This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Richmond, Virginia, Robert Gwathmey became an artist known for
his Social Realist depictions of life in the rural South. He was one of
the first white artists to create dignified images of African-American
people and did so in a style that was modernist with many geometric
forms and bold colororation.
Although he lived intermittently in Pennsylvania and in the South, he spent most of his forty-five
year career in New York City where his studio was at 1 West 68th Street. Frequently he returned to the South
where he became concerned about the problems dividing blacks and whites.
At the start of his career, he traveled in Europe for two
years, and then taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and for
twenty-six years at Cooper Union in New York City where he established a studio at 1 West 68th Street. In 1944, he received a Rosenwald
Fellowship and lived and worked on a tobacco farm, another experience
that motivated him to turn to rural south themes in his art. In 1973,
he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and in
1976, to the National Academy of Design.
His
family were "old Virginia," and he was raised in an environment where
segregation was espoused. He moved north to study art, going first to
the Maryland Institute of Art for a year, and in 1930 earned a degree
from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. To earn money in
Philadelphia, he worked in a settlement house and became much aware of
tensions between people with diverse cultures. He was active
politically to get money for federal support of projects to help needy
individuals. In the 1930s, he was also a WPA artist, and among his projects was a mural for the Eutaw, Alabama Post Office.
Gwathmey married Rosalie Hook of Charlotte, North
Carolina, an artist and photographer who did a documentary series on
blacks in the South. These images became a source of inspiration for
her husband's paintings.
Sources:
Sylvia Yount and J. Binstock, "Robert Gwathmey and Andy Warhol", American Art Review, August, 2000
Matthew Bakkom Collection, Minneapolis, Minnesota
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Biography from The Columbus Museum-Georgia:
| Robert Gwathmey was a twentieth century artist who utilized his
southern heritage as primary subject matter for his paintings.
Although he lived most of his life in New York, he was born near
Richmond, Virginia and traveled home frequently. An
eighth-generation Virginian, Gwathmey was deeply impressed by his
Southern heritage, something that is reflected by the imagery in his
work.
Gwathmey’s first formal artistic studies occurred in his twenties when
he moved to Baltimore and enrolled at the Maryland Institute.
“When I went to Baltimore to study art, the first thing I saw was Negro
policemen and statues of Yankee generals. It was my first trip
north, the farthest North I’d ever been, and I was 22 years old.
When I got back home, I was shocked by the poverty. The most
shocking thing was the Negroes, the oppressed segment. If I had
never gone back home, perhaps, I would never have painted the
Negro. I was shocked at the red clay, at the redness of the clay.
The green pine trees and red clay were everywhere. The Negro
seemed to be everywhere, too, omnipresent. But he was a thing
apart, so segregated. When people ask me why I paint the Negro, I
ask ‘Don’t artists have eyes’?” (1)
Gwathmey advanced to studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts where he won a Cresson scholarship that enabled him to travel to
Europe during the summers of 1929 and 1930. There he saw the work of
many artists covering a wide range of history; but apparently, he
gravitated to the Gothic style above others. (2)
Following his studies there, he taught at several schools in
Pennsylvania before settling permanently in New York. Although
New York became Gwathmey’s favorite city in which to live and paint, he
continued his established tradition of returning home to the South to
visit family every year. In 1942, Gwathmey joined the faculty of
the Cooper Union in New York, where he taught for 26 years.
In 1944-45, he received a Rosenwald Fellowship to live and work
on a tobacco farm in North Carolina. Such an experience
entrenched his work with rural southern themes and provided him with
first-hand experiences to transfer to the canvas. The farmers
particularly fascinated Gwathmey, their lean bodies with deliberate and
stiff actions and often portrayed them as Christ-like figures.
Although the 1950s surge of Abstract Expressionism was definitely the
reigning aesthetic of the time, Gwathmey took a stand against this
movement, protesting against its rejection of representational
art. He remained dedicated to the figural tradition, still
relying on his subject matter to distinguish much of his art.
While Gwathmey was often labeled a “Social Realist,” his imagery
focusing on the lives of the African-American minority moves beyond
pure social commentary on the plight of their situation within American
society. Gwathmey remained true to his subject matter, but his
exploration manifests a unique visual language. His work
demonstrates a modernist tendency to abstract shapes, forms, and
colors, all the while never abandoning the human figure. He
incorporated such elements as large bands of color, low horizon lines,
fragmentation of the human body, and completely flat picture planes
into his paintings.
Gwathmey’s distinctive style successfully fuses the formal elements of
modern expression with a deeper, older tradition of realism.
Despite the strength of Gwathmey’s social and political commitments,
perhaps his most effective work is less about advocacy for social
change than an examination of the nature of community and the
relationships between the races and sexes within his region. (3)
Gwathmey’s painting does not invoke social commentary per se, asking
more for contemplation than pure action about the scene. Gwathmey’s
figures mimic the stained glass windows of the Gothic cathedrals he had
seen almost two decades earlier with bright colors, bold patterning,
and outlines in black. Pattern moves throughout his picture plane,
typical of Gwathmey’s ability to unite the figures into a tightly
controlled, yet rhythmical composition.
Gwathmey himself stated, “I believe that in painting the use of limited
imagery is the best method of presentation of your content. I believe
that if the symbols are strong enough and simple enough and inventive
enough, they can transcend literary [sic., literature?] in painting.
One technical way of gaining this end is with simplified pattern. I’d
also like to say that this is a modern way of painting…” (4)
Source:
1. Quoted in Elizabeth McCausland, “Robert Gwathmey,” Magazine of Art (April 1946), 149.
2. Michael Kammen, Robert Gwathmey: The Life and Work of a Passionate Observer (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 18-19.
3. Charles K. Piehl, “Anonymous Heroines: Black Women as Heroic Types
in Robert Gwathmey’s Art,” Heroines of Popular Culture, edited by Pat
Browne (Bowling Green Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press),
130.
4. Quoted in McCausland, 151.
Submitted by staff, Columbus Museum |
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