Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 7

Jo Cain
Industrial Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Modern WPA

c. 1930s

About the Item

Industrial Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Modern WPA Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Hammering Nails 39 x 50 ½ inches Gouache on paper c. 1930s Signed lower right 44 x 55 inches framed Our gallery is pleased to present the exhibition, "Jo Cain: Echoes of an Era," a tribute to the enduring legacy of Joseph Lambert Cain and a celebration of his art that transcends time and remains relevant today. The exhibition features mural studies, works on paper and paintings from the 1930s and 40s, all are available on 1stDibs. BIO JOSEPH LAMBERT CAIN (1904–2003) A painter, muralist, and art educator, Joseph Cain's work was consistently infused by the color and vibrancy of his native New Orleans, even as he pursued a career that took him far from home. Beginning at the age of sixteen, his educational journey led him first to the Art Institute of Chicago and then to the Art Students League in New York, where he was instructed by Kenneth Hayes Miller, Kimon Nicolaides and Vaclav Vytlacil. He later studied under the Abstract Expressionist Hans Hoffman. A 1929 Carnegie Fellowship funded a year's enrollment at the Sorbonne in Paris and travel throughout Europe; Cain also received multiple Tiffany Foundation Fellowships. Using thickly applied paint, layered color planes, and multiple perspectives, Cain created paintings, including streetscapes, marine scenes, and landscapes, which were sometimes categorized as "decorative expressionism" beginning in the late 1930s. In 1932, Cain's entry to the First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art hung in the exhibition's entry way; other works were shown at such prestigious venues as the Museum of Modern Art, American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, National Academy of Design, and Carnegie Institute. He also executed a monumental mural at New York State Training School where he was employed as a teacher. While living in New York during this period, Cain was an integral member of a contemporary art collective known as "The Group," whose participants included Milton Avery, George Biddle, Robert Gwathmey, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and many other important modernists. Jo’s work evolved continuously. Moving from realism in the ‘20’s, he developed a highly personal, cubism based, abstract style similar in spirit to that of Stuart Davis and clearly influenced by Leger, Matisse and Picasso. In 1944, Cain joined the faculty at the University of Rhode Island, establishing and chairing the art department for over two decades. He continued creating art until his death.
  • Creator:
    Jo Cain (1904)
  • Creation Year:
    c. 1930s
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 44 in (111.76 cm)Width: 32 in (81.28 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    soft creases.
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1156213217372
More From This SellerView All
  • Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Modern
    By Jo Cain
    Located in New York, NY
    Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Modern Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Telephone Pole Worker 38 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches Oil on pap...
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Gouache

  • Surveyors WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism Men Working
    By Jo Cain
    Located in New York, NY
    Surveyors WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism Men Working Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Surveyors 30 ½ x 40 ¼ inches (sight) Gouache on paper c. 1930s Signed lower rig...
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Gouache, Paper

  • Two Men on a Street Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene
    By Stuart Davis
    Located in New York, NY
    Two Men on a Street Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene Note: We have three similar in style works from 1911 available now on 1stDibs. All are framed identi...
    Category

    Early 1900s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • Answering the Door Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene
    By Stuart Davis
    Located in New York, NY
    Answering the Door Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene Note: We have three similar in style works from 1911 available now on 1stDibs. All are framed identi...
    Category

    1910s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • "Brick Layers" WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing Men Working
    By David Fredenthal
    Located in New York, NY
    "Brick Layers" WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing Men Working. 21 x 15 inches Watercolor on paper. c. 1938. Signed lower left. BIO David Fredenthal (1914 - 1958) was one ot America's most respected watercolor artists. He was famous for his bold, intensely vigorous and complex paintings and drawings that expressed his deep feeling for excitement with life and living. He was a draftsman with seemingly a special gift for catching anything, physically and emotionally on the spot, and he never went anywhere without three or four loaded pens and a sketchbook in his pocket. As part of the WPA project he executed a number of murals including the Sports Pavilion on the Heinz Building of the New York World's Fair 1939. Some of his fresco and mural techniques were inspired by his friendship with Diego Rivera who had admired and encouraged him in the early 1930's. After he won a traveling scholarship to Europe from The Museum of Modern Art at age 19, he was the recipient of two Guggenheim grants in Painting. He had his first solo exhibition at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1937 at age 23, and many others after that including the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1947. Because of Fredenthal's prodigious drawing gifts, he was chosen by Erskine Caldwell to illustrate his novel "Tobacco Road" in 1940. He was a War Artist Correspondent for both the State Department (the European and Asian fronts) and Life magazine from 1943 to 1946 and his work was featured in Life magazine regularly during the war and after until the end of his life. Also featured in Life in 1956 were drawings that Fredenthal had vividly recorded on his sketch pad, of the entire filming of the movie, The Pride and the Passion, starring Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, and Frank Sinatra, along the treacherous mountain passes of Spain. Though he was fiercely committed to an art that expressed deeply human social values and issues and was quite hostile to abstraction, he was friendly with a number of abstract artists such as David Smith, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Paul Feeley, and Herman Cherry.
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Handmade Paper

  • TOBACCO ROAD Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 2
    By David Fredenthal
    Located in New York, NY
    TOBACCO ROAD Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 2 10 1/2 x 6 (sight), Signed David Fredenthal lower right. Framed by Lowy....
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Ink, Watercolor

You May Also Like
  • Environmental Prognostication Coil Narrative "Homo Sapiens R.I.P."
    Located in Miami, FL
    "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," Joni Mitchell said. - - Created in 1969, at the dawn of the American environmental movement, artist Richard Erdoes draws a sequential narrative in the form of a coil. From inception to destruction, it illustrates a list of things that humans are doing to destroy the world we live in. The work was commissioned for school-age humans and executed in a whimsically comic way. Yet the underlying narrative is sophisticated and foreshadows a world that could be on the brink of ecological disaster. Graphically and conceptually, this work exhibits an endless amount of creativity and Erdoes cartoony style is one to fall in love with. Signed lower right. Unframed 12.4 inches Width: 12.85 inches Height is the live area. Board is 16x22 inches. Richard Erdoes (Hungarian Erdős, German Erdös; July 7, 1912 – July 16, 2008) was an American artist, photographer, illustrator and author. Early life Erdoes was born in Frankfurt,to Maria Josefa Schrom on July 7, 1912. His father, Richárd Erdős Sr., was a Jewish Hungarian opera singer who had died a few weeks earlier in Budapest on June 9, 1912.After his birth, his mother lived with her sister, the Viennese actress Leopoldine ("Poldi") Sangora,He described himself as "equal parts Austrian, Hungarian and German, as well as equal parts Catholic, Protestant and Jew..."[4] Career He was a student at the Berlin Academy of Art in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power. He was involved in a small underground paper where he published anti-Hitler political cartoons which attracted the attention of the Nazi regime. He fled Germany with a price on his head. Back in Vienna, he continued his training at the Kunstgewerbeschule, now the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.[5] He also wrote and illustrated children's books and worked as a caricaturist for Tag and Stunde, anti-Nazi newspapers. After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938 he fled again, first to Paris, where he studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and then London, England before journeying to the United States. He married his first wife, fellow artist Elsie Schulhof (d. xxxx) in London, shortly before their arrival in New York City. In New York City, Erdoes enjoyed a long career as a commercial artist, and was known for his highly detailed, whimsical drawings. He created illustrations for such magazines as Stage, Fortune, Pageant, Gourmet, Harper's Bazaar, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, Time, National Geographic and Life Magazine, where he met his second wife, Jean Sternbergh (d. 1995) who was an art director there. The couple married in 1951 and had three children.[6] Erdoes also illustrated many children's books. An assignment for Life in 1967 took Erdoes to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the first time, and marked the beginning of the work for which he would be best known. Erdoes was fascinated by Native American culture, outraged at the conditions on the reservation and deeply moved by the Civil Rights Movement that was raging at the time. He wrote histories, collections of Native American stories...
    Category

    1960s American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Ink, Gouache, Illustration Board

  • Large Watercolour of Pleasure Boats Moored on the River in Florida by USA Artist
    Located in Preston, GB
    Large Watercolour of Pleasure Boats Moored on the River in Florida by USA Artist David Coolidge AWS (American 20th-21st Century) Art measures 40 x 30 i...
    Category

    Late 20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • David Dewey Watercolor of Reader's Digest Headquarters
    By David Dewey
    Located in Larchmont, NY
    David Dewey (B. 1946) Reader's Digest Headquarters, 1996 Watercolor on paper Sight: 24 x 18 1/2 in. Framed: 36 x 29 3/4 x 1 in. Living on the Maine coast, David Dewey is a watercolo...
    Category

    1990s American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • Schooners along the Hudson, West Point Academy in the distance.
    Located in Middletown, NY
    A serene Hudson River scene by a student of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Anna May Walling was born in 1881, a native of Goshen, New York. She was a graduate of the Blair Academy, and Prat...
    Category

    Early 20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Handmade Paper

  • Medicine Man
    By Cassilly Adams
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Cassilly Adams (American 1843-1921) "Medicine Man" c. 1860s Watercolor on Paper Unsigned Provenance: Questroyal Gallery, NYC Site Size: approx. 14.5 x 8....
    Category

    Mid-19th Century American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Paper

  • Mid-Century Hillside Trees Landscape Watercolor (unfinished)
    By Joseph Yeager
    Located in Soquel, CA
    Beautiful mid-century landscape watercolor with a tall, stately tree in the foreground, its many forking branches depicted with exceptional detail, and a verdant background of rollin...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

Recently Viewed

View All