Surrealism Leon Kelly

Leon Kelly (October 21, 1901 – June 28, 1982) was an American artist born in Philadelphia, PA. He is most well known for his contributions to American Surrealism, but his work also encompassed styles such as Cubism, Social Realism, and Abstraction. Reclusive by nature, a character trait that became more exaggerated in the 1940s and later, Kelly’s work reflects his determination not to be limited by the trends of his time. His large output of paintings is complemented by a prolific number of drawings that span his career of 50 years. Some of the collections where his work is represented are: The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Boston Public Library.

 One of the hallmarks of Kelly’s surrealist work are the enormous mosquitos that stalked the canvases. These gigantic insects and their surroundings are meticulously rendered, giving plausibility to the idea that they may, in fact, exist in some undiscovered landscape. One had only to spend a summer evening outdoors in Southern New Jersey to appreciate that the size of these creatures was in part an allegory for their relentless savagery. While mosquitos dominated Kelly’s Surrealist work, other creatures began to appear such as beetles, birds and, later, a horses in a series of drawings made for his daughter Paula, (“The Butterfly Horse, Birth of Pegasus”, 1952)

 As Kelly settled into life on the island his work continued to evolve. His relationship with nature intensified and the impressions from it were woven into the several series of paintings: Return and Departure, and the Lunar series. The Return and Departure series was done in the mid 1940s as a reaction to the seasonal ebb and flow of life on the barrier island, the flow of tides, the migration of birds and butterflies and the influx of summer visitors who retreated again in the Fall. Birds in particular begin to appear in his work as symbolic of the fugitive and ephemeral. “Birds and their mystic and silent relationship to the elements. They come and go like the spiritual counterparts of human beings. Down out of infinite space to stand for a moment like the apparition of the soul.” He further wrote “People who come to me from a thin thread and then leave and in their departure diminish to a fine thread. These paintings were made on the seaboard and relate to a feeling of people coming and going away from a little platform in eternity and infinite space.” See “Atlantic Pastorale”, 1944, which is a preliminary sketch for a painting of the same name done in 1945. Abstract representations of figures vary in size and are scattered across the page to denote the appearance of their approach and departure.Wikipedia

Popular Art Edwin Georgi

Edwin Georgi(1896 - 1964) A leader in the second wave of "pretty-girl" artists: more like pin-ups without actually being pin-ups. Largely self-taught, learning his way up in ad and art agencies. A pilot in WWI. Style ranged from simple, posteresque lines and colors to his more famous pointillist pieces with boldly directed light, a unique use of warm shadows, and sparkling colors. Ads for Webster Cigars, Woodbury, Ford Mercury, Crane paper, Yardley, The Italian Line. In-demand illustrator for Goldenbook Magazine, Fortune, Redbook, Woman's Home Companion, Cosmo, True, Esquire, Ladies' Home Journal,Saturday Evening Post, American Girl, Liberty.(americanartarchives.com)

Isabel Bishop

Isabel Bishop (March 3, 1902 – February 19, 1988) was an American painter and graphic artist who depicted urban scenes of Union Square, New York, from the 1930s to the 1970s. She is best known for her depiction of American women and as a leading member of the Fourteenth Street School of artists.Wikipedia
Isabel Bishop developed her artistic voice during the Depression, when rigid gender roles and the Separate Sphere ideology were breaking down. She moved to New York at 16 to become a professional artist and made her reputation depicting an emerging sub-genre of the ‘New Woman’—the ‘Career Girl’ in the public sphere, specifically, the ‘Office Girl’ who worked at Union Square. During the Depression, Union Square blended office workers, the unemployed and homeless, social activists and soapbox orators, shoppers, and crowds gathered for political rallies. Bishop maintained a studio in various locations around the Square for fifty years. She watched the melee from her studio window and also mingled in the Square, sketchbook in hand. She, along with 3 male colleagues, including her teacher Kenneth Hayes Miller (1876-1952), became known as the ‘14th Street School’, named for one bordering street. 

 Bishop perceived these young women’s fate differently. She believed in upward social mobility, using imagery of the Office Girl to demonstrate that possibility. In the 1930s, she made a series of works focusing on young women at lunch time. She depicts them attired in “their cheap rayon dresses” (Bishop, in an oral history), who used their lunch hour to create a kind of domestic-sphere intimacy in the modern urban environment. They ignore the viewer, taking a respite from their pressured day and being “bossed around” by men at work.

 Bishop also shows viewers how these young women just entering the workplace start to grow up. Now the Office Girl has been promoted, as seen in Young Woman from 1937. She displays polish, decorum, and grace, dressed in a tailored, smart business suit, boldly and assuredly striding forward into the public sphere. This is a woman with things to say and places to go, well beyond the domestic. She aspires to more, to bigger, to better, an equal in confidence and competence with any man.

 Bishop demonstrated her own competence with her meticulous technique. Like her teacher Miller, she reflected her interest in Renaissance art by working in those traditional methods. She would not only make drawings prior to painting, but also took the extra step of working out her composition with prints. She used the rigorous, time-consuming process of painting with egg tempera, a method that lost prominence with the increased prevalence of oil paints beginning in the 17th century. With these techniques, Bishop worked slowly, often taking a year to finish one work. (Art Times Journal )

Neo-Dada: Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993.[3] He became the recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts in 1995 in recognition of his more than 40 years of fruitful artmaking.
Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City as well as on Captiva Island, Florida until his death from heart failure on May 12, 2008.Wikipedia 

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