Biography from Levis Fine Art:
| Rolph Scarlett was the first American artist selected to provide paintings alongside Kandinsky, Klee and Bauer for Solomon Guggenheim’s Museum of Non-objective Painting beginning in 1940. Throughout his life Scarlett wavered between representational, geometric, non-objective and abstraction, the latter representing his true voice and passion.
His body of work reflects an artist truly devoted to the exploration and continuation of abstract art, while simultaneously holding onto the romantic conception of the artist being the creator, an idea wholeheartedly rejected by the tenets of Non-Objective art, the works for which he is most well-known.
Scarlett’s acceptance into the Museum of Non-Objective painting resulted in a close friendship with its founder, Hilla Rebay, and by 1940, Scarlett had become the new museum's chief lecturer and within a decade the Guggenheim owned nearly sixty of his paintings and monoprints. Rebay and supporting artist Rudolph Bauer offered Scarlett constructive criticism during his position at the Museum.
Although Rebay’s support of Scarlett forced him to explore the geometric abstractions (Non-Objective), he continuously stood by his artistic methodology, which is described as ”creating an organization that is alive as to color, and form, with challenging and stimulating rhythms, making full use of one’s emotional and intuitive creative programming and keeping it under cerebral control, so that when it is finished it is a visual experience that is alive with mysticism and inner order, and has grown into a new world of art governed by authority” (Struve, 1990).
According to Scarlett scholar and author, Harriet Tannin (also his student), Scarlett created a substantial body of pure abstractions, beginning in the 1930’s and would continue to do them in secret during his tenure of creating non-objective works for Rebay’s Guggenheim, two of which were shown at the Whitney Annual Exhibition in 1951.
His works are represented in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian.
© 2008 Levis Fine Art, Inc.
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Biography from AskART:
| Rolph Scarlett was a painter of geometric abstraction during the American avant-garde movement of the 1930s and 1940s.
Born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 1889, he left Canada at the age of 18 to go to New York City and returned to Canada during the years of World War I. However, by 1924 he had established New York City as his home. While he was beginning his career as an abstract painter he was designing stage scenery for George Bernard Shaw's play, Man and Superman and for the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.
While in the process of creating the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), in 1939 Solomon Guggenheim, Director Hilla Rebay began to take an interest in Scarlett's work. By 1940 he had become the new museum's chief lecturer.
By 1953, the Guggenheim owned nearly sixty of his paintings and monoprints. He later became a resident of the Woodstock art colony for more than twenty-five years and showed his work in the Woodstock exhibits.
Sources:
Peter Hastings Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
James Cox Gallery |
Biography from AskART:
| Born in Canada on June 13, 1889, Rolph Scarlett lived in southern California during 1928 to 1936. While there, he painted and did set designs for the Pasadena Playhouse. Leaving California, he moved to NYC where he remained until his demise in August 1984.
Exhibitions: Hagemeyer Studio (LA), 1930; GGIE, 1939; Seligmann Gallery (NYC), 1949; Tanar Gallery (LA), 1964. | Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Census; Who's Who in American Art 1940; Social Security Death Index (1940-2002). | | Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here. |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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