We see a steamboat on a river, its importance shown via a stack located at the center of Burliuk's composition and by how much space the boat itself occupies--seemingly the width of the river. The watercolor is drawn in a neo-primitive style, especially with the squat figures in foreground. Earth and sky are painted using the same hues; the steamboat incorporates some of them into itself. About the Artist: Among the most accomplished and internationally known of the New Deal Gallery artists, Burliuk called himself “The Father of Russian Futurism” with good reason. He was an important figure in early 20th-century avant-garde circles, collaborating or exhibiting alongside painters like Kandinsky, Picasso, and Rousseau; writing poetry with Mayakovski, Yessenin, and Gorky; and counting as friends composers like Rachmaninoff, Scriabine, Gershwin, and Prokofiev. He painted a portrait of groundbreaking filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. The multitalented artist—whose name sometimes is spelled Burlyuk—was born in Kharkov, Russia, attended various art schools in Europe, and became an energetic creator of multimedia happenings that anticipate performance art: drinking tea under a suspended piano; staging an exhibition of paintings in a coal mine. His constantly changing style has been characterized as Fauvist, Cubist, Futurist, Social Realist, and Neo-Primitivist. Burliuk lived through the Russian revolutions before relocating to Japan (1920-22) and then eventually to America (1922), claiming to have crossed into Alaska using as his passport a Vanity Fair article about him. He became a US citizen in 1930 and lived the rest of his life on Long Island. Between 1923-1940 he worked as art editor and proofreader for a communist newspaper published in New York called Russkiĭ golos (Russian Voice). Throughout his life Burliuk was a prolific painter (creating an estimated 18,000 pictures), self-published with his wife Marussia the art magazine Color and Rhyme (1931-1966), and wrote several important manifestoes—including “Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (1912). Of particular interest for his two works at the NDG and others from the 1930s is a 1926 manifesto entitled “Universal Camp of Radio Modernists” and its vision of an animistic force in the world that infuses his paintings regardless of style: “Everything—from the tiny bug to a tea-spoon—has its specific soul. The whiskey bottle that was on the table is there still forever, but abstract. Consciousness is the possession not only of man, the insignificant particle of creation, but of Mother Nature as well.” 6 works at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 18 works at the Museum of Modern Art. 16 works at the Ukranian Museum. 399 works at WikiArt. 1 more image at FAP. His papers are at Syracuse University.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18126
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Domon, Victoria (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
The Genesee Farmer 12.4 (April 1851): 87 Courtesy of Internet Archive
A traditional oil on canvas still life with visible brush strokes features two and a half green-yellow pears, a golden pineapple, a paring knife, a bottle of Italian wine, and a red bowl propped up as the centerpiece on a wooden dining table. In facing the window to the right, a chair juts out from the make-shift blue backdrop. The contrasting but warm colors reflect the different origins of the items found in a classic American household. About the Artist: Born in Dresden, Germany, Schiff immigrated to the US in 1915 with her mother Lydia and father Jacob, a portrait painter. Her formative years were spent in Chicago, where she received training from her father and was featured at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1934. Her work also was exhibited by the Hadassah women’s Zionist organization of that city. Shortly thereafter, perhaps in 1935, Schiff moved to New York and took classes at the Art Students League, meanwhile showing her work at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. Although her paintings at the New Deal Gallery collection consist of still lifes, Schiff took great pleasure in portraiture; at a 1941 show she sketched visitors to her own exhibit and then displayed them on the walls (“Art Show”). The physicist Albert Einstein was a subject of her sketching. In 1943 she married James Vrettos, then moved to Colorado in 1956. Schiff’s work took a turn toward more chimerical subject matter, described by gallery director Simon Zalkind as tableaux of paper-doll characters: “Schiff's women, alternately alluring, playful and coy are always being seen. Figuratively and often literally, they are ‘on stage’. As Schiff's work evolves through the decades her women progressively lose the appearance of physical solidity, acquiring instead cartoon-like curves and contours. Bodies are flattened and appear to float weightlessly.” Her son recalls that Schiff “remained a loving, joyous, positively spirited person until the end of her life—true to her name Luba—Luboff in Russian meaning love.” 3 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: “Art Show Continues,” Gloverville Morning Herald 8 May 1941: 20. For additional information, a special thanks to Schiff’s son James Vrettos.
We approach this still life obliquely, as a momentary and almost casual glimpse of domestic space: a covered table is pushed against the wall, next to a door frame, holding a few everyday objects set down in passing. Yet each of them points beyond the frame with unanswered questions. What is the apple doing here? What book is being read? And most urgently, what is inside the envelope mailed to “Mr. R. Kadowaki” at his Hell’s Kitchen address? Does the conspicuous dead leaf nearby signal some great disappointment? Regardless of what we don’t know, the plant at center has mass and its shadow is rendered in a distinctive tone—less a shadow than that of a spirit. 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.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18186
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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.
Precise outlines and imaginative color blending give this watercolor a distinctive appearance. It departs from most still lifes in giving a “ground-level” perspective of its subject matter—almost as a terrain. Fruit, flowers, and vegetables all make an appearance, along with a southwestern water vessel. Along the ground and as a sort of horizontal range are three, perhaps four patterned cloths against a gray-washed background. A note on the title: most New Deal Gallery records give the paintings title as “Still Life”; it’s not clear why the later title was added, and the frame doesn’t permit closer examination. About the Artist: Born in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, Nagai immigrated to the US in 1906, initially with a plan to study law but soon returning to his love of art—a grandfather and uncle both had been painters. In New York he studied at the Art Students’ League with Thomas Hart Benton for five years, whose influence can be seen in Nagai’s “Picnic” (1929) with its treatment of massy figures arranged in deep space. In 1928 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s art critic, Helen Appleton Read, singled out Nagai’s painting “Tea” as one of three “discoveries” from more than 1,000 exhibits at the Society of Independent Artists. He went on to exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Musuem of Art, and the ACA Gallery, among many venues. His “Japanese Landscape” appeared in a 1939 FAP exhibit on Long Island, focused upon farms and rural life; fellow NDG artists Louis Harris, Bena Frank, and Herman Copen also appeared. Many of In 1936 Nagai signed the Call for the American Artists’ Congress, an anti-fascist popular front organization. Near the end of his life Nagai and his artist wife Paula Rosen retired to Orlando, FL area. 1 work at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 2 more images at FAP.
Bowler uses fine strokes to create a vibrant display of red and pink tulips spiraling outwards amidst a mass of strong, green leaves in a unique, white cornucopia vase. The arrangement is placed directly in the daylight on a white window bench along with a a silver plate of two apples and a pear dangerously close to the edge of the bench.The bright colors of the natural items seem almost out of place in the starkly white surroundings. About the Artist: Born in Syracuse, NY Bowler attended the Syracuse University College of Fine Arts and there received a postgraduate award for study in Paris. He was best known for painting official portraits of prominent political, military, and theatrical figures such as dancers Ruth St. Denis and Michel Fokine; humorist Will Rogers, actor Vincent Price, and explorer/author Richard Halliburton. Bowler also traveled to Washington, D.C. to paint portraits of Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Vice President John Nance Garner, among others. But Bowler also was passionate about landscapes and still lifes. A 1940 newspaper article implies that his two works at NDG were part of “a series of flower paintings done for all the tuberculosis hospitals in New York” (Allentown, PA Morning Call 31 Mar. 1940: 16). During World War II, Bowler served as Director of Design for a camouflage section of the 909th Air Force Engineers, organizing a 1943 show of their work at Macy’s Department store. It was after a 32-mile training hike that he painted a well-known image entitled “After the Hike”—a picture of his worn pair of army shoes—that was exhibited in the Library of Congress. Bowler also served as director of an arts program for the American Red Cross and as a USO portrait artist during the war (Syracuse Herald-Journal 23 July 1965: 14). After 1945 Bowler continued to live and work in Bucks County, PA. A critic attending the Phillips’ Mill Art Exhibition wrote that he had “all the majesty and power of great people who see great movements and think great things. A realist, his ‘Little Red Barn’ is characterized by a sensitive brush, a direct approach, rich colors and mellow overtones and an uninhibited technique — all contributing to the aching loveliness of this farm scene” (Muhlenberg Weekly 14 Oct. 1948: 2). In addition to producing many paintings, Bowler was an art teacher for much of his professional life. 1 work at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 3 works at Michener Art Museum. 2 more images at FAP.
This painting appears to be a collection of familiar domestic objects: a bowl of fruit and a plant rest upon a deep window sill; another plant is visible outdoors. But is everything in its place? Here, plants on either side of a glass window or glass serving dish point sharply in all directions. Fossil-fueled heat from a radiator is another material connection across the boundaries of inside and outside. About the Artist: Born in Norfolk, VA, Frank spent her early years in Wyoming because her father was a sheep rancher. Perhaps hyperbolically, she recalled that “The sheep froze, and Indians raided the town. I remember seeing Indians over in the hills” (citation). Her family moved to New York in 1913, where Frank studied at the Cooper Union, the Arts Students League, and privately with Stuart Davis. She was a founding member of the New York Society of Women Artists (founded 1925). Expressionist. In 1927 she married artist Ralph Mayer, a specialist in painting materials who published The Painter’s Craft. A lot of information on her, some of it biographical. Signs a declaration published in NYT 26 June 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis?) on “the certainty of damage through testing and the imminence of catastrophe through miscalculation. We ask, in the name of our posterity, in the name of the unborn generations and of works yet unborn, that the current tests be stopped, never to be resumed” (p. 1). Her watercolor “Salt” appeared in a 1938 FAP exhibit on Long Island, focused upon farms and rural life; fellow NDG artists Louis Harris, Herman Copen, and Thomas Nagai also appeared. The Brooklyn Museum (1930), 1 work at Index of American Design. 3 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.