an illustrator, I am an artist’.” (NMAI)

In 1973 Rockwell established a trust placing his works under the custodianship of Stockbridge’s historic Old Corner House. The trust now forms the core of the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. In 1976, Rockwell added his Stockbridge studio and all its contents to the bequest. In 1977, Rockwell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his “vivid and affectionate portraits of our country.”

Norman Rockwell died at his home in Stockbridge on November 8, 1978, at the age of 84.

Sources: Norman Rockwell Museum, Saturday Evening Post, PBS, National Museum of American Illustration

Norman Rockwell on Amazon

Roy Lichtenstein: 1923-1997

October 27, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is primarily identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery lifted from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein’s success was matched by his focus and energy, and after his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create an oeuvre of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention. (from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation) For in-depth information about Lichtenstein’s life and works, visit the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation website.

The nine-minute video below, Roy Lichtenstein: Diagram of an Artist, from the TATE brings together archival footage of Lichtenstein. at home and at work in his studio, as well as interviews with his wife Dorothy and friend Frederic Tuten, to create an intimate portrait of the artist.

Image credit: Roy Lichtenstein, Left: In the Car – 1963 | Middle: Woman with Flowered Hat, 1963 | Right: Nurse, 1964 All images © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Paul Strand: 1890 – 1976

October 16, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Portrait of Paul Strand by Louise Dahl-Wolfe

Born on October 16, 1890, in New York City, Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century.

Strand studied with documentary photographer Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. By 1909, he had set up his own commercial studio and also did work on the side in a pictorialist style that was exhibited at the New York Camera Club. In the early 1920s, Strand’s work experimented with formal abstraction and also reflected his interest in social reform. He was one of the founders of the Photo League, an association of photographers who advocated using their art to promote social and political causes.

“Strand visited New Mexico in 1926 and, beginning in 1930, returned for three consecutive summers, making portraits of artist friends and acquaintances. It was there, amidst a community of visual artists and writers, that Strand began to develop his belief in the humanistic value of portraiture.”

Strand traveled to Mexico again in 1934 where he photographed the landscape, architecture, folk art, and people and produced a film about fishermen for the Mexican government. He returned to New York late in 1934 and devoted his time to theater and filmmaking cooperatives.

In 1943, Strand resumed his still photography, focusing on the people and surroundings of New England. In June 1949, he left the United States to present Native Land at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia. This marked the beginning of Strand’s long absence from the United States due to McCarthyism. “Although he was never officially a member of the Communist Party, many of Strand’s collaborators were either Party members or were prominent socialist writers and activists. Many of his friends were also Communists or were suspected of being so. Strand was also closely involved with Frontier Films, one of more than twenty organizations that were branded as ‘subversive’ and ‘un-American’ by the U.S. Attorney General.”

“The remaining 27 years of Strand’s life were spent in Orgeval, France. In the early 1950s, he spent six weeks in the northern Italian agrarian community of Luzzara and later travelled to the Outer Hebrides, islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. He also travelled and photographed in North and West Africa in the 1960s.”

Paul Strand died on March 31, 1976 at his home in France.

About the short film above: In 1920 Paul Strand and artist Charles Sheeler collaborated on Manhatta, a short silent film that presents a day in the life of lower Manhattan. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s book Leaves of Grass, the film includes multiple segments that express the character of New York. The sequences display a similar approach to the still photography of both artists. Attracted by the cityscape and its visual design, Strand and Sheeler favored extreme camera angles to capture New York’s dynamic qualities. Although influenced by Romanticism in its view of the urban environment, Manhatta is considered the first American avant-garde film.

Sources: Wikipedia, Getty Museum, Lee Gallery

E. E. Cummings: Writer and Visual Artist

October 14, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born on October 14, 1894, most people know E.E. Cummings, the writer. As a poet, Edward Estlin Cummings was very popular throughout the 20th century and received tremendous critical acclaim. Less well-known is Cummings’ accomplishment as a visual artist. Cummings considered himself as much a painter as a poet and he devoted a tremendous amount of time to his art. He also produced thousands of pages of notes concerning his own opinions about painting, colour theory, the human form, the “intelligence” of painting, and his thoughts about the Masters.

Cummings painted primarily in oils on canvas, canvas board, particle board, cardboard, and sometimes burlap. His painting is generally divided into two phases. Between 1915 and 1928, he produced large-scale abstractions which were widely acclaimed. He also produced very popular drawings and caricatures that were published in The Dial journal. Between 1928 and 1962, Cummings created primarily representational works including still lifes, landscapes, nudes, and portraits.

Cummings spent the last ten years of his life traveling, attending speaking engagements, and at his summer home, Joy Farm, in Silver Lake, New Hampshire. He died on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire of a stroke.

For a more in depth look at the art of E. E. Cummings, visit EE Cummings Art.com.

Source: EE Cummings Art, Wikipedia

Mark Rothko: 1903-1970

September 25, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born on September 25, 1903, Mark Rothko (Marcus Rothkowitz), was a major Abstract Expressionist artist and had an important influence on the development of colour field painting. Latvian by birth, Rothko emigrated with his mother and sister to the United States in 1913, joining his father and two brothers who had come a few years before. Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Rothko did well in school and upon completion was awarded a scholarship to Yale which he attend from 1921-1923. He found the Yale community to be elitist and racist and dropped out after two years of study.

Rothko moved to New York in 1923 where he worked in the garment district. He studied sporadically at the Arts Students League but was essentially a self-taught artist, educating himself by visiting exhibitions and the studios of other artists. In 1929, Rothko began teaching children at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, a position he retained for more than twenty years.

Rothko’s first paintings were typically of Expressionist landscapes, still-lifes, and bathers. He was also commissioned to illustrate for Rabbi Lewis Browne’s The Graphic Bible (1928) which included maps, sphinxes, lions, serpents, and other symbols and scenes that reflected the book’s content.

Rothko’s paintings of the 1930s had an eerie mood and created a sense of mystery with tragic figures in apartments, on city streets and subway platforms. From 1935-1940 Rothko, along with other artists including Ilya Bolotowsky and Adolph Gottlieb, was a part of an independent group called “The Ten” that held exhibitions in New York and Paris.

In the early 1940s Rothko abandoned Expressionism and, under the influence of Surrealism and Jung’s ideas on the collective unconscious, began to use archaic symbols as archetypal images. The first of these paintings were based on mythic subjects and were composed of humans, animals and plants arranged in a manner similar to archaic friezes. By the mid-1940s Rothko was also painting organic forms that were close to abstraction. During this time, he also developed his technique of applying watercolour, gouache, and tempera to heavy paper. Rothko’s paintings during this time were well received and he exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, the Betty Parsons Gallery, and the San Francisco Museum of Art.

Between 1947 and 1949, Rothko sought to create an original approach of abstraction by replacing the figure with shapes. His large canvases with bold colour and form were intended to create the impression of constant movement. His goal was to express profound human emotions as directly as possible stating: “The progression of a painter’s work…will be toward clarity; toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.”

Beginning in 1958, in conjunction with three major commissions, Rothko darkened his colour palatte painting with maroon, black, and olive green. He believed his view of the tragic human condition would be conveyed more clearly than with his earlier brightly coloured works.

Despite his success, Rothko felt he was misunderstood as an artist and feared that people purchased his paintings out of fashion. He rejected the label of an abstractionist and colourist saying that his interest was “only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. . . The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point.”

In 1968, as a result of chronic high blood pressure, Rothko suffered an aneurysm of the aorta. Despite his physicians advice, he continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoided exercise, and maintained an unhealthy diet. He did however focus his efforts on smaller format works that required less physical exertion. On February 25, 1970, Mark Rothko committed suicide. He was 66 years old.

For a more detailed biography, visit the MoMA site as well as the National Gallery of Art (USA) website which has a large collection of Rothko’s works online.

Sources: Ciudad de la Pintura (images), MoMA, National Gallery of Art, Wikipedia

Alma Thomas: 1891-1978

September 22, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia, Alma Woodsey Thomas grew up in a family that encouraged education and appreciation of literature and the arts. In 1907, the family moved to Washington D.C., partly due to the Atlanta race riots, but also because Washington had better education and employment opportunities for African Americans than most other cities at the time. That same year, Thomas enrolled at Armstrong Manual Training High School where she excelled at math, and was exposed to the visual arts.

Thomas attended Miner Normal School (today, the University of the District of Columbia) in 1911 studying kindergarten education. She received her teaching certificate in 1913 after which she taught for four years at Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington Delaware. Thomas returned to Washington in 1921 to study home economics at Howard University. Initially intending to pursue a career as a costume designer, she switched her studies to the newly created Fine Arts department and in 1924, became the first graduate of the program.

In 1925, Thomas began working as an art instructor at Shaw Junior High School in Washington D.C. – a career which she would remain at for 35 years. With a desire to cultivate appreciation for art in young people, Thomas organized the School Arts League based at Shaw as well as organizing the school’s first art gallery.

Between 1930 and 1934, Thomas earned her masters degree in Fine Arts Education from the teachers college at Columbia University. In 1943, she was vice-president of the Barnett Aden Gallery – the first private gallery to welcome art created by artists of any race, colour, or creed. While there, Thomas was able to increase her awareness of art trends and directions. As well, she was involved with the Little Paris Studio where artists met and worked together, improving their skills, exchanging critiques, and holding exhibitions.

Thomas initially painted realistic images but moved toward abstract painting in 1950, when at the age of 59, she returned to school, taking art classes at the American University. She studied with Robert Gates, Ben Summerford, and well-known painter Jacob Kainen with whom she became close friends. A passion for learning, Thomas continued her evening and weekend classes for ten years. During that time, her painting evolved from realism to cubism, abstract impressionism, and finally her own style of abstract art.

In 1960, Thomas retired from teaching to focus exclusively on her art. Her primary inspirations were her observations of nature and the abstract patterns of light created when shining through flowers and plants. Her paintings reflected this with their bold colours and short jagged brush strokes.

Thomas’s work began receiving recognition in the late 60s and early 70s. She had solo exhibitions at Howard and Fisk Universities, at the Franz Bader Gallery in Washington, and was included in the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program. In 1972, she was the first African American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

From the 1970s onward, Thomas minimized the number of colours in her paintings and experimented with optical effects. Her brush strokes had the appearance of wedges and commas and created rhythmic patterns that often resembled mosaics. During these last years of her life, Thomas was challenged by arthritis and deteriorating eyesight, but she continued painting, drawing on nature and music for inspiration, up until her last days.

Alma Thomas died on February 24, 1978 in Washington D.C. from complications following surgery. Today, her paintings are on display in major art museums and university galleries across the United States. Her 1966 painting, Resurrection, currently hangs in the White House.

Sources: Alma W. Thomas: A Retrospective of the Paintings, Smithsonian American Art Museum