A fierce encounter between two stallions recalls the work of Frederic Remington in its drama and stripped-down setting. Rounded masses of muscle on the horses resemble the surrounding hills, particularly at lower right. Although not perhaps set during nighttime, a stark contrast between white horses and the landscape’s darker colors likewise owes a debt to Remington’s moonlit scenes. Here there are no humans, other horses, or even trees to witness this frozen moment in time. About the Artist: Born in Townsend, MT, Meloy was raised on the family ranch, where he and his siblings were encouraged to pursue their creative interests as children. His parents arranged for a year of study with the landscape painter Elmer Boone, and meanwhile Meloy took correspondence courses in commercial art. Visiting friends in Chicago, a trip to that city’s Art Institute so moved him that he decided to enroll there, marking a change in plans and the “divide between a reliable career in commercial art and a more risky career in painting” (citation). Meloy relocated to New York in 1926, studying first with Robert Henri at the National Academic of Design and then John Carroll at the Art Students’ League. Meloy was influenced by the Ashcan School’s urban realism, sketching on New York’s busy streets and while riding its subway: “These urban portraits convey Meloy’s interest for the whole of life’s volume and mass. The movement of fast-paced New York is depicted through sweeping caricature into beautiful line figures in motion, changing light, and telling environmental information” (citation). During the late 1920s and early ‘30s Meloy supported himself, in part, through illustrations for western and outdoor magazines. Beginning in 1933 he created works for the WPA, including its Easel Art division. During 1941-42 he painted a mural, Flathead War Party, for the US Post Office in Hamilton, MT that still remains. Beginning in 1940 Meloy taught art at Columbia University, where he became intrigued by the more abstract painting of artists like Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. In a letter concerning his new experiments with color, line, and shape he wrote, “I want to fit in and at the same time I want to be alive and contribute something of myself” (Rodriguez). Meloy died suddenly in 1951, while waiting for a train in Grand Central Station. 2 works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2 works at the Brooklyn Museum. 3 works at the Yellowstone Art Museum. 18 works at Montana Museum of Art & Culture. 4 more images at FAP. His papers and approximately 4,000 oil paintings are the Montana Museum of Art and Culture. Sources Consulted: Gordon McConnell, “Henry Meloy: Record of a Life,” Henry Meloy: Five Themes, 1945-1951 (Yellowstone Art Center, 1990); Kathryn Lorraine Rodriguez, Henry Meloy: The Portraits, A Narrative of the Exhibition (MA Thesis at University of Montana, 2008)
Delicate, minimalist still life depicts a vase of cut stems from trees and plants. In keeping with the season—but also reminding us of time’s passage—two leafs have fallen upon an unadorned table. McEvoy’s flattened background transforms the leaves into an arrangement of color and form; a seemingly glowing, ruby-red globe is at once part of the autumnal pallette and an object of fascination in its own right. About the Artist: What’s known of McEvoy is very limited and seems to reflect the limited opportunities for women artists during her time. She was born in Dubuque, IA, and appears to have studied at the Art Institue of Chicago. By the 1930s her name is mentioned in newspaper items as a teacher at the Queensborough Community Art Center; reading poems or reading palms at a Woodstock summer fundraiser. Her paintings “Allegro” and “Intime” were shown at the Woodstock Art Gallery; “The Willow Tree,” “Paradise,” and “Flowers” at the Larkin House, Ossining, NY. At one of these shows her work was exhibited along with NDG artist Erna Lange, and it’s interesting to imagine that the two women might have met. During 1937 McEvoy worked for the “Gallery Tours” division of the Federal Art Project: “Miss McEvoy will describe the techniques of etching, aquatint, and lithography, and a demonstration of the printing of a lithograph will take place” (Daily Worker 13 April 1937: 7).
A cryptic, maybe private allegory is signalled by this still life. We look downward to a table in disarray: yes, the towel is artfully draped, but eleven cherries are scattered from a bowl; the carafe of water doesn’t match a coffee cup and saucer; the presence of scissors can’t be logically inferred from the other objects. Maxey’s lighting, quite stark, arrives from the left to illuminate hard surfaces. About the Artist: Maxey’s art training took place at the National Academy of Design, New York. Working for the Federal Art Project during the 1930s, his paintings were placed in several New York locations: PS 109 (Brooklyn), PS 152 (Queens), New Utrecht High School, and the YMCA’s William Sloane branch; his paintings were shown at the Federal Art Gallery (1938, 1939). Maxey also was politically active: in an undated draft document, Maxey was one of many to propose an Artists’ Union, which in 1938 organized itself as the Federal Arts Committee and urged creation of a permanent Federal Arts Commission. Its executive board included actor Burgess Meredith, composer Leopold Stokowski, actor Lillian Gish, and painter Max Weber; Maxey was the group’s Executive Secretary. A bill jointly sponsored by Rep. John Coffee (WA) and Sen. Claude Pepper (FL) failed to gain support, and federal funding for artists withered. During the 1950s Maxey and his artist wife, Amelia (herself a WPA artist), moved to Bucks County, PA and ran a business specializing in painted furnishings. 13 more images at FAP.
A simple grouping of teapot, cup and spoon, cherries and an orange becomes an exploration of color and form thanks to Adler's gauzy rendering. Neutral backgrounds of brown and tan set apart small placements of red and blue; a painting upon the wall echoes those two colors in more explicitly geometric forms. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Born in Poltava, Russia (modern-day Ukraine) as Joseph Zaganchinsky, Adler immigrated to the US in 1907. Census records show him to have been a dressmaker, but obviously he seems to have painted as well. He was the father of NDG artist Fred Adler. 6 more images at FAP.
We look upon a remarkably minimalist still life--sixteen apples upon a wooden board or table--but by the time of Adler's painting they were highly charged objects due to the thousands of minimally employed apple vendors on New York streets during the Great Depression. Keeping this in mind, we see an insistence upon each apple being represented individually, and for that matter each row of wood laminated into the wooden board. Adler's light and colors are direct, with very little shadow. About the Artist: Born in New York, Adler was the son of Russian immigrants—his father a dressmaker and eventual NDG artist Joseph Adler. Fred studied two years at National Academy of Design, then two more at the Art Students League with Raphael Soyer. At age twenty he was employed by the Federal Art Project and assigned to a Civilian Conservation Corps project in Milford, IA where he “sketch[ed] characteristic moments in camp life” (Milford Mail 6 Sept 1934: 2). In 1940 his “Still Life With Herring” was selected for a Musuem of Modern Art traveling exhibition called “35 Under 35.” Along with NDG artists Herman Copen and Ben Delman, Adler’s painting “Avenue C market” was included in a 1941 show focused upon “Market Scenes,” and held at the USDA’s Surplus Marketing Department in New York. 1 painting at Smithsonian Museum of American Art. 8 more images at FAP.
An inscription on the reverse side of Abernathy's canvas identifies her location as somewhere near Wallkill, NY; more specific landmarks or even skylines cannot be discerned because the space here is so enclosing. Impressionistic splashes of fall color swirl around the sharper forms of tree trunks and branches. Patterns of foliage are reflected in the creek below, with gentle ripples creating a horizontal counterpart. About the Artist: Born in Summerville, AK, Abernathy studied at the Art Academy in Cincinnati and later in Europe. She supported herself by teaching art and elocution at Belmont College (TN), Stanford Female College (KY), Columbia Female Institute (TN), the University of Arkansas, and the Florida Female College. At this last instution, when a fire broke out Abernathy guided her students to safety rather than saving her own art and equipment; the Florida legislature passed a special bill to help compensate her loss (The Weekly True Democrat 29 Sept 1905: 1). She studied art for a period in Paris, and her painting “Reverie” was shown at the 1902 Salon des artistes français, described by one reporter as “the full-length figure of a girl seated, with a background of dull blues and yellows. A springtime freshness pervades the picture” (San Francisco Chronicle 26 Oct. 1902: 6). Her works were exhibited at the Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, and the National Academy of Design. Two more images from FAP.
A beautifully balanced composition depicts, on either side of its central planter, a knobbly gourd and ringed vase of similar shape. Our conception of what constitutes a garden blurs distinctions between human-cultivated plants and human-created objects, like the polished table, pleasing containers and lacework. As with Kadowaki's NDG still lifes “Japanese Plant” and “Still Life,” a sort of flaming life-force surrounds the objects in gently burning colors—although most pronounced in this painting. About the Artist: Born Tokorogo, Japan, Kadowaki immigrated to Seattle, WA in 1909, giving as his profession a tailor for the famous Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo. He appears to have lived in California shortly after arrival. As of 1917, he was a waiter at an Oyster Bay, NY restaurant; in 1920 he was butler to the son of a US Vice President in Wayne, NJ; in 1930 he was servant to a Murray Hill attorney; in 1940 he was a cook. These occupations all were considered appropriate for Japanese immigrants, and yet Kadowaki persisted in his art. While in California he took classes at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design, exhibiting there in 1910; while in New York, he took classes at the Art Students League and exhibited at the ACA Gallery and Salons of America. In 1926 he designed a whimsical cockatoo light made of celluloid. After the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, he was one of seven (along with NDG artist Thomas Nagai) to sign and publish a “Declaration of Japanese-American Artists”: “Let us express here and now our tremendous anxiety for national defense of America; our determination to support it to our utmost as artists and men, and further, to bear arms if necessary to ensure the final victory for the Democratic forces of the world. Whether a Fascist calls himself German, Italian, or Japanese, he is part and parcel of the same plot against all mankind.” Kadowaki became a US citizen in 1953. Source Consulted: Ruth L. Benjamin, “Japanese Painters in America” Parnassus 7.5 (October 1935): 13–15.
This painting seems to be a hybrid of portraiture, domestic genre, and still life. A sleeping young woman, whose cheeks and camisole echo the rose’s color, is posed so that her resting fingers appear only inches away from a bunch of grapes. A portion of that bunch, moreover, appears to be reaching toward her as well. What is happening in the woman’s dreams cannot be known; furthermore, the painting’s creation of a viewer beholding her renders such questions not simply unknowable but perhaps uncomfortable. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Lubovsky was born in Bialystok, Russia and immigrated to the US in 1907, becoming a citizen in 1937. He exhibited at the Municipal Art Gallery in 1914, where his painting “In the Depths” was called “gruesome as a subject...but great for imaginative force” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 11 Jan. 1914: 9); Lubovsky also was represented at a 1915 Friends of Young Artists show under the auspices of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. 13 more images at FAP.
It’s not impossible to render Lo Pinto’s scene in everyday terms: moored in a marina are several boats, two of them accessed by floating docks upon which a group of children are passing time dreamily. To describe it in such terms, however, would ignore the painting’s many surreal, even mystical elements. Why are some boats in full sail? Why do chains of rowboats—one in the foreground and four more in the distance—create angles in relation to the gangways? Do the colors here have any existence in the waking world? About the Artist: Lo Pinto was the son of Italian immigrants in New York City, his father a physician. After attending the National Academy of Design and taking classes at the Art Students League, he exhibited at venues like the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the De Young Memorial Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Carnegie Institute, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lo Pinto also studied with the sculptor David Smith, whose geometric designs appear to have influenced his NDG painting. Lo Pinto’s landscape “Evening” received favorable mention at a Federal Art Project show in 1937. In 1937 he was one of a dozen artists who traveled to Alaska under WPA auspices resulting, in addition to several paintings, numerous illustrations for Merle Colby’s Alaska: A Guide to Last American Frontier. During the 1930s Lo Pinto created two murals: one for the “Hall of Man” at the 1939 World’s Fair at New York, the other for the Federal Court House in Anchorage, AK. He also created several stage sets for the Federal Theater Project in New York. Lo Pinto relocated to Allentown, PA during the 1950s and seems to have begun work for Hess’s department stores as a designer. 1 work at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 14 more images at FAP. Source consulted: Archives of askART, including family papers courtesy of the artist's niece, Kathleen Lo Pinto Vignolini.
A lighter was a type of barge used for unloading ships in shallower harbors; in the early 20th century, the name extended to lighter tugs used to move those unpowered barges. Here, in golden tones and against a wall of clouds, the Good Hope also is depicted as an object of beauty. In the lower portions of Litze’s painting, both her design and brushstrokes emphasize horizontal strata of road, wharf, water, planks, gunwales and, across the water, another line of vegetation and trees. The more spacious upper portion is reserved for the vertical geometry of mast and rigging. About the Artist: Lietze was born in Cincinnati, OH to German immigrants, her father Ernst a teacher of art and mechanical drawing at the Ohio Mechanics Institute. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati, then moved to Chicago sometime around 1904 to pursue her vocation. She exhibited “Still Life” at the Detroit Museum of Art (1903), “Early Morning” and “The Setting Sun” with the Society of Independent Artists (1919), and “The Snow Storm” at Laguna Art Gallery (1925). A 1923 show at the Museum of New Mexico noted how “Portraits that are rugged, still life which is unusual in its treatment and and landscape indicate the wide range of Miss Lietze’s ambition” (“The Galleries” 170). She is listed as an employee of the Federal Art Project, but no further information is available. Unfortunately, one of Lietze’s last public records is a 1955 editorial on the financial plight of elderly individuals like her: “One does not have to search far to discover one of these aged persons, cowering in some dreary lodging to which they have been assigned by a relentless fate....These people have played their role in the drama of life; they have made many sacrifices. Now, reduced to penury, they are probably granted a meager benefit....If need be, I apologize for these unpleasant remarks, but they proceed from the depths, for I, too am one of the underprivileged and I feel that the cards are stacked against me.” Sources Consulted: “The Galleries in May,” El Palacio 14.11 (1 June 1923): 169-170;Dolores Lietze, “Remember the Elderly,” Cincinnati Enquirer 10 Jan. 1955: 6).