Eddie Arning Naive Cray-Pas Oil Pastel Drawing
Item Details
Couple with Geometric Patterns
Cray-Pas oil pastel on paper
Unsigned
An Cray-Pas oil pastel drawing on paper by well-listed American naive folk genre artist Eddie Arning (Texas; 1898 – 1993), titled Couple with Geometric Patterns. The image depicts charmingly simply rendered figures standing before a building’s facade, surrounded by bold shapes and colors. There is no artist signature. This work is mounted behind glass in a simple blonde wood frame.
As a young adult, Arning was committed to a Texas mental institution by his family for acts of violence. After spending 60 years there, he was introduced to crayons by Austrian artist Helen Mayfield, who spent her summers volunteering at the institution. Arning began making autobiographical art depicting scenes from his childhood, and after several years switched to Cray-Pas oil pastels, which became his signature medium, and his works evolved in complexity. The next decade proved vastly prolific for Arning, who created more than 2,000 works of art before suddenly stopping in 1973, when he was removed from his home for disorderly conduct.
Arning’s works are represented in the collections of numerous prestigious institutions, including the American Folk Art Museum; High Museum of Art; Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art; Milwaukee Art Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The University of Michigan Museum of Art; and National Museum of American Art – Smithsonian, among others.
Dimensions
- image measures 22" W x 16" H.
Item #
18CIN698-033