Andrew Dasburg

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(1887–1979). Painter and draftsman. A contributor to adventurous color abstraction of the 1910s, he built his mature reputation on landscapes, still lifes, and portraits combining acute observation with structural techniques learned from the work of Cézanne and the cubists. Born in Paris, Andrew Michael Dasburg lived for three years in Germany before he arrived in New York in 1892. He was later naturalized as a U.S. citizen. In 1902 he began his formal studies at the Art Students League, where Kenyon Cox numbered among his teachers. He also studied with Robert Henri. During the several years following a 1909–10 sojourn in France, he pushed cubism close to pure abstraction in a few particularly daring works. He also made a brief detour into a form of color abstraction related to synchromism. In 1916 Dasburg abandoned his colorful expressionistic modernism to begin forging a personal style reinvigorating the classical tradition as received through Cézanne. Typically, warmth of tone and a deft touch animate the rigorously structured, pared down New Mexican Village (Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, 1926). In spare landscape drawings of the 1950s and 1960s, he pushed rigorously toward formal essentials and expressive marking, approaching aspects of contemporary abstract expressionism. Between 1906 and the late 1920s, Dasburg regularly worked at Woodstock. After extended visits to the Southwest beginning in 1918, he settled permanently in Taos in 1930. With a discerning eye for unconventional expression, Dasburg figured importantly in popularizing American Indian art and instrumentally in bringing attention to John Kane. At his death, he was thought to be the last surviving exhibitor in the Armory Show. His first wife, a financially independent, freethinking “New Woman,” sculptor Grace Mott Johnson (1882–1967), born in New York, studied at the Art Students League primarily with Gutzon Borglum, but worked also with Hermon MacNeil and James Earle Fraser. She and Dasburg married in London in 1909, on a side trip from France, but divorced in 1922. A specialist in animal subjects, she, too, exhibited in the Armory Show and participated in Woodstock activities. Although she visited Dasburg in New Mexico, she never resided there. Later among the earliest agitators for the civil rights of African Americans, she became relatively inactive as an artist during the final two decades of her life. From 1922until1928, Dasburg lived with sculptor, painter, and theater professional Ida Rauh (1877–1970), another feminist, who had been married from 1911until1922 to Max Eastman, crusading editor of The Masses and, subsequently, The Liberator.

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Andrew Dasburg

Andrew Dasburg, c. 1940s
Birth name Andrew Michael Dasburg
Born (1887-05-04)May 4, 1887
Paris
Died August 13, 1979(1979-08-13) (aged 92)
Taos, New Mexico
Spouse Grace Mott Johnson (married 1909-1922)
Field Painting
Training Art Students League of New York
Movement Cubism, Synchromism
Influenced by Paul Cézanne

Andrew Michael Dasburg (4 May 1887 – 13 August 1979) was an American modernist painter and "one of America's leading early exponents of cubism".[1]

Contents

Biography

Improvisation, c.1915-1916

He was born in 1887 in Paris. He emigrated from Germany to New York City with his widowed mother in 1892. After a severe injury, he passed the time in convalescence by sketching.[1] In 1902 he joined the Art Students League of New York on a scholarship,[2] where he was taught by Kenyon Cox.[3] At the League's summer school in Woodstock, New York, he studied landscapes under Birge Harrison.[1]

In 1909 Dasburg visited Paris and joined the modernist circle of artists living there, including Morgan Russell, Jo Davidson, and Arthur Lee. During a trip to London that same year he married sculptor Grace Mott Johnson. Johnson returned to the United States early the next year, but Dasburg stayed in Paris where he met Henri Matisse, Gertrude Stein and Leo Stein, and became influenced by the paintings of Cézanne and Cubism.[4] He soon became an ardent promoter of the Cubist style.[1]

Dasburg returned to Woodstock, New York, in August and he and Johnson became active members of the artist community. In 1911 their son Alfred was born, the same year as Dasburg's first exhibition.[2] Dasburg exhibited three oils and a sculpture[1] at the "International Exhibition of Modern Art", better known the Armory Show, which opened in New York City's 69th Regiment Armory in 1913 and introduced astonished New Yorkers to modern art.[5] The three Cubist-oriented oils displayed at the 1913 show were considered "daringly experimental".[6] In the years after the Armory Show, Dasburg's works were exhibited along with those of other Modernists at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery.[7]

Dasburg and Johnson lived apart for most of their marriage. By 1917 they had separated and Dasburg began teaching painting in Woodstock and in New York City. In 1918 he was invited to Taos, New Mexico, by Mabel Dodge, and returning in 1919, Johnson joined him there for a period of time.[4] After moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1921, Dasburg integrated the boxy traditional construction styles in New Mexico into his Cubist art.[8]

In both New York and Taos, he was part of the social milieu that included Georgia O'Keeffe and Gertrude Stein, and a close friend of Mabel Dodge Luhan.[2] A painting named The Absence of Mabel Dodge was allegedly painted to inflame the jealousy of her then-lover, mutual friend John Reed (it was a pointed reminder of a peyote celebration in which the two had shared), and for four years Dasburg and Reed's other lover Louise Bryant carried on an affair.[9] The elderly Dasburg appeared posthumously as himself in the movie about Reed and Bryant, Reds, although he "curiously ... does not speak of his intimacy with either".[10] He was also involved for some time with Ida Rauh, a co-founder of the Provincetown Players, and the two of them were friends with D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda von Richthofen, and helped Lawrence recover from a bout of tuberculosis that nearly got him refused entry to the U.S. at the border with Mexico.[11]

In 1936, he married poet Mary Channing Wister, the daughter of Owen Wister.[12]

Dasburg died in his home in Taos, New Mexico on August 13, 1979, at age 92.[6] Following his death, the Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe held a 96-work retrospective exhibition funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts which traveled to four other Western states.[13] His works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum, among others.[6]

Awards and honors

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Steve Shipp (1996). American Art Colonies, 1850-1930: A Historical Guide to America's Original Art Colonies and Their Artists. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29619-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=OXtiQn6q0X4C&pg=PA115&dq=Andrew+Dasburg&as_brr=3&ei=azMoR-bQMabqoQKB0dj1DA&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=M_frfOyrWjmL48CJD1znpjwViVY. 
  2. ^ a b c "Andrew Michael Dasburg". http://www.andrewdasburg.com. Retrieved 2007-09-25. "Andrew Dasburg was one of the leading Modernists in New Mexico for sixty years. A student of Robert Henri, an acquaintance of Matisse and a contributor to the famous 1913 Armory Show, his artistic credentials are sterling and his following devoted." 
  3. ^ Edward Burns, ed. (1986). The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten 1913-1946. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-06430-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=jXdzB8HmkpYC&pg=PA78&dq=Andrew+Dasburg&as_brr=3&ei=azMoR-bQMabqoQKB0dj1DA&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=O94_scrKAs2_t30V0CUODvvnOw8. 
  4. ^ a b Corley, Erin, A Finding Aid to the Andrew Dasburg and Grace Mott Johnson Papers, 1833-1980 (bulk 1900-1980), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  5. ^ Andrew Michael Dasburg, artnet. Accessed October 30, 2007.
  6. ^ a b c "Andrew Dasburg, Cubist Painter, Dies. Said to Be Last Surviving Artist of the Armory Show of 1913.". New York Times. August 14, 1979. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40913F83E5A12728DDDAD0994D0405B898BF1D3. Retrieved 2007-09-25. "Andrew Dasburg, a painter who was said to be the last survivor of the artists who contributed work to the Armory show of 1913, died yesterday in Taos, N.M. He was 92 years old." 
  7. ^ Corley, Erin, A Finding Aid to the Andrew Dasburg and Grace Mott Johnson Papers, 1833-1980 (bulk 1900-1980), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  8. ^ Zimmer, William. "Mexico, Both Sides of the Border, From the Century's First Half", The New York Times, October 27, 1996. Accessed October 30, 2007. "Andrew Dasburg worked with the idea that New Mexican towns and villages, with their arrangements of box-like buildings, constituted a kind of Cubism in the flesh. His Taos Houses (New Mexican Village) is a good example of this."
  9. ^ Ross Wetzsteon (2002). Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village, the American Bohemia, 1910-1960. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-86996-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=o2DB77ccf9sC&pg=PA97&dq=Andrew+Dasburg&as_brr=3&ei=azMoR-bQMabqoQKB0dj1DA&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=cyFLWkaCp0Q22VJdUbRNDQpA1mE#PPA97,M1.  The painting is now lost.
  10. ^ Mark Christopher Carnes (1995). Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies. Holt Paperbacks. ISBN 0-8050-3760-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=YSZeteMhP_UC&pg=PA194&dq=Andrew+Dasburg&as_brr=3&ei=Uz8oR6SRJJm4pgL_lJmGDQ&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=Py415Wg_I_TkqtC00iv90_ycAAo. 
  11. ^ John Worthen (2007). D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider. Counterpoint Press. ISBN 1-58243-355-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=OP-8bjTlPo4C&pg=PA323&dq=Andrew+Dasburg&as_brr=3&ei=e0EoR-_2OKTKoQLSqeD-DA&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=YDcjsx0WEOotl6zbBp06zh4GNHA. 
  12. ^ "Dispatches". TIME magazine. March 13, 1933. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,745319,00.html. Retrieved 2007-10-31. "Married. Mary Channing Wister, poetess daughter of Novelist Owen Wister; and Painter Andrew Michael Dasburg, 45, Guggenheim Fellow; in Philadelphia." 
  13. ^ Frank Waters (2000). Of Time and Change. MacAdam/Cage Publishing. ISBN 1-878448-07-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=UzidA4ETRFEC&pg=PA219&dq=Andrew+Dasburg&as_brr=3&ei=azMoR-bQMabqoQKB0dj1DA&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=WcpIIogr2ynuoaWlLS8gRkcTAQI#PPA220,M1. 
  14. ^ "History of the American Art Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mweb/about/american_history.asp. Retrieved 2007-10-31. "It turned out to be an important event for the art world of Los Angeles and also for the museum’s collection, to which were added not only the purchase prize paintings-William Wendt’s Where Nature’s God Hath Wrought, John Carroll’s Parthenope, Andrew Dasburg’s Tulips, Guy Pène du Bois’s Shops, and Diego Rivera’s Flower Day --but also Bernard Karfiol’s Seated Figure and Eugene Savage’s Recessional." 
  15. ^ "International Exhibition". TIME magazine. October 24, 1927. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,736939,00.html. Retrieved 2007-10-31. "Third prize ($500) was given to Andrew Dasburg of Santa Fe. He had painted a table, on which a vase was full of poppy petals, heaped on the canvas like the bright blood of an immortal." 
  16. ^ "Guggenheim Fellowships". TIME magazine. March 21, 1932. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,743424,00.html. Retrieved 2007-10-31. 

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