biografia di Charles DEMUTH (1883-1935)

Birth place: Lancaster, PA

Death place: Lancaster, PA

Addresses: Lancaster, PA/NYC

Profession: Watercolor painter

Studied: Franklin & Marshall Acad.; Drexel Inst., 1901; PMSchIA, 1903-05; Paris, 1904, PAFA, with W.M. Chase, T. Anshutz, Hugh Breckenridge, and H. McCarter, 1905-07, 1908-10; Paris, 1907 (when he met Matisse, Braque, Derain, Dufy, and Vlaminck); Académie Julian, Paris, 1912-14, and in those same years at Acad. Colarossi and Acad. Moderne, also in Paris, with visits to London and Berlin.

Exhibited: His dealer was George Daniel Gallery, NYC, where his reputation was established with his first solo show in 1915. Other exh.: PAFA, 1913; S.Indp.A., 1917; Salons of Am., 1924, 1930; 291 Gallery, 1925; Phila. Sesqui-Centenn. Expo, 1926 (med); Smith Col. Mus. A., 1934; WMAA, 1935-37, 1987; Corcoran Gal, 1935, 1957; Cincinnati AM, 1941; Phillips Mem. Gal., 1942; Phila. Mus. A., 1944; Albertina, Vienna, 1949; MoMA, 1949-50 (retrospective); AIC.

Work: PMA; MMA; AIC; Fogg A. Mus., BM; CMA; Rochester Mus.; Barnes Fnd., Merion, Pa., Phillips Mem. Gal.; Los Angeles Mus. Hist., Science & Art; Demuth Foundation, Lancaster, PA

Comments: Early modernist and major exponent of Precisionism. After returning from a three-year stay in Paris (1912-14), during which he became a frequent visitor to the salon of Leo and Gerturde Stein, Dove became one of the most important American modernists, dividing his time between NYC and Lancaster (PA) and working primarily in watercolor. He was in Bermuda in 1916 and 1917 with Hartley, and in those years began to develop a more structured, gently cubist style; by the end of the 1920s his works became less abstract and more concerned about the organization of color and shape in space. Some critics preferred his watercolors of fruits and flowers, while others considered his best work was done in abstract painting. Demuth worked most of his life under the handicap of poor health; in 1920, he began to suffer from severe diabetes and was in declining health thereafter. Publications: contributed a poem to the second number of Duchamp's Blind Man magazine (May 1917).

Sources: WW33; Emily Farnham, Charles Demuth, Behind a Laughing Mask (Norman, Okla., 1971); Baigell, Dictionary; W. Homer, Avant-Garde Painting and Sculpture in America, 60; Barbara Haskel, Charles Demuth (WMAA, 1987); Helen Cooper, The Watercolors of Charles Demuth," Antiques, Jan. 1988, p.258"

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