Carl Holty Incredible American Modernist Drawing from the 1930s

Description: Offered here is an exuberant example of early American modernism by the noted artist Carl Holty (dates). The drawing measures 9 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. It is signed with initials and dated lower left, "CRH 1937." The paper exhibits wear consistent with its age, please look at photographs closely. Minor creasing and yellow at the far edge, as one would expect. A small tear at the far left edge, visible in photo--less than 1/8 in. across. Otherwise, paper is solid and drawing is unmarked. The drawing came from the collection of artist Theodore Wassmer who lived for long periods in New York and avidly collected drawings, which was his own interest. Wassmer's wife was briefly head of the Federal Art Project in Utah. Holty was among a select group of Americans experimenting with European innovations in the 1930s. This drawing depicts no clear object, though the shape at the center may reference a shoulder blade. Indeed, Holty made a lithograph in this year (Collection of the Museum of Modern Art) that features the same graphic elements seen here--cross hatched lines over a shape; the clear outline of shape, and heavy graphic line--and the central shape in that image appears to be a bone. Holty abstracted from figures primarily, and eventually became one of the finest fully non-objective painters. His work is included in major museum collections across the country. A biography from the internet: Carl Holty was born in Freiburg, where his father was attending medical school, but before he was a year old, the family moved to Milwaukee. As a teenager Holty took art classes, and by age sixteen was submitting cartoons to a local antiwar paper. In 1919, hoping to become a poster artist, Holty studied briefly at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. Shortly thereafter, he left for New York, where he enrolled at Parsons School of Design and subsequently at the National Academy of Design. In 1923, he returned to Milwaukee to pursue a career as a portraitist. Three years later he left with his new bride for Munich, planning to study at the Royal Academy. Instead, he ran into his friend Vaclav Vytlacil, who convinced Holty to join Hans Hofmann?s school. Holty?s ideas were immediately transformed: ??No one had ever talked to me about conceptual drawing, about knowing what I?m looking at from the point of view of my tactile knowledge as well as my visual knowledge. Hofmann did. And the world opened up just like that.?In 1927, with his wife suffering from tuberculosis, the Holtys moved to Switzerland. Although his study with Hofmann had been short-lived, the two kept in touch, and Holty began to assimilate Hofmann?s teaching into his art. After the death of his wife in 1930, Holty moved to Paris, where Robert Delaunay sponsored his membership in Abstraction-Création two years later. Holty?s curvilinear abstractions were published in the group?s magazine in 1933. Nevertheless, his artistic aims weremore closely allied with Cubism than withNeo-plasticism, and he disengaged himself after a year. His canvases of the early 1930s, which reflect a close knowledge of Juan Gris?s paintings and Picasso?s Synthetic Cubism, were shown in several exhibitions in Paris to positive critical reviews. When Holty returned to New York in 1935, he soon found a New York dealer.In New York, Holty became immersed in vanguard art circles and renewed his friendships with Hans Hofmann, Vaclav Vytlacil, and Stuart Davis, whom he had known in Paris. Vytlacil invited Holty to participate in the discussions that led to the formation of the American Abstract Artists. An articulate spokesman with extensive firsthand knowledge of European modernism, Holty was immediately drawn into the group, and subsequently became its chairman. He remained a member until 1944, when he felt the organization had fulfilled its purposes.In his own art, Holty had begun to stray from the spatial and conceptual format of Cubism. Instead, biomorphic shapes that seem to move freely over the entire surface of the canvas indicate a fascination for the images, if not the ideas of Miró. Increasingly, however, his earlier concern for structure reemerged to harness the still active rhythms of his compositions. In his abstractions, Holty did not seek to eliminate references to the natural world. He used titlesOf War, Circus Forms, Gridironas reference points or to set a mood. The form of a kneeling figure holding a ball can be discerned, for example, in Gridiron. During the 1930s, Holty began using tape to give crisp edges to form, and in Gridiron, which he reworked and overpainted before arriving at his final statement, the sharpness and clarity of this approach is especially apparent.By the mid 1940s, Holty had been creating abstract paintings for many years, yet he continually searched for new ways to render form within the two-dimensional picture plane. He described one discovery in words that echo Hofmann: ??In breaking up the shapes or forms, it is imperative not to attempt to rejoin them because thatleads to transformation only. By breaking them and keeping them broken, the forms, large and small, are simply densities in the rhythmic movement of color and shapes.?By the 1960s, Holty had put aside his concern for tactile form within dimensional space. Contours disappeared, replaced by thinly washed, fluid areas of color swimming within subtly toned space.

Price: 650 USD

Location: Columbia, South Carolina

End Time: 2024-12-22T01:44:04.000Z

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