Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 10

Albert Swinden
"Still Life of Fruit, " Albert Swinden, American Abstract Association, AAA

1937

About the Item

Albert Swinden (1901 - 1961) Still Life of Fruit, 1937 Oil on canvas 18 x 30 inches Provenance: Graham Gallery, New York Albert Swinden (1901–1961) was an English-born American abstract painter. He was one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists, and he created significant murals as part of the Federal Art Project. Albert Swinden was born in Birmingham, England in 1901. When he was seven, he moved with his family to Canada, and in 1919 he immigrated to the United States. He lived in Chicago, where he studied for about a year and a half at the Art Institute. He then relocated to New York City, where his art education continued briefly at the National Academy of Design. He soon changed schools again, to the Art Students League, which he attended from 1930 to 1934. He studied with Hans Hofmann and gained an appreciation for Synthetic Cubism and Neoplasticism. According to painter and printmaker George McNeil, Swinden "could have influenced Hofmann ... He was working with very, very simple planes, not in this sort of Cubistic manner. Swinden was working synthetically at this time." While still a student, Swinden began teaching at the Art Students League, in 1932. Swinden married Rebecca Palter (1912–1998), from New York. Their daughter, Alice Swinden Carter, also became an artist. Carter, who attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, received an award from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston for her large sculptures. Swinden was hired for the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and he is best known for the murals which he painted as part of that project. In 1935, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the opening of the inaugural exhibit at the Federal Art Project Gallery, accompanied by Audrey McMahon, New York regional director for the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project. Among the works on display was Abstraction, a sketch by Swinden; it was the design for a mural planned for the College of the City of New York. A newspaper account described it as consisting of "brightly colored T-squares, triangles and rulers in horizontal, vertical and diagonal positions". La Guardia asked what it was, and upon being told it was a mural design, he said he didn't know what it depicted. Someone joked that it could be a map of Manhattan. The displeased mayor stated that "if that's art, I belong to Tammany Hall." (Tammany Hall, which the Republican mayor referenced, was the New York Democratic Party political society.) Fearing that the mayor's negative attitude could jeopardize the future of abstract art within the Federal Art Project, McMahon dispatched an assistant to summon an artist who could speak to the mayor in defense of abstraction. The assistant returned with Arshile Gorky. Swinden played an important role in the founding of the American Abstract Artists. In 1935, he met with three friends, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, her future husband Byron Browne, and Ibram Lassaw, with the goal of exhibiting together. The group grew and started meeting in Swinden's studio, which adjoined those of Balcomb and Gertrude Greene. The A.A.A. evolved in 1937 out of these meetings among twenty-two artists. One of the artists attending those meetings was painter John Opper, who said in an interview that Swinden was very quiet, shy, and inhibited. He also said that Swinden was one of the best painters in the group. "His paintings were very powerful, very strong. You would think he would be one of those robust persons like Gorky, for instance. But he was the opposite of Gorky. He was very withdrawn." Around this time, Swinden may have painted abstracts exclusively. But later, according to Irving Sandler, "it was sort of a mixture between figurative and geometric abstraction. It was a kind of hard-edge figure towards the end." Burgoyne Diller selected Swinden to create a mural for Brooklyn's Williamsburg Housing Project. The other artists chosen for this project were Paul Kelpe, who painted two murals, and Ilya Bolotowsky and Balcomb Greene, each of whom created one. The murals were commissioned in 1936 by the Mural Division of the WPA/FAP in New York. Diller headed the Mural Division. Swinden's large – 9.31 by 14.36 feet (2.84 m × 4.38 m) – untitled abstract mural has been described as a "carefully balanced, disciplined composition of rectangular shapes punctuated by occasional biomorphic forms". He was not able to execute the mural exactly as he had originally conceptualized, due to constraints of the installation space; for example, the unpainted upper corners which were inserted during restoration are where structural beams were present at the Williamsburg site. The black strip at the top and the broken blue one on the right were probably also changes made due to requirements of using the particular space. The murals, owned by the New York City Housing Authority, are on loan to the Brooklyn Museum. These five paintings were the first abstract murals anywhere in the United States, and they're considered to be some of the most significant. Art historians have praised the murals as "extremely important artworks, quite courageous and extraordinary ... painted in the most radical style you could get at the time", "key to American art between the wars", and "national treasures". Among the other murals he created was one for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Although he did not often write about his art, a short essay of his was published in the American Abstract Artists Yearbook of 1938. This yearbook featured, among other things, essays such as Swinden's which expounded on theories and practices of abstract art. In his essay, "On Simplification", Swinden wrote: "We are moved not only by particular, or individual forms, but by the relationships between the particular forms and their significance as a unity." A 1940 fire at Swinden's studio destroyed the majority of his early work. His mural for the Williamsburg Project, which had been painted over and considered lost before being rediscovered and restored, is a rare and very significant painting from the period before the fire. In a 1942 review of the American Abstract Artists' sixth annual exhibition, influential art critic Clement Greenberg wrote that among the "geometricians", Swinden "shows as much promise perhaps in his single unsuccessful painting as the others in their successful ones." Although he was respected by the prominent artists he associated with, had his paintings exhibited in many group shows (including such prestigious venues as the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art), and created significant murals, he was not able to promote his art in a commercially successful way. Instead, he often had to work in other capacities, supporting himself as an engineering draftsman or a textile designer. He died in 1961 in New York City. In 1962, a retrospective exhibit of his work was mounted at New York's Graham Gallery. Swinden left behind a relatively small oeuvre of "calmly classical visions".
  • Creator:
    Albert Swinden (1901 - 1961, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1937
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 19 in (48.26 cm)Width: 31 in (78.74 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1841210737112
More From This SellerView All
  • "Fruit" Georgina Klitgaard, Apples and Pears Still Life, Woodstock Female Artist
    By Georgina Klitgaard
    Located in New York, NY
    Georgina Klitgaard Apples and Pears Still Life Signed lower right Oil on canvas 8 x 10 inches Georgina Klitgaard’s art has sometimes gotten lost in the critical propensity to assign artists to membership in one school or another. Unfortunately for her posthumous reputation, Klitgaard defied easy characterization. She was a U.S. modernist, working in both oil and watercolors, but never abandoned figurative painting. She made her reputation in landscape but also excelled in portraits, flower studies, and even cityscapes. Yet despite Klitgaard’s ambiguous status in art history, her paintings continue to fascinate viewers attracted to the unsteady ground between twentieth-century realism and expressionism. Georgina Klitgaard (née Berrian) was born in Spuyten Duyvil, New York (now part of the Bronx); the Berrians had lived in the area since at least the U.S. Revolution. After graduating from Barnard College, she studied art at the National Academy of Design. In 1919 she married Kay Klitgaard, a Danish artist and writer. The next year, her life took a decisive turn when the couple visited friends in Woodstock, NY—about 120 miles north of New York City--and fell in love with the area. In 1906, L. Birge Harrison helped found the Art Students League Summer School in Woodstock and the area became a magnet for landscape painters. The Klitgaards bought a house in 1922 on a steep ledge at the end of Cricket Ridge, high above Bearsville, which provided panoramic vistas overlooking the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Valley. Klitgaard joined the artists’ colony in the area, which at the time included artists Ernest Fiene and Katherine Schmidt. Klitgaard exhibited widely and her career slowly developed momentum. She was a regular contributor at Whitney Museum shows from 1927 to 1944. In 1929, she exhibited a painting entitled “Carousel” in the Whitney Studio Club’s famous exhibition “Circus in Paint.” Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney acquired five paintings by Klitgaard in the early 1930s and served as a significant patron for the artist. Klitgaard s New York dealer, Frank Rehn...
    Category

    Early 20th Century Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "Floral Still Life Arrangement" Frederick Jessup, Butterflies, Wine Bottle
    By Robert Jessup
    Located in New York, NY
    Frederick Arthur Jessup Still Life Arrangement Signed lower left Oil on canvas 18 1/2 x 22 inches Provenance: Findlay Galleries, New York Private Collection, New York
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "Ethnographic Still Life, " Edith Kramer, African Mask and Shofar, Art Therapy
    By Edith Kramer
    Located in New York, NY
    Edith Kramer (1916 - 2014) Still Life with Mask, n.d. Oil on canvas 26 x 20 inches Signed and titled on the stretcher Provenance: Estate of the artist Kramer was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary in 1916. At age 13 Kramer began art lessons with Friedl Dicker. Dicker was graduate of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany and was an artist and art teacher of note. Kramer studied drawing, sculpture and painting, and was influenced by the method for teaching art developed by Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten. It was in 1934 after Kramer graduated from Realgymnasium that she, then 18, followed Dicker to Prague to continue to study under her. During this time in Prague, Kramer witnessed the therapeutic impact of art when she assisted Dicker in teaching art to the children of political refugees. With the threat of Nazi invasion looming, Kramer took refuge in America in 1938. In New York City, she worked for three years teaching sculpture at a progressive school called the Little Red School House. During World War II Kramer worked as a machinist at a tool and die shop in the Soho district of New York City. She stayed after her shift to draw the other workers in their industrial setting. These works were rendered in the social realist style. In 1947 Kramer visited some of the earliest known artwork, in the caves at Lascaux. Kramer spoke of these cave paintings as an example of the universal language of art. At the age of 33 she returned to New York City, with hopes of making a living as an artist. Still in her 33rd year, Kramer was offered a job at Wiltwyck School for Boys, a school and residential treatment facility for children with behavioral and emotional needs. This job was arranged for her by psychoanalyst and board member at Wiltwyck, Dr. Viola Bernard. Dr. Bernard gave Kramer the title, "Art Therapist," noting that few teachers were willing to work with such challenging students. It was here that Kramer worked with disturbed boys, ages 8 through 13, for the following seven years. Raised in a family which was interested in psychoanalytic theory, Kramer herself became a follower of Sigmund Freud. Kramer especially believed in the concept of sublimation. Freudian theory describes sublimation as a process in which primitive urges coming from the id are transformed into socially productive activities that lead to gratification of the original urge. Kramer's training was in art, art education and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy. Kramer believed sublimation to be one of the most vital goals of art therapy...
    Category

    20th Century American Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "Sunflowers, " Frank London, Modernist Yellow Floral Still Life with Window
    Located in New York, NY
    Frank Marsdon London (1876 - 1945) Sunflowers Oil on canvas 31 x 22 inches Signed lower right Exhibited: Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art. Frank Marsden London was born in the small Southern town of Pittsboro in central North Carolina in 1876. When he reached adulthood, London attended the University of North Carolina...
    Category

    1920s American Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Canvas

  • "Lemons and Pear" Marsden Hartley, Colorful Fruit Still Life, Modern Art
    By Marsden Hartley
    Located in New York, NY
    Marsden Hartley Lemons and Pear, circa 1922-23 Oil on canvas 9 x 10 3/4 inches Provenance: Adelaide Shaffer Kuntz, Bronxville (Hartley’s friend and patron) Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York (acquired from the above) Private Collection, Stamford, Connecticut (acquired from the above) Barridoff Galleries, Portland, Maine, April 7, 1984, Lot 29 (as Still Life with Pear and Lemons) Richard Ward Foster (acquired at above sale) Sotheby's New York, American Art, October 6, 2017, Lot 32 Private Collection (acquired from the above) Exhibited: (possibly) Kantstrasse, Berlin, Private showing in artist’s studio, 1923. (possibly) New York, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, Still Life Painting by European and American Painters, 1944. Born in Lewiston, Maine, Marsden Hartley became one of the most famous early modernist artists of twentieth-century American art, known for landscapes, still lifes, and some portraits. His painting showed a focus on monumental shapes, especially clouds and landscape forms, and his unique style has been described by critic Sadakichi Hartmann as "an extreme and up-to-date impressionism" and "emerging modernism that evolved through Impressionism". (Gerdts 291) He had a lonely, insecure childhood because his mother died when he was eight years old, and he was raised by an older sister when his father left to remarry. He studied art in Cleveland, Ohio and then in 1898 went to the Chase School in New York and at the National Academy of Design. He continued to spend much time in Maine painting landscapes, and by 1909 had his first exhibition, which was held at New York Gallery 291, run by Alfred Stieglitz. There he became involved with a social circle of modernists that included Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, and John Marin. In 1912, he first went to Europe where he had further exposure to modernism, and from 1913 to 1915 he was in Germany. In Paris, he experimented with Cezanne-like still lifes and was befriended by Gertrude Stein. In Germany, he was influenced by Expressionism, and especially by military pageantry. It is said that his greatest contribution to early 20th-century American modernism has been his brilliant synthetic military icons known as German Officer Portraits. He developed a close homosexual relationship with a handsome young Prussian officer who was killed in World War I. Being encouraged by Stieglitz to explore American subjects, Hartley turned to American Indian objects...
    Category

    1920s Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "The Tailor Shop" Suzanne Lalique, French Still Life, Measuring Tape, Fabric
    By Suzanne Lalique
    Located in New York, NY
    Suzanne Lalique The Tailor Shop, 1929 Signed and dated upper left Oil on canvas 13 x 16 inches Suzanne Lalique was born in 1892, the daughter of René Lalique and Alice Ledru. She wa...
    Category

    1920s Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

You May Also Like
  • Vessels by Yosl Bergner - Still life painting, 1965
    By Yosl Bergner
    Located in London, GB
    *PLEASE NOTE UK BUYERS WILL ONLY PAY 5% VAT ON THIS PURCHASE. Vessels by Yosl Bergner (1920-2017) Oil on canvas 65 x 81.4 cm (25 ⁵/₈ x 32 inches) Signed and dated upper left Execute...
    Category

    1960s Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Modern British mid century oil painting of aubergines on purple and white
    Located in Petworth, West Sussex
    Rodney Gladwell (British, 1928 – 1979) Aubergines, 1959 Signed and dated ‘Gladwell 59’ (lower left) Oil on board 79.1/2 x 31.1/2 in. (202 x 80 cm.) including frame Painter Rodney Gl...
    Category

    20th Century Modern Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • VASE WITH FLOWERS IN THE MIRROR Modernist Oil Painting
    By Joseph Raskin
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Joseph Raskin painted still lifes throughout his career, often using them for formal and technical experimentation. Here, the artist renders a bouquet of a wide variety of flowers in...
    Category

    1940s American Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Bouquet of Flowers Latvian Modernist Floral Oil Painting
    By Vita Merca
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Vita Merca Latvian artist born 1951. Her father was a conductor, her mother was fascinated with violin and entered Vita in the music world and later in fine arts. Vita has been interested in painting since thirteen years of age. "in the fairy tales by Karl Skalbe, in the poems ofFricis Bard. I also try to approach this subtle soul vibration," says Merca. She emphasizes that she feels free of pompousness and more when she is painting, painting as a means of expression, managing techniques and paying attention to the nuances and motifs, without excessive volume. "Conceptualism does not exist for me, I want more so that a person, by contacting the painting, reveals what I want to say. It is looking for my contemporaries, the souls of the soul," she says. The artist is painting very specific things, but the reflection of water in her is not only general, it connects the earth and the sky. "It's like serving beauty," says Merca about her relationship with painting. Education: Jahn Rozenthal Riga Art Academy(1963-1970) and the Department of Painting of the Latvian Academy of Arts (1970-1977), graduated in 1977. at Eduard Kalniņš, in 1983 graduated from the postgraduate studio of the Art Academy of the USSR Riga with Professor Eduard Kalniņa. Graduated from the Art Academy at the master's studio in Riga. Participated in exhibitions since 1976. Member of the Artists' Union of Latvia since 1980 and member of the association "B - 13" (1993 - 1998) from 1993. Has had personal exhibition in Jelgava (1991) and Riga (1993). Regularly participated in group exhibitions in Riga, Vilnius, Moscow, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Japan and elsewhere. Works are in the State Art Museum, the Latvian Artists' Union, the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga and Talsi museum Ģederta Eliasa Jelgava History and Art Museum, Works in private collections in Latvia, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Russia, Canada, USA, Australia, Israel, Italy Popular painter...
    Category

    1980s Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • BOUQUET Modernist Flowers in a Vase, Impasto Oil Painting
    By Mortimer Borne
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Floral painting. Flowers in a vase. Mortimer Borne, Printmaker, painter, sculptor, and educator was born in Rypin, Poland in 1902 and emigrated to the US in 1916. He studied at the National Academy of Design, The Art Students League, The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and with Charles Webster Hawthorne, founder of the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown. Painted in a thick impasto style similar in technique to Samuel Rothbort and David Burliuk. Borne himself taught at The New School for Social Research in New York City from 1945-1967. From the 1920s through the 40s he was a prolific producer of New York City cityscapes and genre scenes. In later decades, he adopted a more modernist style apparently influenced by Picasso, producing color drypoints of abstracted figures. His works were widely exhibited in museums in the U.S. and abroad from 1931 and later, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, New York Public Library, Carnegie Institute, and Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers in London. He taught at The New School for Social Research in New York City from 1945-1967, and at the Tappan...
    Category

    20th Century Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Oval Still Life - Oil on Canvas - Mid-20th Century
    Located in Roma, IT
    Oval Still Life is an artwork realized by an unknown in the mid-20th centry. Oil on canvas mounted on board. 37 x 49 cm ; 53 x 65 cm with frame. Good conditions!
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil, Board

Recently Viewed

View All