AMERICAN MODERNISM

 

Graphic Eloquence: American Modernism on Paper is on view at the George Museum of Art, at the University of Georgia, Athens, through September 4. It’s a wide ranging, rambling show from the collection of Michael Ricker, the Texas-based donor of many of the works. Ricker and the museum’s Curator of American Art, Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, made the final selections and many of the layout arrangements. The installation is stunning and thought provoking. Work by WILLIAM BAZIOTES, FRED BECKER, EDMOND CASARELLA, MINNA CITRON, WORDEN DAY, DOROTHY DEHNER, FANNIE HILLSMITH, BORIS MARGO, HUGH MESIBOV, ANNE RYAN, and MITCHELL SIPORIN, is featured, with prints and drawings showing more or less equally.

 

 

 

It was especially wonderful to view Anne Ryan’s black-line woodcut Fantasia, 1947, facing off Fannie Hillsmith’s pair of intaglio early and final states for Interior with Lamp/Table, 1945. Above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Showing Dorothy Dehner’s engravings alongside an ink line-drawing is inspired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pair of Hugh Mesibov surrealist drawings from 1944 are an ideal compare and contrast exercise. One is a large watercolor fantasy, Three Mechanical Figures #1. The second, Duet, a 9 x 6-inch sheet of crayon and ink tightly drawn composition – two robots meeting on shelf while lost in space?

 

 

 

 

 

We're only recently back from the trip to Athens -- it was a wonderful journey.

Anna Heyward Taylor, Picking Cotton, 1946

 

 

Anna Heyward Taylor, Picking Cotton, 1946

 

Born into a South Carolina family with ties to the cotton industry, Taylor (1879-1956) was well educated and well-traveled. She studied with William Merritt Chase in Holland, in 1903, visited Britain in 1904, France, and Switzerland in 1908, and Germany in 1909. In 1914 she traveled to China and Japan. At that point she entered a graduate program at Radcliffe College, and visited Provincetown, MA, where she studied with BJO Nordfeldt in 1915 and 16. Also in 1916 she went to British Guiana, and then back to France in 1917 and 19, and to Mexico from 1935 to 1936.

 

During the late teens and twenties Taylor was largely based in New York City; she made the permanent move to Charleston in 1929. There, along with Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Alfred Hutty, and Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, she was part of the Charleston Renaissance.

 

This is a complex mid-twentieth century image. The medium of linocut, with strict black and white patterning, is exploited to show a bleak road and repeating puffs of cotton. The women’s clothes, while patterned, are basic and lacking decoration or charm. The top edge shows the gouges of a carving tool that adds traces of a naïve, home-spun ‘frame.’ At the same time it presents multi-faceted, highly charged social issues.

 

It is an insightful plunge into American history. Made for the publication of This is Our Land: The Story of the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, by Chalmers S. Murray, published by the Carolina Art Association, 1949, this impression has the notation No. 5, possibly referring to its placement in the series of images.

 

Of special importance is the group of figures working the long rows of plants – often it was women and children who were assigned this task. This references the brutal and rigid nature of the field management system in which the lead picker was among the most productive and the others in the row were pressed to keep up with her. Here they are deliberately un-regimented, shown in a more casual manner. Although they are clustered at the near left, there doesn’t seem to be any exchange between them. They work in isolation – each is alone and their group is apart from others that might be nearby. 

 

In the distance at the right is a building – a simple barn-like structure with a wide door -- probably awaiting the crop. At the far left is the roof of a building that might be a cabin. If this is a home of the field workers it is distant and un-inviting. While not exactly homeless, they seem adrift and aware that ‘home’ it isn’t particularly welcoming when they manage to return there.

 

Anne Heyward Taylor, working for a relatively objective, even scientific project, used the drama of a block print to examine the fine line between documenting current conditions that were difficult at best, while recalling those historically abhorrent. 

 

An impression of this subject is in the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; it was donated by the artist.

Vida Americana: Mexican/American Connections

The Vida Americana Show at the Whitney Museum of American Art (on view through January 31, 2021), features three artists we represent: Ben Shahn, Mitchell Siporin, and Harry Sternberg. In addition we're showing work by artists who are Mexican, Francisco Mora and Francisco Toledo, artists who traveled to Mexico or even, as in the case of Doris Rosenthal, established residences there, as well as work that shows the impact of this powerful moment.

 

                                  Judith Shahn, Bus Parking Lot, Mexico City, 1950

This is the link for the Gallery's Mexican/American Connections page:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=vida

 

Vida Americana: Mural Studies

 The Vida Americana show at the Whitney Museum of Art inspired us to re-visit our own collection of American mural studies. They range from the Samuel Greeenburg 1940s rural scene at 6 x 8 to the 1940 Hugh Mesibov, Life of a Miner, at 63 inches. Some are early suggestions such as Louis Schanker's drawings for the World's Fair Mural, 1939, while others like Mordi Gassner's Coca Cola, a private submission of 1932, are finished in fine detail.

 

 

                            Harry Sternberg, Detail, Steel, 1937 

 

 

Link for the Gallery's Mural Studies page:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=murals

 

Vida Americana: Racial Strife.

Please note that these images are disturbing.

The horrific phenomenon of lynching runs through the Vida Americana Show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Our works were acquired over several decades. The artists range from the African-American New Yorker Vernon Poindexter and the Massachusetts-based Italian-American Umberto Romano, to the Cleveland-born Marion Campbell Kronfeld, who worked in Los Angeles, and Michael J. Gallagher, from the Pennsylvania coal fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marian Campbell Kronfeld, Detail: Pieta, about 1940

 

                               

 

This is the link to our Vida Americana: Racial Strife page:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=strife

 

IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair, 2020

 

Today is the last day of the IFPDA online virtual Print Fair available through Artsy. This past Friday we were so pleased to be included in ‘Swoon’s IFPDA’s Fine Art Print Fair Online Picks.’ Swoon, the artist Caledonia Curry, featured our Blanche Grambs lithograph Unemployed (also titled Depression), of 1935. She commented “The place where rest meets grief.” Definitely Grambs would have appreciated that. Thank you Swoon.

 

                                Blanche Grambs, Unemployed (also titled Depression), 1935
 

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IFPDA Online Print Fair, Autumn, 2020

 

The Susan Teller Gallery is participating in the IFPDA Online Fine Art Print Fair, Online, Fall 2020, from October 7 through November 1. 

 

Here is the link:

https://www.artsy.net/show/susan-teller-gallery-susan-teller-gallery-at-ifpda-fine-art-print-fair-online-fall-2020

 

 

                                         Harry Sternberg, Pablo Picasso, 1944

 

 

Naturally we are remembering the many IFPDA fairs at the Park Avenue Armory (two with interruptions) and the recent three at the Javits Center and wishing we could be there welcoming visitors. But this year there is a pandemic and we are all adapting as well as we can.

 

For the 2020 virtual fair we are featuring figurative work from between the wars – including the new Deal Era -- with prints by Peggy Bacon, Michael J. Gallagher, Riva Helfond, Angelo Pinto, Salvatore Pinto, and Harry Sternberg. There are modernist works by William Baziotes, Howard Daum, Sue Fuller, Peter Grippe, Stanley William Hayter, Fannie Hillsmith, Kett, Dorothy Browdy Kushner, Hugh Mesibov, Betty Waldo Parish, Bernard Rosenquit, Anne Ryan, Louis Schanker, Karl Schrag, and Ansei Uchima. 

 

 

 

 

 

#printfair #IFPDA #IFPDAprintfair #collectprints #newdeal #WPA #modernism #PeggyBacon #MichaelJGallagher #RivaHelfond #AngeloPinto, #SalvatorePinto, and #HarrySternberg. There are modernist works by #WilliamBaziotes #HowardDaum #Sue Fuller #PeterGrippe #StanleyWilliamHayter #FannieHillsmith #Kett #DorothyBrowdyKushne #HughMesibov #BettyWaldoParish #BernardRosenquit #AnneRyan #LouisSchanker #KarlSchrag #AnseiUchima. 

THE IRASCIBLES

Seventy years ago tomorrow, May 20, 1950, the New York Times published a letter to Roland L. Redmond, President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It protested the selection of the museum’s ‘American Painting Today -- 1950’ exhibition and was signed by eighteen American painters, including William Baziotes, as well as ten sculptors, including Peter Grippe.

 

William Baziotes, Clown and Clock, 1943-46

The group was critical of the makeup of the juries: Among the jurists were Charles Burchfield, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Millard Sheets. The next day, May 21, a competing paper, The Herald Tribune, published an article, presumably by their art critic Emily Genauer, defending the Museum and calling the protestors ‘The Irascible 18.’

Peter Grippe, Daley Brothers' Moving, 1944

On July 3, 1950, seventy-five artists issued a statement defending the museum. Among them were Will Barnet, Philip Evergood, Reginald Marsh, and Harry Sternberg. 

Detail of Nina Leen's photograph for Life Magazine, with identification.

Generally now known as the New York School, most of the protestors were photographed by Nina Leen for Life Magazine’s January 15, 1951, issue. It was Barnett Newman (who also largely composed the letter), who suggested that they should look like bankers.

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Women March at the NY Historical Society

Women March at the New-York Historical Society commemorates the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted women the right to vote in 1920. It explores the effort women made to expand democracy before and after the suffrage victory and was curated by Valerie Paley, senior vice president, historian, and director of the museum’s Center for Women’s History.

Riva Helfond, Curtain Factory, 1937

This multi-media serious and yet joyful extravaganza begins with banners and pamphlets from the 1820s through the nineteenth century when the Abolitionists and Suffragettes were closely aligned and the Wyoming Territory was the first to give women the vote in 1869. (Surely that’s not the only thing I remember from high school?) Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton through the National Woman Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone through the American Woman Suffrage Association were special heroes of the drive. After successes in several western states (perhaps prompted by the pragmatic notion that women might migrate to places where they were needed and would be appreciated?), the movement was revitalized in the 1910s. The installation has numerous photographs and films of this period featuring marches with hundreds and hundreds of women of diverse classes, races, and generations, in shoe-length white dresses, in endless rows – they are determined, very brave, and so dignified.

Installation shot: Antoinette Mauro upper left and center of lower left.

In the 1930s, during the era of the Great Depression, the groups supported the labor movement as sweatshops employed thousands of women largely as sewing machine operators. It is in this part of the show that Riva Helfond’s monumental painting Curtain Factory, 1937, appears. It’s amazing to come upon it – a sensitive and touching view of piece-work employment in a claustrophobic sweatshop environment. It stands out so clearly among the other mediums and moving images of the film pieces – all in black and white until that point. Just past the Helfond is an area dedicated to women who took jobs in industries making equipment and munitions for the war effort. Antoinette Mauro is shown with her colleagues and her actual drafting set. In the 1940s the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a huge, huge employer, hired its first woman factory employee.

Installation shot

Even as jobs were given up to returning soldiers, the 1950s set the stage for large numbers of women to further their educations and enter the workforce in the 1960s, paving the way for the demand for reproductive rights, childcare, feminism, and the eventually the #MeToo movement. The show ends with more contemporary memorabilia including a Gorilla Girl mask, a deep pink pussy hat, and hand-made posters (my favorite: If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention), as well as footage of recent marches. Of course these are in color, the clothing is certainly not white, and there aren’t any of the seemingly endless, orderly rows of a century ago. The determination and the camaraderie are still there though.

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BARNES TALK ON ANGELO PINTO'S BATHERS ON THE BOARDWALK, 1944

Tomorrow, February 19, from 3 to 3:30, there will be a talk by Virginia Duncan, a graduate student in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Ms. Duncan will be discussing the Angelo Pinto's reverse painting on glass, Bathers on the Boardwalk, 1944, as part of the Institute’s In Focus Gallery Talks series. This subject dates to the period when the artist and his extended family spent summers at the Jersey Shore.

Angelo Pinto, Bathers on the Boardwalk, 1944

Showing here is our preparatory drawing for the Barnes’ work, a gouache on paper. It’s interesting to see that the composition is basically ‘flopped’ with the building and pier and the green-suited figure both on the left of the Barnes’ version. Of course this makes sense if the artist was following his composition and we are seeing it from the back as it were. Could there be a more difficult technique? 

Our drawing has two additional figures on the sand, below the boardwalk level.

Naturally I wish I could be there. If anyone has an opportunity to attend – comments would be most welcome.

#Angelopinto #Barnes #Barnesfoundation #reversepaintingonglass #paintingonglass #boardwalk #Jerseyshore #philadelphia #Barnesphiladelphia

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NEW YORK FINE ART PRINT FAIR

This week we move into the Javits Center for the New York Fine Art Print Fair. We're in Booth 204 and we're nearly ready!

Millard Sheets, Family Flats, 193

Public Hours:

Thursday, October 24           Noon* to 7 PM

Friday, October 25               Noon to 8 PM

Saturday, October 26           Noon to 8 PM   

Sunday, October 27             Noon to 5 PM 

We will be featuring:

The Women of Atelier 17: Intaglios by Worden Day, Dorothy Dehner, Fannie Hillsmith, Kett, Alice Trumbull Mason, Anne Ryan, and master printer Sue Fuller.

*SPECIAL EVENT: Thursday, from noon to 12:30, Dr. Christina Weyl will be at our  booth to discuss her recent publication, The Women of Atelier 17, Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York.

Louis Schanker: Prints on paper, plaster, and wood, by the highly innovative Schanker, along with states and variant impressions, made possible by the Estate’s recent release of this extremely scarce material. Included is an impression of the   huge woodcut, Mythical Cock, along with its matrix.

American Modernism: Works by William Baziotes, Howard Daum, Michael J. Gallagher, Peter Grippe, Stanley William Hayter, Dorothy Browdy Kushner, Hugh Mesibov, Angelo Pinto, Karl Schrag, Millard Sheets, William E. Smith, and Ansei Uchima.

Link for Preview Page on Site:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=NYPF2019

#ifpdaprintfair #collectprints #newyorkprintfair #javitscenter #atelier17 #modernism 

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AMERICAN MURAL STUDIES

Building on works that have been in our inventory for more than a decade and some that came in just this spring, this group of Mural Studies ranges from the modestly sized Samuel Greeenburg 1940s rural scene at 6 x 8 to Hugh Mesibov's 1940 Life of a Miner at 63 inches. Some are early suggestions of images such as Louis Schanker's drawings for the World's Fair Mural, 1939, while others like Mordi Gassner's Coca Cola, a private submission of 1932, are finished in fine detail.

Harry Sternberg, Steel, 1937, oil on Masonite

It is unlikely that there will be additional subjects added to this list -- an odd one or two perhaps, but very, very few. It’s a condensed number of years and although I’ve stretched the definition of ‘study,’ it’s unlikely that new discoveries will be made, although it’s nice to think that they might be.

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Link to site:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=murals

PASTELS AND CHARCOAL DRAWINGS

There is a new virtual exhibition on our site featuring pastel drawings. Charcoal studies and mixed media pieces with work in pastels are also included. Because it’s by medium there’s a large subject range, from finely delineated abstractions such as Hugh Mesibov’s Space Interior #2, 1952, to Katharine McCollum Gallagher’s incredibly delicate Spring Bouquet made when she was in her eighties, to Charles Keller’s highly expressionistic Hanging the Sticks (a North Carolina tobacco barn), 1945.

Charles Keller, Hanging the Sticks, 1945

It’s notable that although many artists tried their hands at pastels, in fact these works generally account for a very small number in the artists’ full body of work. They are in fact scarce.

This is the link to the virtual exhibition:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_ExhList.pl

#pastel #pasteldrawing #charcoal #charcoaldrawing 

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GWYNETH LEECH: Construction Sites

The Gallery

Clinton / Hell’s Kitchen Studios

545 West 52^nd Street, New York, NY

On view through June 8

Ever since an enormous new hotel blocked Gwyneth Leech’s studio window she has taken on construction sites in the city. The Hudson Yards, The Museum of Modern Art, One Vanderbilt, 57^th Street – these and others are subjects in the paintings and works on paper on view.

Although she would probably prefer to be on the street working, she’s often at the exhibition. If you have the opportunity to visit while she’s there by all means try to do that.

Link to Leech’s page on the Gallery site:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=leech_g

#gwynethleech #constructionsites #hudsonyards #onevanderbilt #545West52nd #clinton

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PHILADELPHIA, ST. LOUIS, AND PHILADELPHIA FOLLOW-UP.

Now that we’re actually back from two trips to Philadelphia and one to St. Louis it’s time to reflect on it all. 

The weekend of the Philadelphia Antiques and Art Show there was WEATHER! Many thanks for all who braved the elements and total understanding to those who didn’t. Between the rain on Friday and the wind on Saturday travel was treacherous.

 

The Gallery's booth at the Philadelphia Antiques and Art Show.

On Friday the drama of the rain hitting the roof of the tent was great, but we really had no idea of what it was like outside. In fact the parking lot was mostly flooded. The water was only an inch or so deep but it was amazing to see what seemed like hundreds of feet of water stretching out before us. Saturday was a windstorm and the management made the announcement that the tent was perfectly safe -- it was anchored to the concrete of the parking lot and made to withstand tornadoes. The skin of the tent did ripple though.

At Philadelphia Museum of Art there’s a show of 1930s prints, We the People, American Prints from Between the World Wars, with works by Will Barnet, Pele deLappe, Sue Fuller, Riva Helfond, Millard Sheets, and Harry Sternberg, and others as well. It was along the corridor to their blockbuster The Impressionist’s Eye but it wouldn’t surprise me if some people got waylaid entirely. The room was packed the whole time I was there with both visitors who seemed familiar with the material of that era even if they didn’t know those particular artists, and others to whom it was completely new. It was a terrific audience. Well done to Curatorial Fellow Jillian Kruse. On view through July 24.

 

Riva Helfond, Out of the Pit, 1935. This lithograph is used on the Museum's advertising for the exhibition.

On a totally different continent, the Museum’s Crossing Borders, Painting in the Crown of Aragon, 1400—1500, is a Renaissance one-room jewel of a show.

In St. Louis at the Mercantile Library Fine Print, Rare Book, and Paper Arts Fair we missed the worst of the rain but nearby areas were flooded and everything was growing like mad. They’re two to three weeks ahead of New York City so there was a lot more green than we’ve had although we’re starting to catch up. 

The Gallery's booth in St. Louis -- the 13th Annual Fair.

The Library’s show of historical area maps was extended for the weekend of the Fair. It was fascinating, both for it’s emphasis on the St. Louis neighborhoods along the Mississippi River and for depictions of the river’s length and it’s delta in Louisiana – clearly challenging subjects. A banknote featured what might be the earliest printed view of St. Louis. 

 

Close up of the town view.

There was also a quick visit to a charming nearby town, Florrisant, with some wonderful old buildings. 

This past week was a return visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a series of talks relating to the We The People exhibition. There were so many terrific ideas: selections for the prize winners of the “Fine Prints of the Year” series, (artists' verses collectors' juries, traditional verses modern images, styles, and/or techniques); technical developments on WPA Printmaking Projects (especially carborundum prints and serigraphs) and transition of genre subjects to heightened social awareness and specific industries and then to wartime imagery shortly before the programs were shut down; and totally unknown to many (including me), two versions of large scrapbook-like volumes holding samples of Philadelphia WPA prints from which authorized visitors could make their selections. WOW!!!

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