Interview of Thomas Hart Benton conducted 1973 July 23-24, by Paul Cummings, for the Archives of American Art. Benton speaks of his childhood in Missouri and Washington, D.C., working as a newspaper cartoonist, and classes at the Chicago Art Institute (1907-1908) and the Academie Julian in Paris (1908). He discusses the New York art world, painting scenes for silent movies, the "Stieglitz Society," the synchromist and regionalist movements, John Weichsel and the People's Art Guild, teaching at the Art Students League and the Kansas City Art Institute, murals and mural techniques, lithographic illustrations, drawings, and World War II propaganda posters. He recalls Thomas Craven, Rex Ingram, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Jackson Pollock, Alma Reed, Boardman Robinson, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) was a painter and mural painter.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 4 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hr., 46 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are 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 others.
The collection documents the career of Bolivian born painter and illustrator, Antonio Sotomayor, his interest in Latin American art and artists, and his association with the San Francisco arts community. Materials found in the collection include letters, writings, sketches and sketchbooks, printed material and photographs.
Scope and Content Note:
The collection documents the career of Bolivian born painter and illustrator, Antonio Sotomayor, his interest in Latin American art and artists, and his association with the San Francisco arts community.
The collection consists primarily of correspondence, writings, artwork, printed material, and photographs documenting Sotomayor's career, his interest in Latin American art and artists, and his association with the San Francisco arts community.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as six series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1931-1988, undated (box 1, 21 folders)
Series 2: Writings, 1932-1946, undated (box 1, 11 folders)
Series 3: Artwork, 1935, undated (box 1, 23 folders)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1935-1987 (boxes 1-2, 12 folders)
Series 5: Photographs, circa 1920-1984, undated (box 2, 13 folders)
Series 6: Oversized Material, 1941, 1958, undated (2 OV folders)
Biographical Note:
Antonio Sotomayor was born in Bolvia and came to San Francisco in 1923. He was educated at the Escuela de Belleas Arts in La Paz and the Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco. Primarily known for his murals and paintings, Sotomayor was also an illustrator, caricaturist, designer, ceramicist, and educator. Over the course of his career his work was exhibited in the United States, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and South America and he became known as the popular "artist laureate" of San Francisco where he lived with his wife, Grace. He died of cancer in 1985 at the age of 82.
Provenance:
The Antonio Sotomayor papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by Grace Sotomayor in 1998.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research. Patrons must use microfilm copy.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Painters -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Cartoonists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Topic:
Muralists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
The papers of Cuban born painter, sculptor, cartoonist, and illustrator Enrique Riverón measure 3.3 linear feet and date from 1918-1990s. The collection contains correspondence, writings, diary entries, scrapbooks, printed material, and photographs documenting Riverón's career as an illustrator, cartoonist, painter and sculptor in the United States and Cuba and, to a lesser extent, Riverón's teaching career at Wichita University in Kansas.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of Cuban born painter, sculptor, cartoonist, and illustrator Enrique Riverón measure 3.3 linear feet, date from 1918-1990s and document Riverón's career as an illustrator, cartoonist, painter and sculptor in the United States and Cuba and, to a lesser extent, his teaching career at Wichita University in Kansas. The collection includes correspondence, the majority of which concerns Riverón's exhibitions; writings, primarily Riverón's recollections of his trips to Paris and Madrid and his memories of people he met in Latin America, Europe, and the United States; printed material documenting exhibitions and Riverón's work for magazines such as Cine-Mudial and Bally-Hoo; and photographs.
Arrangement:
The collection is organized into eight series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, circa 1929-1960 (Box 1; 2 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1918-1991 (box 1, 0.6 ft.)
Series 3: Writings, 1923-1980s, undated (box 1, 0.2 ft.)
Series 4: Scrapbooks, 1920s-1990s, undated (boxes 1, 3, and 4, 0.7 ft.)
Series 5: Artwork, 1958-1983, undated (boxes 1 and 5, 0.4 ft.)
Series 6: Printed Material, circa 1930-1992 (boxes 2 and 5, 0.7 ft.)
Series 7: Photographs, 1918-1992, undated (boxes 2, 5 and 6, 0.6 ft.)
Series 8: Miscellany, 1927-1989, undated (box 6, 7 folders)
Biographical Note:
Painter, sculptor, cartoonist, and illustrator Enrique Riverón was born in 1902 in Cienfuegos, Cuba and belonged to the first generation of Cuban modernists, experimenting with Cubism and pursuing abstraction from very early on in his career. During his early twenties Riverón traveled to France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain to study under scholarships and attend the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. In 1926 Riverón's first major one-man exhibition took place at the Association Paris Amerique Latine where the catalog introduction was written by noted Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes.
In 1927 Riverón returned to Havana and had a one-man show of his European work at the Asociación de Pintores y Escultores, as well as several other shows in Havana and New York. He moved to the United States in 1930 and became a United States citizen in 1943.
In addition to being known for his naturalistic drawings of street life in Paris and Cuba, Riverón began working with collage in the 1930s and was, for a number of years, a cartoonist for newspapers in Havana and other publications such as The New Yorker and Cine Mundial which was published in New York and widely circulated in Latin America. He also worked in Hollywood for a time as an illustrator for Walt Disney Pictures.
From 1940 on, Riverón focused on painting and sculpture. He moved to Miami from Wichita, Kansas, in 1964. Enrique Riverón died in 1998.
Related Material:
The Archives of American Art also has a collection of Enrique Riverón letters to Mario Carreño, 1981-1990, in which Riverón writes of their mutual friends, his memories of Cuba, health issues, politics, pricing paintings, collages, and his longings for Paris and New York.
Provenance:
The Enrique Riverón papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by Patricia Riverón Lee, daughter of Riverón, in 1996.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research. Use requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
The bulk of the correspondence (approximately 75 percent) is written to Frederic Newlin Price, W. Frank Purdy and Ferargil Galleries by artists, dealers, and museums and other art and educational institutions. Artist correspondence is well represented with a significant number of letters from, or relating to, artists represented by the gallery including Bartlett Arkell, Randall Davey, Hunt Diedrich, Ernest Lawson, Agnes Potter Lowrie, Barse Miller, Maxfield Parrish, John Pike, Paul Sample, Wells M. Sawyer, and many others. Some correspondence relating to Price's involvement with Swarthmore College can also be found here.
Found at the end of the incoming correspondence is a folder relating to an exhibition "The Circus Comes to Ferargil Galleries," and a folder of circa 19 letters regarding the authentication and disposition of Gilbert Stuart's Lansdowne portrait of George Washington.
Outgoing correspondence consists primarily of copies of letters and memoranda written in response to the incoming material. The bulk of the outgoing correspondence ends in 1956 with one letter each from 1958 and 1963.
See Appendix for a partial list of correspondents in Series 1, noting illustrated letters.
Arrangement note:
Incoming correspondence is arranged alphabetically by correspondent; outgoing correspondence follows, and is arranged chronologically.
Appendix: Partial List of Correspondents in Series 1:
Addision Gallery of American Art
Addison, Walter
Aiken, Charles Avery
American Artists Group, Inc.
Anderson, Karl
Anderson, C. W.
Andrews, Charles Sperry (includes illustrated letter)
Arms, John Taylor
Art Institute of Chicago
Ashe, Edmund Marion
Ashton, Leonard C.
Bassett, Richard
Benton, Thomas Hart and Rita Piacenza Benton
Beresford, Virginia
Bok, Hannes (includes illustrated letters)
Bower, Alexander
Bragdon, Claude
Braun, Edith E.
Brewer, Floyd E.
Brooklyn Museum
Brooks, Alfred Mansfield
Bye, Arthur Edwin
Byerley, Blanche A.
Buell, Alice Standish
Buller, Audrey
Butterlin, Otto
Calder, Alexander Stirling
Campbell, Charles
Cantine, Jo
Carlsen, Emil
Carrigan, William
Cheney, Russell
Clark, Eliot
Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts
Comito, Nicholas
Conner, John R.
Cortissoz, Royal
Crane, Bruce
Crowninshield, Frank
Curry, John Steuart
Daingerfield, Elliott
Davenport, Carson
Davey, Randall
Davies, Arthur B.
Julius Delbos
Diederich, Hunt (includes illustrated letters)
Dike, Phil
Dix, John A.
Dodd, Lamar
Dows, Olin
Dyson, Will
Edie, Stuart
Eilshemius, Louis M. (illustrated letter)
Epstein, Jacob
Faulkner, Barry
Folinsbee, John F.
Ford, Julia Ellsworth
Ford, Lauren
Freed, Ernest (includes illustrated letter)
Gantt, James B.
Gill, Sue May
Gramatky, Hardy
Hale, Philip L.
Hamlin, Genevieve
Hartley, Russell
Hartmann, Sadakihi
Haseltine, Herbert
Healy, Arthur K.D.
Heinz, Charles L.
Herpst, Martha
Hesketh, E.
Hills, Laura C.
Hoffman, Malvina
Hollingsworth, Jr., William
Holt, Jr., Henry
Hopkinson, Charles
Hoyt, Edith
Humphrey, Eleanor B.
Hurd, Peter
Jennewein, C. P.
Jones, Amy
Jones, Janet
Jones, J. Pope
Judson, Sylvia Shaw
Katz, A. Raymond
Kellog, Jean
Kent, Rockwell
Kingsbury, Alison Mason
Kreis, Henry (illustrated letter)
Ladd, Anna Coleman
La Montagne, Harry
Lathrop, William L.
Lawless, Carl
Lawson, Ernest
Lebduska, Lawrence
Lechay, James
Lee, Doris
Lever, Hayley
Lillie, John
Lober, Georg
Lowrie, Agnes Potter
Lucioni, Luigi
Macbeth Galleries
MacLeod, Alexander Samuel
Macouillard, Louis
Merritt, Jesse
Miller, Barse
Nichols, Henry Hobart
Oehlschlaeger, Frank J.
O'Malley, Power
Paradise, Phil
Parrish, Maxfield
Paxton, William M.
Pike, John (includes illustrated letters)
Prendergast, Charles E.
Price, M. Elizabeth
Puccinelli, Raymond
Reed, Alma M.
Rockwell, Norman
Sample, Paul
Savage, Eugene Francis
Sawyer, Wells. M.
Schaefer, Carl
Scudder, Janet
Shinn, Everett
Shonnard, Eugenie F.
Simmons, Will
Smith, André
Spencer, Robert and Margaret F. Spencer
Tarbell, Edmund C.
Tolegian, Manuel J.
Townsend, Harry (includes illustrated letter)
Ufer, Walter
van Soelen, Theodore
Whitaker, Frederic
Wiles, Irving
Wood, Grant
Woodruff, James W.
Yandell, Enid
Yeats, Jack Butler
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Ferargil Galleries records, 1900-1963. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art
