ART & ARTISTS

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Irving Amen – woodcuts

Born in New York City in 1918, Irving Amen was drawing at the age of four. A scholarship to the Pratt Institute was awarded to him when he was fourteen years old. With Michelangelo as his idol, he spent seven years in life classes perfecting his drawing.

From 1942 to 1945 he served with the Armed Forces. He headed a mural project and executed murals in the United States and Belgium. His first exhibition in woodcut was held at the New School for Social Research and his second at the Smithsonian Institute in 1949, and in 1949 he travelled to Paris to study for a year. On his return to the United States he had one man shows in New York and Washington DC.

In 1953, Amen travelled throughout Italy. This resulted in a series of eleven woodcuts, eight etchings and a number of oil paintings. One of these woodcuts, Piazza San Marco #4 and its four woodblocks constitute a permanent exhibit of block printing in colour at the Smithsonian Institution. Travel in Israel, Greece and Turkey in 1960 led to a retrospective show at the Artist's House in Jerusalem.

Piazza San Marco #4
40.6 x 61 cm

Irving Amen has taught at Pratt Institute and at the University of Notre Dame. He had a show of woodcuts at the Artists Studio in NYC. Commissions include a Peace Medal in honour of the Vietnam War. He created designs for 12 stained glass windows 16 feet high depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel, commissioned by Agudas Achim Synagogue in Columbus, Ohio. He is listed in Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers and the Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists by Paul Cummings. He was elected member of Accademia Fiorentina Delle Arti Del Disegno, an organisation to which Michelangelo belonged.

1948 Promenade
woodcut

1950 Times Square #4
woodcut

1954 Piazza San Marco
woodcut

1954 Rialto and Bridge of Sighs
woodcut

1954 Slaughtered Houses
woodcut

1974 Flight
woodcut

Babylon
woodcut

Bird Watcher
woodcut

Florence, Italy
woodcut

1975c Playmates
woodcut 25.4 x 17.8 cm

Girl with a Ball
woodcut

In My Father's House Are Many Mansions
woodcut

Italian Landscape
woodcut

1970c Many Children Dwell in My Father's House
woodcut 40.6 x 53.3 cm

1970c Many Children Dwell in My Father's House

(variation)

woodcut 40.6 x 53.3 cm

Miner
woodcut

Palazzo Vecchio
woodcut

Pensive Girl #6
woodcut

Piazza San Marco #1
woodcut

1955c Shelley
woodcut 42.9 x 30.5 cm

The Basket Offering
woodcut

1965 Afternoon Sun
woodcut 64.8 x 49.3 cm

1976 Musician
woodcut 40.6 x 52.1 cm

1977 Chess Players
woodcut 50.8 x 66 cm

Don Quixote
woodcut 53.3 x 34.3

1960 Student
woodcut

The Open Book
woodcut

Three Graces

Chess Players
woodcut

Monday, 16 January 2012

Soren Emil Carlsen

Carrying on with the short theme of artists associated with John Henry Twachtman (for Twachtman see recent blog posts of 6 and 8 January) I’m taking a look at Soren Emil Carlsen.

Carlsen (1853 – 1932) was an American Impressionist painter who emigrated to the United States from Denmark. While he became known for his still lifes and has been described as "The American Chardin," he branched out later in his career and also became known for landscape and marine subjects.

Carlsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1853. After studying architecture in his native Denmark at Copenhagen's Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, he emmigrated to the United States just before his twentieth birthday in 1872 to become a painter. He moved to Chicago to study under fellow Dane, painter Lauritz Holtz, in 1874, and continued his study in Paris for six months of 1875, enrolling at the Academie Julien before financial trouble forced him to leave.

Preferring to enter the educational system instead of seeking to become an independent artist after this time, Carlsen accepted a teaching position at the Chicago Academy of Design (soon to become the Art Institute of Chicago) upon his return to America. With his great interest in the work of French artist Jean-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779), Carlsen returned to Paris in 1884 to study that master for two years.

On his next return to America, Carlsen moved to San Francisco to become the next director of the California School of Design, continuing to paint his signature still life images after Chardin. While in California, he kept in contact with several fellow artists he had come to know during an earlier stay in New York City; he taught his students about Augustus Saint-Gaudens, J. Alden Weir, and John LaFarge, and also allowed these artists to influence his own personal style. Around 1891, Carlsen returned to New York because sales opportunities for his work were better there, and he had tired of the long hours his teaching position required.

He settled permanently in New York after this point, but his still-life images were so popular and successful that he exhibited throughout the country, returning several times to San Francisco. Elected to the National Academy of Design in 1906, where he had been exhibiting with regularity since 1885, Carlsen also showed at the San Francisco Art Association between 1890 and 1897. 1904's Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco also featured Carlsen's work. Carlsen passed away in 1932 in New York nine years after being the subject of a major retrospective at Washington DC's Corcoran Gallery of Art. He died in New York in 1932.