biografia di Werner DREWES (1899-1985)

Birth place: Canig, Germany

Death place: Reston, VA

Addresses: NYC (immigrated 1930; citizen 1937); Wash., DC, 1972; Reston, VA, 1976

Profession: Painter, etcher, block printer, teacher

Studied: Charlottenburg Technische-Hochschule, Berlin, Germany; Stuttgart School Arch.; Stuttgart School Arts & Crafts; Weimar Staatliches Bauhaus, with Itten and Paul Klee; Dessau Staatliches Bauhaus, with Kandinsky and Feininger, 1927.

Exhibited: Société Anonyme, 1930s; Salons of Am., 1933, 1934; PAFA, 1933-34, 1944-51; AIC; WMAA; MoMA, 1939 (prize, plexiglas sculpture); Mus. of Costume Art, 1941 (prize, textile comp.); Carnegie Int., 1945-47; St. Louis AM, 1959 (prize); Cleveland Mus. Art, 1961 (solo); Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1962 (solo, prints); Washington Univ., St Louis, 1965 (retrospective); NMAA, 1969 (retrospective, prints).

Member: Société Anonyme (vice-pres); Am. Abstract Artists, 1937-46 (founder); Philadelphia Print Club; Color Print Soc.; Woodstock AA

Work: PMG; NMAH; NMAA; Busch-Reisinger Mus., Cambridge, MA; St Louis AM; LOC; Yale Univ. AG; PMA; SociÈtÈ Anonyme; Bennington College; AGAA; BM; Honolulu Acad. Arts; SFMA; AIC; Springfield MA; BMFA; Fogg MA; Newark Public Library; NYPL; PAFA; Frankfurt Mus., Germany.

Comments: An abstract painter, his early style was influenced by Kandinsky and Feininger at the Bauhaus. He was a strong advocate of abstract art and in 1985 was the last of the Bauhaus artists. Positions: teacher at Brooklyn Mus. and Columbia Univ, 1937-40 (under WPA); head of Graphic Art Div., WPA, 1940-41; teacher at Inst. Design, Chicago, 1945; Washington Univ. School Fine Arts, 1946-65.

Sources: WW73; WW47; R. Frost, Werner Drewes, Nature & Abstract," Art News, (Feb 15, 1949); Germain Bazin, History of Modern Painting, (Hyperion, 1951); Caril Dreyfuss, Werner Drewes, Woodcuts, (Smithsonian Inst, 1969).; Diamond, Thirty-Five American Modernists; American Abstract Art, 181; Falk, Exh. Record Series; addit. info. courtesy Woodstock AA"