The papers of Los Angeles Abstract Classicist painter and educator Frederick Hammersley measure 34.75 linear feet and date from circa 1860-2009, bulk 1940-2009. The papers contain biographical materials, 32 diaries, family and professional correspondence, personal business and financial records, estate records, writings, graphic design projects, teaching files, printed materials, scrapbooks, photographs, and works of art.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Los Angeles Abstract Classicist painter and educator Frederick Hammersley measure 34.75 linear feet and date from circa 1860-2009, bulk 1940-2009. The papers contain biographical materials, 32 diaries, family and professional correspondence, personal business and financial records, estate records, writings, graphic design projects, teaching files, printed materials, scrapbooks, photographs, and works of art. 2015 and 2018 additions include a diary possibly written by Hammersley's mother, photograph albums and photographs, sketches and block prints, computer printouts, and hand painted grid color boxes used by Hammersley in teaching color theory.
Biographical materials include resumes and biographies, calendars, military records, family genealogies, school records, high school and college yearbooks, and awards. There are also sound and video recordings of talks, interviews, and television appearances. Scattered materials relating to Hammersley's parents, Anna Westberg Hammersley and Harold Hammersley, are also found in the series.
Correspondence consists of letters from family and close friends as well as business correspondence with collectors and professional art associations. Family correspondents include Hammersley's immediate family and aunts and cousins. Additional noteworthy correspondents include fellow artists Karl Benjamin, William Brice, Robert Chuey, Rico Lebrun, and John McLaughlin, among others.
There are 23 diaries written by Frederick Hammersley dating from 1935-2008, with a gap spanning 1954-1972. Also found are six diaries written by Harold Hammersley dating from 1940-1959 and three by Anna Hammersley from 1909-1965.
Hammersley's writings include college class notes, essays, poetry, lecture notes, grant applications, and proposals. There are also sound recordings of lectures and talks as well as drafts and a final copy of an article published in the journal Leonardo in 1970.
Teaching files consist of class lecture notes, student evaluations, and grade books for classes likely taught at Pomona University and the Chouinard Art Institute.
Graphic design projects contain materials from Hammersley's company Handsome Cards for which he designed greeting and holiday cards. Also included are various freelance designs and draft designs for exhibition catalogs. General financial and business records focus on Hammersley business relationships and transactions with galleries and museums and his efforts to promote his art. Galleries and museums represented in the files include Modernism Gallery (San Francisco), L.A. Louver Gallery (Venice, California), and Hoshour Gallery (Albuquerque). This series also contains tax returns and expense ledgers. Also found are scattered materials from the household of Anna and Harold Hammersley.
Estate records are found for Frederick Hammersley, Susie Hammersley Stone, Anna and Harold Hammersley, Frederick Hammersley Sr., Mrs. E. Hammersley, Maude Eliza Hammersley, Dorothy Hutchinson Hammersley, and Basil Edward Pratt. These files include wills and yearly financial reports.
Printed material consists of newspaper and magazine clippings, exhibition catalogs and announcements, and printed copies of Hammersley's graphic designs. The series is extensive and contains clippings and exhibition material that represents Hammersley's entire career as an artist. Also found are packets of printed materials created by Hammersley to represent the careers of his friends and colleagues.
Scrapbooks consist of eleven "scrapfiles," postcard albums, and clippings scrapbooks created by Frederick Hammersley and Anna Hammersley. Scrapfiles refers to the original title created by the Hammersleys. Frederick's scrapbooks contain clippings of art, criticisms of his work, and news mentions of his career. Anna's scrapbooks contain one postcard album and 4 scrapbooks and scrapfiles of news clippings relating to subjects of her personal interest.
Photographs include snapshots of Hammersley; images of Hammersley with family and friends; travel photographs, many of them taken in Europe during World War II; photographs of exhibitions; and photographs of Hammersley's artwork. Most of the photographs were labeled and dated by Hammersley. There are six photo albums created by Frederick Hammersley and four albums compiled by his parents Harold and Anna Hammersley.
Artwork consists of Hammersley's sketchbooks, drawings, and paintings from high school and college classes, designs for exhibition catalogs, and cards and printouts for his computer drawings series. Also included are geometric color studies on panel and artwork for a bank mural proposal from 1977. Drawings and design work by Susie Stone, Hammersley's sister are also included, as well as two works by Lu Nowels.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 12 series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1919-2008 (2.5 linear feet; Box 1-3, 31, 33, 37)
Series 2: Correspondence, circa 1900-2009 (3.1 linear feet; Box 3-6, 37)
Series 3: Diaries, 1909-2008 (2.1 linear feet; Box 6-8, 37)
Series 4: Writings, Lectures, and Notes, circa 1940-2009 (0.6 linear feet; Box 8-9, 37)
Series 5: Teaching Files, circa 1950-1993 (0.2 linear feet; Box 9)
Series 6: Graphic Design Projects, circa 1945-1980 (0.4 linear feet; Box 9-10, 31)
Series 7: Personal Business and Financial Records, 1897-2008 (3.2 linear feet; Box 10-13, 24, 33, 35, 37)
Series 8: Estate Records, 1898-2001 (0.7 linear feet; Box 13, 24, 37)
Series 9: Printed Material, 1945, 2011 (3.6 linear feet; Box 13-17, 31, 37, 42, OV45)
Series 10: Scrapbooks, circa 1890-1960s (3.3 linear feet; Box 17-18, 25-29)
Series 11: Photographs, circa 1860s-2007 (10.7 linear feet; Box 18-23, 29-31, 37-43)
Series 12: Artwork and Artifacts, 1934-2009 (3.2 linear feet; Box 22, 31-32, 35, 38, 42, 44, OV46-56)
Biographical / Historical:
Painter, graphic designer, and educator Frederick Hammersley (1919-2009) spent most of his career in Los Angeles and New Mexico. He is closely associated with the hard-edge abstraction painting style of the Abstract Classicists of Southern California.
Hammersley was born on January 5, 1919 to Anna Westberg and Harold Hammersley in Salt Lake City, where his father worked for the U.S. Department of the Interior. The family lived in Utah and Idaho before finally settling in San Francisco. Hammersley attended the University of Idaho and later enrolled in the Academy of Advertising Art in San Francisco. In 1940, Hammersley began taking classes at the Chouinard Art Institution in Los Angeles.
Hammersley's studies were interrupted by World War II military service from 1942 to 1946. He was stationed first in Paris as a draftsman in the Signal Corp and was eventually promoted to Army sargeant in the Office of Military Government in Berlin. While in Paris, he visited Picasso's studio several times and also took classes at the Ècole des Beaux Arts at the end of the war. When he returned home in 1946, the GI Bill subsidized his final year of study at Chouinard, now the California Institute of Arts, and three years at the Jepson Art Institute in Los Angeles.
Hammersley made his living as an art professor in California for twenty years, where he taught at the Jepson Art Institute and Pomona College in Claremont. He moved to Albuquerque after accepting a teaching position at the University of New Mexico in 1968. In 1971, Hammersley resigned his teaching position and devoted himself to painting.
Hammersley's reputaton as a painter began in 1948 when one of his small paintings was accepted in an annual exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1958, several of his works were included in the seminal exhibition Four Abstract Classicists, organized by Jules Langsner and Peter Selz and shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Hammersley, and fellow painters Lorser Feitelson, Karl Benjamin, and John McLaughlin, were dubbed the "hard-edged painters," whose style consisted of flat, colored geometric shapes that were a sharp contrast to the more popular Abstract Expressionism. The label stuck and in the mid 1970s, Hammersley submitted several works of art for a show called L.A. Hard Edge, a show that featured art from the 1950s and 1970s.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Hammersley exhibited in several one-man shows, including at L.A. Louver in Venice, California, the Hoshour Gallery in Albuquerque, and the Corcoran in Washington, D.C. In 2000, the Laguna Art Museum presented a traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Sante Fe, and the Pomona College Museum of Art organized a retrospective in 2007. His work is in museum collections across the country, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Hammersley died in 2009 at the age of 90. He was survived by his sister, Susie Hammersley Stone.
Related Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds the Tamara Webster papers relating to Frederick Hammersley.
Provenance:
Frederick Hammersley donated his papers to the Archives of American Art in nine accessions from 1974 to 2008. The Frederick Hammersley Foundation donated additional papers in 2012, 2015, and 2018 via Executive Director Kathleen Shields.
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. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice.
Rights:
The Frederick Hammersley 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.
[Television interviews of Marcella Brenner and Sybil and Robert Meyersburg] [videorecordings] /WETA ; producers and interviewers, Jeffrey Bieber and Jackson Frost, 1987
The papers of Southern California painter Stanton Macdonald-Wright measure 3.2 linear feet and date from 1907 to 1973. The collection contains correspondence with family, friends, and artists, including Morgan Russell, and his wife Suzanne Binon, Michel and Suzanne Seuplor, Ann and John Summerfield, and Bethany Wilson. Also found are writings, six diaries, travel journals, printed materials, and artwork.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Southern California painter Stanton Macdonald-Wright measure 3.2 linear feet and date from 1907 to 1973. The collection contains correspondence with family, friends, and artists, including Morgan Russell, and his wife Suzanne Binon, Michel and Suzanne Seuphor, Ann and John Summerfield, and Bethany Wilson. Also found are writings, six diaries, travel diaries, printed materials, and artwork.
Writings consist of drafts of essays, plays, and book manuscripts. There are drafts of A Treatise on Color with palettes and color wheels, The Basis of Culture, and Macdonald-Wright's autobiography Bittersweet: An Artist's Life.
There are six diaries and numerous travel journals. One diary was written in Paris in 1909 in which Macdonald-Wright muses over the aesthetics of art and his color theories. Five additional disbound diaries cover his life from 1939-1973. Travel diaries date from 1959-1972 and cover trips to Italy, Japan, and Hawaii.
Printed material includes a copy of Les Synchromistes exhibition catalog, a newspaper clipping, and The Future of Painting by Willard Wright. Artwork consists of blueprints for Macdonald-Wright's Synchrome Kineidoscope, a color and light projecting machine first envisioned by Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell as early as 1913 and finally completed in the late 1950s.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 5 series.
Series 1: Correspondence, circa 1907-circa 1972 (0.5 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 2: Writings, 1920-circa 1970 (0.9 linear feet; Box 1-2)
Series 3: Diaries, 1909-1973 (1.3 linear feet; Box 2-3)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1913-1967 (0.3 linear feet; Box 3, OV 4)
Series 5: Artwork, 1969 (0.1 linear feet; Box 3, OV 4)
Biographical / Historical:
Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) was the creator of a modernist style of painting based on pure spectral color known as chromatic abstraction or "Synchromism." He worked in New York and later primarily in Los Angeles.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright was born in 1890 in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1900 the family moved to Santa Monica, California where they ran a seaside hotel. A few years later he took courses at the Art Students League in Los Angeles, studying under Warren T. Huges. His older brother was Willard Huntington Wright, a respected art critic who wrote Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning (1915), upon which he collaborated with his younger brother Stanton, and The Future of Painting (1923), and later became a detective novelist under the name S. S. Van Dine.
At the age of seventeen, Stanton Macdonald-Wright married his first wife and moved to Paris where he immersed himself in European art and studied at the Sorbonne, the Académie Julian, the École des Beaux-Arts, and the Académie Colarossi. While in Europe he also befriended fellow American painter Morgan Russell and the two artists began working closely together. They studied with Canadian painter Percyval Tudor-Hart between 1911 and 1913 and were deeply influenced by their teacher's color theory, which connected the qualities of color to those of music. Together Macdonald-Wright and Russell developed a style of painting based on color and named it "Synchromism." They introduced their work in 1913 at the Der Neue Kuntsalon in Munich and in Paris at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. These exhibitions helped to establish Synchromism as an major influence in modern art well into the 1920s.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell returned to the United States eager to promote their work and theory. It was not long before the two separated, but both continued to work in the Synchromist style. Together, they held one more Synchromist exhibition in New York in 1916 which received significant critical support. Macdonald-Wright also participated in the prestigious 1916 "Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters" in New York and exhibited his work at Alfred Stieglitz's famed 291 gallery in New York in 1917. Yet, financial success evaded him.
Macdonald-Wright moved to Santa Monica in 1918, where he taught and served as director of the Los Angeles Art Students League. In 1924 he published his instructive Treatise on Color. In 1927 he organized another joint exhibition with Morgan Russell at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he also exhibited five years later. He exhibited at the Oakland Art Gallery, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Alfred Stieglitz's An American Place gallery in New York, and the Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles. From 1935 to 1942 Macdonald-Wright served as director of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project for Southern California, followed by a faculty position at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles where he taught for sixteen years.
In the late 1950s, Macdonald-Wright completed the Synchome Kineidoscope, a color and light projecting machine first envisioned by Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell as early as 1913.
Macdonald-Wright traveled extensively throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, spending time in Hawaii, Italy, and Japan. Macdonald-Wright married three times and died in California in 1973, at the age of 83.
This biographical note draws heavily on the Archives of American Art's West Coast Regional Collector Paul Karlstrom's collection description written upon acquisition of the papers.
Related Materials:
The Archives of American Art holds several collections related to the Stanton Macdonald-Wright papers. There is an oral interview of Stanton Macdonald-Wright conducted 1964 Apr. 13-Sept. 16, by Betty Hoag. There are also Stanton Macdonald-Wright Letters to Alan and Fanny Leslie, the Stanton Macdonald-Wright Collection of photographs, Stanton Macdonald-Wright Letters to Morgan Russell, Walter Houk Letters from Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and an Oral History of Stanton Macdonald-Wright by Jeanne M. Marshall for the Voice of America Conducted in 1967.
Separated Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reels LA 1 and LA 5) including a brochure on the Santa Monica Library murals and six photographs of the panels while in Macdonald-Wright's studio. There is also a 1939 exhibition catalog for "Southern California Art Project" a master's thesis on Macdonald-Wright by Dori Jean Watson (1957), and one scrapbook of photographs, clippings, and other printed materials dating from circa 1910-1964. Lent materials were returned to the lender and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
Stanton Macdonald-Wright first loaned materials to the Archives of American Art for microfilming in 1964. David Nellis, a gallery owner, gave the Archives the artist's unpublished autobiography in 1978. His widow, Jean Macdonald-Wright, donated additional papers in 1995 in two seperate installments.
Restrictions:
ACCESS RESTRICTED; use requires written permission. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Stanton Macdonald-Wright 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.
Webster, E. Ambrose (Edwin Ambrose), 1869-1935 Search this
Extent:
2.2 Linear feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographs
Postcards
Notebooks
Notes
Sketches
Scrapbooks
Place:
Chile -- description and travel
Paris (France) -- description and travel
Provincetown (Mass.) -- Description and Travel
Date:
1890-1991
Summary:
The papers of painter Houghton Cranford Smith measure 2.2 linear feet and date from 1890-1991. They consist of eight scrapbooks compiled by his widow containing correspondence with family and friends, biographical materials, sketches, school work, extensive clippings, exhibition catalogs, travel documents and numerous photographs of family and friends.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of painter Houghton Cranford Smith measure 2.2 linear feet and date from 1890-1991. They consist of eight scrapbooks compiled by his widow containing correspondence with family and friends, biographical materials, sketches, school work, extensive clippings, exhibition catalogs, travel documents and numerous photographs of family and friends.
Biographical materials include photographs of Smith, of his artwork and of friends and family in Provincetown and New Mexico, school documents from the Foebel Academy, the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and the Art Students' League, autographed menus, correspondence, including postcards and letters to family and friends sent from Bermuda and Jamaica, customs declarations, exhibition catalogs, newspaper clippings, a passport to Chile, newsletters, and Smith's teaching contract from the University of Kansas. Additionally, there are significant photographs and letters documenting Smith's art studies with E. Ambrose Webster at the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
The collection also includes Smith's correspondence from France and South America. A significant portion of the collection includes papers from his time in France from 1913-1914, where he studied at the Parisian art school Academie Julian. These include a log from a tandem bicycle trip with classmate Harold P. Browne, an invitation to the Bal Randolphe, a Browne Art Class brochure and a narrative entitled "A Party of Fugitives from France," which describes Smith's forced fleeing from France after the French mobilization in 1914. There are also papers describing his South American travels which include notes and correspondence about Argentina, Uruguay and his time in Chile, which spans five years.
Materials documenting Smith's return to France and studies at the Academie Ozenfant from 1926 to 1933 include Smith's passport, ship passenger lists and other travel documents, correspondence with family, French identification letters, exhibition catalogs, newspaper clippings and his Academie Ozenfant list of classes and student card. Of particular note are correspondence from and a picture of Sir Walter Kitchener, governor of Bermuda, and letters from wife Elena Peralta to her parents-in-law. Topics covered in the correspondence of this scrapbook include sons Houghton Jr. and Gerrit and the birth of daughter Florence, financial difficulties, art teachers Amadee Ozenfant and Andree L'hote and the family's travels to Bermuda, New Mexico and New York City.
Materials from later in Smith's life include correspondence from Smith to second wife Laura Gilbert Williams, exhibition catalogs and registers, photographs of artwork, newspaper clippings of reviews received for Smith's exhibited paintings and congratulatory letters from family and friends on Smith's successful exhibits and feature article in The American Artist. Additionally, there is significant correspondence with the Passedoit Gallery, Homer Saint-Gaudens of the Carnegie Institute regarding the exhibition and purchase of Smith's artwork and Smith's gifted painting to the Butler Institute of American Art. Additionally, there are several biographical newspaper articles and a biographical sketch written by his wife Laura after his death.
Of note is the artist's original handwritten notes and final published version of his reminiscence "The Provincetown I Remember," notes about painting with various colors and color charts, related assignments from Smith's Color Theory Class, a signed copy of the book Color by E. Ambrose Webster, Smith's former art teacher, pencil sketches, a class notebook about lettering and an address book.
Arrangement:
As requested by the donor, the original arrangement has been maintained, but the collection has been rehoused for preservation purposes. The collection is arranged as 4 series.
Series 1: Scrapbooks, 1890-1991 (Boxes 1-2; 1.5 linear feet)
Series 2: Writings, 1963-1991 (Box 2; 2 folders)
Series 3: Printed Material, 1916-1991 (Box 2, OV 4; 6 folders)
Series 4: Miscellany, circa 1920s-1977 (Box 2, OV 3; 7 folders)
Biographical Note:
Painter Houghton Cranford Smith (1887-1983) traveled extensively and painted throughout his life. He lived and studied art in France, South America, New York City and Provincetown. He had three children, Houghton Jr., Gerrit and Florence with his first wife, Elena Peralta. He held the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas department of Drawing and Painting from 1921-1925.
Smith became widely recognized for his artwork in the 1940s. He married his second wife, Laura Gilbert Williams, in 1941. He has exhibited at many venues including the Passedoit Gallery, Corcoran Gallery, Richmond Museum, Columbia Art Museum, Walker Memorial Gallery, Art Institute of Kansas City and the Provincetown Art Association. For six consecutive years he was represented at Carnegie Institute's annual invitation exhibition.
Provenance:
Florence Cranford Smith Shepard donated her father's papers in 1993-1994.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Houghton Cranford Smith 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.
Topic:
Painters -- Massachusetts -- Provincetown Search this
The papers of cubist painter Karl Knaths measure 8.9 linear feet and date from 1890 to 1973, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1922 to 1971. The collection includes biographical material, personal and professional correspondence, four diaries, 22 notebooks and notes on theoretical color and compositional approaches to painting, published and draft copies of essays on art, miscellaneous printed material, 132 sketchbooks and other artwork.
Scope and Contents note:
The papers of cubist painter Karl Knaths measure 8.9 linear feet and date from 1890 to 1973, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1922 to 1971. The collection includes biographical material, personal and professional correspondence, four diaries, 22 notebooks and notes on theoretical color and compositional approaches to painting, published and draft copies of essays on art, miscellaneous printed material, and 132 sketchbooks and additional artwork.
Biographical material consists of a copy of Knaths's curriculum vitae, a press release, and miscellaneous personal financial records.
Correspondence in the collection documents Knaths's relationships with family, friends, and business associates after his move to Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1919. Notable correspondents include Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, artist Joseph Meierhans, and the gallery Paul Rosenberg and Co.
The papers include three of Knaths's personal diaries (1916-1919, 1948) and a diary written by F.A. Mehler in 1890. Additional writings include lecture notes from classes that Knaths both attended and taught; 22 notebooks that explore his interest in articulating a color and compositional theory of painting; loose notes on various artists, projects, and facets of painting; several of his completed essays on art, including "Decorative Material" and "Pictorial Analysis;" and a draft of his unpublished manuscript "Ornament and Glory." Writings by others include 15 lecture transcripts from courses taught by Hans Hofmann during the 1930s, Knaths's translations of essays by Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevitch, and Carl Einstein, and a biographical essay on Karl Knaths by Paul Mocsanyi.
Printed materials in the collection include clippings, exhibition catalogs, and programs related to Knaths's one-man exhibitions and group shows, and the books Syracuse University Centennial Collection of Art (1970) and Karl Knaths: Five Decades of Painting (1973).
The bulk of the collection consists of 132 sketchbooks and additional artwork. Sketchbooks date from the 1920s to the 1970s and document Knaths's early figurative and landscape studies and later explorations of cubist style and compositional experiments with color, line, and form. Additional artwork includes numerous color charts and diagrams that Knaths kept to inform his painting color palette; outlines of compositional works on both graphed and regular paper; loose pencil sketches and pastels of figures, landscapes, and compositional experiments; and finished paintings and prints.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged as 6 series:
Series 1: Biographical Material, circa 1950s-1971 (Box 1, 8; 6 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1923-1971 (Box 1; .5 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1890, 1916-1968 (Boxes 1-3, 8, OV 14, OV 19; 2 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Material, circa 1920s-1973 (Box 3, OV 19; 10 folders)
Series 5: Sketchbooks, circa 1920s-1970s (Boxes 3-6, 9-13; 4.5 linear feet)
Series 6: Artwork, circa 1920s-1970s (Box 6, 13, OV 15-18, OV 20-22; 1.8 linear feet)
Biographical/Historical note:
Karl Knaths (1891-1971), born Otto G. Knaths, lived and worked in Provincetown, Massachusetts and was known for his cubist style of painting.
Knaths was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in his early twenties. The 1913 Armory Show provided his first major encounter with modernist art styles and the works of Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh. In 1919, Knaths moved to Provincetown and began to explore cubist perspectives in his own work, which drew much of its inspiration from the fishing culture and landscapes of his Cape Cod environs. Intellectually curious and drawn to art theory, Knaths recorded his thoughts on composition rules, color classifications, and the potential intersections between music, space, and color theory in notebooks, notes, and sketchbooks throughout his career.
The patronage of art collector Duncan Phillips led to Knaths's first one-man show at the Phillips Collection in 1929. The following year, he landed a solo show at New York's Daniel Gallery. Knaths joined the Works Progress Administration in 1934 and painted murals and other works for a year and a half. From 1938 to 1950, he also taught painting and art theory during a six week course held at the Phillips Art School, and was a guest lecturer at Black Mountain College, North Carolina (1944) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (1948). From 1945 to 1971, he was represented by the art gallery Paul Rosenberg and Co. Knaths died in 1971 in his home in Provincetown, at the age of 80.
Related Archival Materials note:
The Archives of American Art holds one oral history interview with Karl Knaths conducted by Dorothy Seckler in 1962; a transcript of a 1968 lecture delivered by Knaths at the Provincetown Art Association in Provincetown, Massachusetts; and a 1955 video recording documenting Knaths's Cape Cod influenced artwork, directed by Jack Calderwood.
Separated Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reel D81) including one sketchbook. Lent materials were returned to the lender and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
In 1962, Karl Knaths lent the Archives of American Art a sketchbook and a selection of papers for microfilming. Upon Knath's death in 1972, these papers, excluding the sketchbook, along with additional materials, were willed to the Archives. His executor, Kenneth Desmarais, donated additional material from Knaths's estate in 1977 and 1980.
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 Karl Knaths 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.
[Television interviews of Marcella Brenner and Sybil and Robert Meyersburg] [videorecordings] /WETA ; producers and interviewers, Jeffrey Bieber and Jackson Frost
Unedited interviews produced for a WETA public television program "Washington Colorists," including one of Marcella Brenner (4 videocassettes) concerning her husband, painter Morris Louis, conducted by Jackson Frost, and one of artists Sybil and Robert Meyersburg conducted by Jeffrey Bieber. The program aired April 15, 1987.
Publication, Distribution, Etc. (Imprint):
Washington, D.C. : WETA, 1987.
Provenance:
Donated 1989 by Sybil Meyersburg.
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:
Authorization to quote, publish, or reproduce must be obtained from GWETA (Greater Washington Educational Television Association).
Topic:
Painting, Modern -- 20th century -- Washington (D.C.) Search this
An interview of Herbert Bayer conducted 1981 November 3-1982 March 10, by Arthur Cohen, for the Archives of American Art.
Bayer speaks of his family background and early influences in art and painting, his education and experiences at the Bauhaus school, studies under Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and his friendship with Marcel Breuer. Bayer also tells of fleeing from Nazi Germany and of his travels in Italy. He concludes the interview with a discussion of his theories of color, the relation of surrealism to his work, the influence of architecture upon his work, the beginning of his interest in sculpture, the relationship of landscape to culture, mathematics and its relationship to painting, and the role of metaphysics in his life.
Biographical / Historical:
Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) was a painter, sculptor, and architect of Montecito, California.
General:
Originally recorded on 5 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 9 digital wav files. Duration is 6 hr., 44 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are part of the Archives' 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 others.
0.2 Linear feet ((78 items on partial microfilm reel))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Place:
India -- Description and Travel -- views
Date:
1940-1965
Scope and Contents:
A biographical sketch; correspondence, including letters from Abel to his wife, 1943-1945, many with drawings and sketches; photographs of Abel's ten India series paintings, painted while he was stationed there in 1945, with descriptions of their symbolism; notes on color theory; a list of his paintings; his military record and certificate; two articles; 14 clippings; and a memorial booklet written by Norwood Chamberlin.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter, printmaker; Cincinnati, Ohio.
Provenance:
Donated 1974 by Mrs. Marcella Braunstein widow of Abel.
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.
The pigments and mediums of the old masters with a special chapter on microphotographic study of brushwork by A. P. Laurie
Author:
Laurie, A. P (Arthur Pillans) 1861-1949 http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr95021950 http://viaf.org/viaf/18003890 Search this
Artist Wanda Aikens - Executive Director of Ward 7 Arts Collaborative - talks about the artistic endeavors of her parents and grandparents, and her early art experiences. She explains the importance of art and her family's deep appreciation for the arts. Aikens talks about her creative process, her research process, and her thoughts on color and the use of color in art. She describes her artwork; and her interest in rocks, nature, mother nature, trees; and how color travels through nature. She explains what people appreciate and do not appreciate about art. Aikens talks about securing funding and nonprofit status for the organization, Ward 7 Arts Collaborative, which is an arts collaborative with the mission is to build capacity in the community and build community in the arts. Aikens talks about the diversity of skills, education, techniques, media, types, and styles of the Ward 7 artists. She discusses the challenges in helping an underserved community to understand their self-worth and the importance of art as well as the work involved in gaining the interest and investment of the community. Aikens describes the public art in Marvin Gaye Park, at Nannie Helen Burroughs School, and on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue as well as a mural by Rick Freeman. As a teacher and administrator at IDEA Public Charter School, Aikens also talks about working with high school students, and the importance of sharing to learn from one another.
Interview. Dated 20110317.
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