The papers of artist and art teacher Victor Mikhail Arnautoff measure 3.3 linear feet and date from 1920 to 2017 with the bulk of the material dating from the 1920 to 1953. The collection contains biographical material such as marriage certificates, passports, naturalization certificates, and an Arnautoff family history; correspondence between family members, as well as with colleagues including Diego Rivera, and with institutions concerning Arnautoff's work; writings about Arnautoff and others, including his statement regarding the House Un-American Activities Committee Hearing; professional records related to mural projects and exhibitions of Arnautoff's work; and printed material including exhibition announcements and catalogs, clippings, and On the Drumhead by Mike Quin, illustrated by Victor Arnautoff. Also included are a scrapbook containing correspondence, printed material, and photographs highlighting Arnautoff's career with particular emphasis on the controversy surrounding his Dix McSmear lithograph, as well as photographic material depicting Arnautoff, other individuals, and works of art. The bulk of the collection is made up of artwork, including sketches, a sketchbook, watercolors, and prints.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged in eight series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1920-1952, 1961-1979, 1995-1997 (Box 1; 0.1 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, circa 1923-2008 (Box 1; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1956, circa 1984-2006 (Box 1; 5 folders)
Series 4: Professional Records, 1940-1953, 1963-2004 (Box 1, OV 5; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 5: Printed Material, 1923-1998, 2007-2017 (Boxes 1-2, OV 5; 0.6 linear feet)
Series 6: Scrapbook, 1928-1968, 1979-1981 (Bound Volume 4; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 7: Photographic Material, circa 1920s-circa 1960s, 2015 (Box 2; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 8: Artwork, circa 1920s-circa 1950s (Boxes 2-3, OVs 6-13; 1.4 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Victor Mikhail Arnautoff (1896-1979) was an artist and art teacher known for his murals. Arnautoff was born in the Ukraine and served in the Russian army during World War I. After a defeat in Siberia, he crossed into China, where he remained for five years. In China he met and married his wife Lydia, and they had their first two sons.
In 1925 Arnautoff went to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts. He continued with his family to Mexico in 1929 and became an assistant to muralist Diego Rivera. While in Mexico, his third son was born, and Arnautoff met Bernard Zakheim, with whom he would later work on the Coit Tower murals. Arnautoff and his family returned to San Francisco in 1931 and in 1934 he was chosen to paint one of the murals at the Coit Tower with funding from the Public Works of Art Project. Arnautoff was one of the most prolific muralists in San Francisco in the 1930s, completing murals at Coit Tower and the Palo Alto Clinic, as well as the Presidio chapel, George Washington High School, and the California School of Fine Arts library. He also painted murals at five post offices in California and Texas.
Arnautoff began teaching at the California School of Fine Arts in 1936. He taught at Stanford from 1938 to 1962 and also taught art courses at the California Labor School.
Following the death of his wife in 1961, Arnautoff retired from teaching at Stanford and returned to the Soviet Union in 1963. While living there he continued to create works of art and published a memoir. He died in Leningrad in 1979.
Provenance:
The Victor Mikhail Arnautoff papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in 1983 by Jacob and Vasily Arnautoff, Victor Arnautoff's sons. Additional papers were donated in 2018 by Michael and Peter Arnautoff, Victor Arnautoff's son and grandson, and by Robert Cherney, a scholar who wrote a book about Arnautoff.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center.
Occupation:
Art teachers -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Topic:
Artists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Muralists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Genre/Form:
Sketchbooks
Drawings
Scrapbooks
Citation:
Victor Mikhail Arnautoff papers, 1920-2017, bulk 1920-1953. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by Gerald and Bente Buck.
An interview of Leo Holub conducted 1997 July 3, by Paul Karlstrom, for the Archives of American Art, in San Francisco, Calif.
Holub discusses his background, being born in Arkansas, moving to New Mexico, and then to Oakland, Calif. (1923); early educational experiences in Oakland, and later at the Art Institute of Chicago; seeing Edward Weston's photographic work at an exhibition in Chicago, and admiring Weston's nude studies of Charis Wilson; his return to the Bay Area; his studio on Montgomery St. (Monkey Block); meeting painter Matthew Barnes, who had assisted Diego Rivera with his murals at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), 1931-1932; his experiences as a student at CSFA- its program and instructors which included Maurice Sterne, Gottardo Piazzoni, Lee Randolph, Dick Hackett, Otis Oldfield, William Gaw, Spencer Mackey, and Victor Arnautoff; fellow students including Hassel Smith, Ed Corbett, and Florence Michelson (his future wife); and his beginning awareness of modernism.
Holub discusses his involvement with the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939); apprenticeship with industrial designer Joe Sinel and the advent of the product design era; his founding of Design Development Associates, and staying only a year before moving to Grass Valley, Calif. for his son's health; his return to the Bay Area, succeeding Emmy Lou Packard at the San Francisco Planning Office graphic arts dept.; working at the housing agency and redevelopment agency and as chief designer for the Bay Area Rapid Transit report.
He recalls his encounter with Ansel Adams at the 1955 Yosemite workshop where Holub produced a pictorial map of Yosemite; Adam's "zone system" of exposing for shadows and developing for highlights; going on to teach at CSFA (1955-1957), where Imogen Cunningham was a guest instructor; Minor White replacing him; his ten years at Stanford University's planning office (1960-1970); his campus views "Stanford Scene" that were used by the university to appeal for more space for the art dept., and his shows at Stanford's art gallery in 1964 and at the Washington, D.C. home of Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980.
Biographical / Historical:
Leo Holub (1916-2010) was a photographer, lithographer, and teacher from San Francisco, Calif.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics, and administrators. Other interviewees in the Art Schools in California Oral History Project include: Emerson Woelffer, Charles Linder, Paul Carey (1993), and Paul Carey and Stephanie Caloia (1997), with funding provided by the Bente and Gerald E. Buck Collection.
Topic:
Photographers -- California -- San Francisco -- Interviews Search this
Art -- Study and teaching -- California Search this
8.5 Linear feet ((partially microfilmed on 11 reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Date:
1896-1987
Scope and Contents:
Correspondence, photographs, exhibition materials, scrapbooks, journals, printed matter, essays, gallery records and other business records, and miscellaneous papers.
REELS 3799-3806: A resume; a travel journal; an address book; appointment books; passports for Marcelle Labaudt; correspondence, including 3 illustrated Christmas cards from Walt Kuhn and letters from Edward Rowan about Lucien Labaudt's murals for the Los Angeles post office for the Section of Fine Arts; notes on costume design, geometry, and metric color scales; writings by Lucien Labaudt, including "Color Constructions--Opticolormetry", 1940; 4 sketchbooks and 70 sketches by Labaudt; prints and drawings by others; scrapbook on history of costume design; announcements; programs; reproductions; printed material concerning Labaudt's California School of Design; records of the San Francisco Women Artists organization; minutes of the Artists' Council kept by Marcelle Labaudt; artist files; guest registers; ledgers 1929 and 1939-1949, and financial records, 1943-1980, for the Lucien Labaudt Art Gallery; clippings; photographs of Labaudt's family, 1911-1981; of works of art, 1913-1968; and stage and costume design.
REEL 1052: Correspondence relating to the Lucien Labaudt Art Gallery and to Lucien and Marcelle; photographs (many undated and unidentified) of a gallery opening, 1950 of Max Hages, two paintings by Fred Martin, and two by R. Kaess; manuscript material; biographical material on artists who exhibited at the gallery; catalogs and announcements; printed material; and clippings.
REEL 1854: Photographs, 1920-1940 of: Labaudt; Labauadt working on Beach Chalet Murals; at the Bohemian Club Grove with C. Ford, Arnautoff, Otis Oldfield, Moya del Pino, Sotomayer, Timothy Pflueger, William Gerstle, and Diego Rivera; with Adeline Kent; with Marcelle and André Ferier; costumes and sets designed by Labaudt; and paintings and murals by Labaudt. Also included are 173 personal and business letters, 1923-1975; sketches; manuscripts, including essays about Labaudt by Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Lorser Feitelson; a scrapbook; business records; catalogs and announcements; clippings and other printed matter. Correspondents include: Edward Biberman, Lorser Feitelson, Walt Kuhn, Fernand Leger, Charmain London (Mrs. Jack), Henri Matisse, Marthe and Amedee Ozenfant, Timothy L. Pflueger and Edward Rowan.
UNMICROFILMED: Biographical material regarding Marcelle Labaudt's education; correspondence, 1901-1979, with friends and associates, including Alvyne Maisonneuve, Yliane Remy, Henry and Ann Varnum Poor, Charmian London, Millard Sheets and Richard Diebenkorn (1 letter, 1950); Marcelle Labaudt's travel diary kept on a trip to France, undated; art works, undated, including a sketchbook and illustrated letter by Lucien and an unsigned print; exhibition catalogs and clippings regarding the Lucien Labaudt Art Gallery; photographs, slides and negatives, 1896-1976, of friends, family and art works, and an album of photographs of Lucien's works of art.
Biographical / Historical:
Lucien Labaudt was a painter, muralist, costume and set designer. He also ran a commercial art school called the California School of Design. After his death in 1943, on assignment as a war artist correspondent, his wife, Marcelle Labaudt, established the Lucien Labaudt Art Gallery in San Francisco, California. She specialized in giving younger or relatively unknown artists their first exhibitions and operated the gallery until 1980.
Provenance:
Donated by Marcelle Labaudt 1974-1976, and after her death by her estate through her step-sister and executor, Simone M. Berges, 1984. After Berges' death in 1988, an additional installment was received via Berges' sister-in-law, Jill Alexander.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
An interview of Wilma Harris conducted by Mary McChesney on 1964 Apr. 22 for the Archives of American Art.
Harris speaks of her background and art education at the California School of Fine Arts; the Federal Art Project weaving project in San Francisco and her involvement in it. She recalls Victor Arnautoff and Beniamino Bufano.
Biographical / Historical:
Weaver; California.
General:
The recording ends before the conclusion of the interview.
Provenance:
Conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
The papers of sculptor and painter Brents Carlton measure 4.7 linear feet and 0.528 GB and date from 1903 through 2014. The collection consists of biographical material, correspondence, personal business records, notes, a scrapbook, exhibition files, art work, photographs, digital photographs, and printed material.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of sculptor and painter Brents Carlton measure 4.7 linear feet and 0.528 GB and date from 1903 through 2014. The collection consists of biographical material, correspondence, personal business records, notes, a scrapbook, exhibition files, art work, photographs, digital photographs, and printed material.
Biographical materials include several autobiographical accounts, school-related materials, a student card from the Art Students' League, and other identification cards.
Correspondence consists primarily of letters from family members and colleagues, including letters from Victor Arnautoff, H. Mallette Dean, Margaret De Patta, Eugen Neuhaus, Dale Nichols, and Judson T. Smith.
Personal business records include bank passbooks, pharmacy licensing records, receipts, income tax records, and ledgers of income, expenses, and art work sold.
Notes consists of Brents Carlton's address book, notebooks, and meeting minutes, as well as notes written by his daughter Carrie Carlton Helser.
There is one scrapbook. Exhibition files include correspondence, notes, photographs, and printed material related to the Golden Gate International Exhibition and other shows. There are also sketches, drawings, and prints by Carlton in the artwork series.
Photographic material includes an album, slides, negatives, and prints depicting Brents Carlton and his artwork, friends, family, and studios.
Printed material includes magazines, brochures, catalogs, and clippings.
A 2015 addition to the Brents Carlton papers includes additional biographical material, correspondence, personal business records, photographic material, and printed material.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 10 series. Series 10 consists of a 2015 addition to the papers that was not integrated into the other series, although there are similar types of materials.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1921-1944 (0.1 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1922-1987 (0.2 linear feet; Boxes 1, 6)
Series 3: Personal Business Records, 1924-1959 (0.2 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 4: Notes, circa 1923-2009 (0.1 linear feet; Boxes 1, 6, 0.013 GB; ER01)
Series 5: Scrapbook, 1928-1962 (0.2 linear feet; Box 6)
Series 6: Exhibition Files, 1927-1983 (0.3 linear feet; Box 1, OV 8)
Series 7: Art Work, 1924-1962 (0.3 linear feet; Box 1, 6, OV 8)
Series 8: Photographs, 1923-circa 1960 (0.6 linear feet; Boxes 1-2, 6-7)
Series 9: Printed Material, 1923-2012 (0.2 linear feet; Box 2)
Series 10: 2015 Addition to the Brents Carlton Papers, 1903-2014 (2.3 linear feet; Boxes 2-5, 7, 0.515 GB; ER02-ER03)
Biographical / Historical:
Brents Carlton was a sculptor and painter who worked primarily in San Francisco, California.
Brents Carlton was born on October 31, 1903, in Roswell, New Mexico; his family later moved to Arkansas. In 1924, Carlton moved to San Francisco to attend the California School of Fine Arts for four years. From 1928 to 1929, he studied under a scholarship at the Art Students' League in New York, after which he returned to San Francisco and established his own studio at Polk Street. In order to support his family, Carlton was also employed as a pharmacist for 30 years.
In 1937, Carlton moved to a studio on Montgomery Street. In 1938, Carlton was commissioned to create four of his most notable works for the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940) on Treasure Island: two large cast concrete figures for the Fountain of Western Waters at the Court of Pacifica, and two 18-foot bas-relief figures for the façade of the California State Building. He married Jessie Bosworth in 1939 and they had a daughter Carrie.
In the mid-1940s, Carlton relocated to a new studio above the pharmacy on Mission Street, where he worked. Due to failing health in the late 1950s, Carlton switched from sculpture to painting. Brents Carlton died of cancer on September 6, 1962 in San Francisco. His works have been exhibited in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Oakland Art Gallery, and the San Francisco Museum.
Provenance:
The Brents Carlton papers were donated by the artist's daughter Carrie Carlton Helser in 1991 and 2015.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Brents Carlton papers are owned by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Literary rights as possessed by the donor have been dedicated to public use for research, study, and scholarship. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
United States -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1945 -- California -- San Francisco
United States -- Social conditions -- 1933-1945 -- California -- San Francisco
Date:
1936-1937
Scope and Contents:
Twenty volumes of the publication, CALIFORNIA ART RESEARCH, containing monographs on artists whose principal residence was San Francisco.
REEL NDA/Cal 1: Artists include Robert Aitken, Arthur Atkins, Albert Bierstadt, Ray Boynton, Anne Bremer, Henry J. Breuer, Giuseppe Cadenasso, Emil Carlsen, M. Earl Cummings, Rinaldo Cuneo, Charles Dickman, Maynard Dixon, Charles Grant, Armin Hansen, H. W. Hansen, Thomas Hill, Christian Jorgensen, Amedee Joullin, William Keith, Constance Macky, Xavier Martinez, Arthur Mathews, Francis McComas, Arthur C. Nahl, Charles C. Nahl, Hugo W. A. Nahl, Perham W. Nahl, Virgil T. Nahl, Ernest Peixotto, Charles R. Peters, Gottardo Piazzoni, Horatio Nelson Poole, Arthur Putnam, Joseph Raphael, Mary C. Richardson, Julian Rix, Charles D. Robinson, Toby Rosenthal, Will Sparks,Jules Tavernier, Douglas Tilden, Domenico Tojetti, Frank Van Sloun, Thaddeus Welch, Virgil Williams, Evelyn A. Withrow, and Theodore Wores.
REEL NDA/Cal 2: Artists include Rowena M. Abdy, Gertrude Albright, Hermann O. Albright, Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Matthew R. Barne s, Frank Bergman, Jane Berlandina, Ray Bethers, Beniamino Bufano, Margaret Bruton, Chee Chin, Ruth Cravath, Helen Forbes, Euphemia C. Fortune, William Gaw, Edith Hamlin, William Hesthal, Clark Hobart, Charles Howard, John G. Howard, John L. Howard, Robert Boardman Howard, Adaline Kent, Dong Kingman, Lucien Labaudt, Spencer Mackey, Jo Mora, Jose Moya del Pino, Chiura Obata, Otis Oldfield, Julius Pommer, George B. Post, Dorothy W. Puccinelli, Raimondo Puccinelli, Lee F. Randolph, Andree Rexroth, Matteo Sandona, Geneve R. Sargeant, Sergey J. Scherbakoff,Jacques Schnier, Yoshida Sekido, Joseph M. Sheridan,Ralph Stackpole, and Bernard Zakheim.
Biographical / Historical:
Publication of the Works Progress Administration; San Francisco, Calif. Sponsored by Dr. Walter Heil of the M.H. de Young Museum. Was originally a joint project of the WPA-Statistical projects division and the WPA-Federal Art Project in order to disseminate information about artists and art in the San Francisco region.
Publication, Distribution, Etc. (Imprint):
San Francisco, WPA Project 2874, 1936-1937.
Provenance:
Provenance unknown.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
Occupation:
Artists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Topic:
New Deal, 1933-1939 -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Federal aid to the arts -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Federal aid to the public welfare -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Art and state -- California -- San Francisco Search this
An interview of José Moya del Pino conducted 1964 Sept. 10, by Mary McChesney, for the New Deal and the Arts Oral History Project.
Moya del Pino speaks of his youth in Spain, and his education in Rome and in Paris; meeting Matisse; moving to San Francisco and taking up portraiture there; starting with the Federal Art Project (FAP) and working on a mural at Coit Tower; political problems with the murals and other work done under the FAP; painting a mural in a post office in Alpine, Tex., and other murals; how work was assigned; his mural for the Social Security Building in Washington, D.C.; and his feelings about government support for the arts and how it should be administered. He recalls Diego Rivera and Victor Arnautoff.
Biographical / Historical:
José Moya del Pino (1891-1969) was a painter and mural painter from Calif.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hrs., 57 min.
Provenance:
Conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Topic:
Coit Memorial Tower (San Francisco, Calif.) Search this
An interview of Richard Ayer conducted 1964 September 26, by Mary McChesney, for the Archives of American Art New Deal and the Arts Project.
Ayer speaks of his "haphazard" education, including study with Hilaire Hiler; his work assisting Victor Mikhail Arnautoff on frescos in the Presidio Chapel; the WPA easel painting project in San Francisco; and the Aquatic Park Building mural program, 1934. He recalls some of the artists associated with the Aquatic Park project. He also discusses the Ostwald and Hiler color theories and Herman Volz's mural for the Treasure Island Federal Building.
Biographical / Historical:
Richard Ayer (1909-1967) was a mural painter from San Francisco, California.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 52 min.
Provenance:
This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Research and teaching files relating to murals, painted ca. 1933-1966, many for the Public Works of Art Project and Department of the Treasury, and muralists, consisting mainly of two-card indexes listing murals by city and by artist; miscellaneous files on more than 50 artists, many of whom are muralists; a seminar paper by Watrous, "Nineteenth Century Criticism of Degas"; and photographs of murals by Victor Arnautoff, Frank Bergman, John Ballator, Jose Moya Del Pino, and Paul Sample.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter, mural painter, art historian; Madison, Wisc. Full name is James Scales Watrous.
Provenance:
Donated 1966 by James Watrous.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Art historians -- Wisconsin -- Madison Search this
This series consists of identification documentation such as birth, marriage, and death certificates, passports, visas, and naturalization certificates. Also found are an Arnautoff family history, which includes a family tree for Leonid Arnautov and Elga Aše, as well as obituaries.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center.
Collection Citation:
Victor Mikhail Arnautoff papers, 1920-2017, bulk 1920-1953. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by Gerald and Bente Buck.
