Joseph Solman Gouache Painting "The Yankee Squire"
Item Details
Joseph Solman (New York/Russian Federation, 1909 – 2008)
The Yankee Squire, circa 1973
Gouache painting on newspaper
Signed to lower right
Includes receipt from Robert Brown Gallery, Washington D.C. and newspaper articles
Joseph Solman immigrated to America from Russia as a young child in 1912, and went on to become an important figure in the development of American Modernism and Expressionism in the 20th century. He studied at both the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design in New York, but maintained that his true education came from sketching unsuspecting figures on the subway. He worked for the WPA throughout the 30s and 40s, and was a leading influence, along with Mark Rothko, in creating The Ten, a group of progressive artists who held a show, ‘The Ten: Whitney Dissenters’ at the Mercury Galleries in New York in 1938, as a response to their dissatisfaction with the emphasis on realism at the time. Solman, in fact, merged Realism with Expressionism, never completely abandoning the subject, which in his words ‘…yields more pattern, more poetry, more drama, greater abstract design and tension than any shapes we may invent.’ Solman’s work resides in the collections of more than two dozen major museums across the globe.
Condition
- toning; minor nicks and scratches to frame.
Dimensions
- measures frame; visible image measures 10" W x 15" H.
Item #
ITMG562836