Richard Andres

Panama Garden, Mid-century abstract expressionist modern work

c. 1964

Richard Andres (American, 1927-2013) Interior, 1976 acrylic on canvas signed lower right, signed and titled verso 50 x 59.5 inches Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 1927. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1950, he was immediately drafted and served for two years in the army as a mural painter. He received his Master of Arts from Kent State in 1961. A frequent exhibitor at galleries and museums and winner of multiple May Show prizes, Andres taught art in the Cleveland Public Schools for 28 years, as well as teaching the University of Buffalo, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Western Reserve University. Very little in Richard Andres’ childhood would have predicted his love of classical music, mid-century-modern architecture and certainly not his lifelong passion for art and in particular abstract art. Richard’s father, Raymond, had no more than a third-grade education, and his mother, Clara, was one of thirteen children – only three of whom lived into adulthood and none of whom attended high school. They lived, when Richard was a boy, in a dingy area of Buffalo, NY in a walk-up apartment situated above a tavern. Raymond and Clara supplemented the income from their factory jobs in the bar downstairs with Raymond playing ragtime on the piano and Clara serving drinks. This often left Richard and his two older brothers at home alone to fend for themselves. The two older boys, Raymond and Russell, were - unlike Richard- rather rough and tumble and entertained themselves with stickball, boxing and the like. Richard, on the other hand, from a very young age liked to draw, or better yet even, to paint with the small set of watercolors he received for Christmas one year. Paper, however, at the height of the depression, was hard to come by. Luckily, Clara used paper doilies as decoration for the apartment and Richard would contentedly paint and then cut up doilies, gluing the pieces together to create collages. At eight-years-old, he discovered the Albright-Knox Museum (then known as the Albright Art Gallery) and spent several hours a week there studying the paintings. He was particularly fond of Charles Burchfield‘s landscapes, enamored with their ‘messiness’ and thinking that they somehow captured more ‘feeling’ than works he was previously familiar with. For his tenth Christmas, he asked for and received a ‘how-to’ paint book by Elliot O’Hare. Through this self-teaching, he assembled the portfolio needed for acceptance to Buffalo Technical High School where he studied Advertising Arts. In his Junior year, he was encouraged to enter a watercolor painting, “Two Barns,” in the national 1944-45 Ingersoll Art Award Contest and was one of twelve grand prize winners – each one winning one hundred dollars. More importantly the painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute Galleries, which resulted in his winning a national scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art (The Cleveland Art Institute). He flourished at the art school under the tutelage of faculty members such as Carl Gaertner, as well as that of visiting artists such as William Sommer and Henry George Keller. He would say in later years that Gaertner, in particular, influenced his attitude toward life as well as art. “Gaertner,” Andres said, “believed that there was no need to be a ‘tortured artist’, that an artist should rather enjoy beauty, family, and life in general.” Free to spend his days as he chose, he wandered the Cleveland Art Museum for most of the hours he was not attending classes or painting; the remaining time was spent drinking coffee at a local hangout with art school friends – which is where he met fellow Henry Keller scholarship winner, Avis Johnson. Richard was immediately smitten with Avis, but being rather shy, it took him the entire summer of 1948 to build up his courage to ask her out. Over that summer he ‘thought about Avis’ and worked in a diner to save money. He also used the hundred-dollar prize money won in High School to visit the first Max Beckmann retrospective in the United States at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. Over a half century later he spoke of that exhibit with a reverence usually reserved for spiritual matters, “I walked in and it was like nothing I had ever seen before... the color...It just glowed.” Returning to campus in the Fall, the first thing he did was go to the coffee shop in hopes of finding Avis. He did, and she, upon seeing him, realized that she was also smitten with him. They quickly became known as ‘the couple’ on campus, and a year later, with Richard being drafted for the Korean war, they were quickly married by a Justice of the Peace, celebrating after with family at Avis’s Cleveland home. As a gift, faculty member John Paul Miller...

Richard Andres American, 1927-2013 Untitled, c. 1984 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas signed lower right 19 x 16 inches Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 192...

Richard Andres American, 1927-2013 Reflections, 1985 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas signed lower right, signed, dated and titled verso 52.5 x 72.5 inches 53 x 73 inches, ...

Richard Andres American, 1927-2013 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas 12 x 10 inches Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 1927. A graduate of the Cleveland Instit...

Richard Andres American, 1927-2013 The King of Diamonds Accepts Challenges, 1982 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas signed lower right, signed and titled verso 47.5 x 47.5 in...

Richard Andres American, 1927-2013 Untitled, c. 1980 acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas signed lower right 24 x 20 inches 25 x 21 inches, framed Richard Andres was born in B...

Hidden words and symbols hide beneath the bold red exterior of the painting. Solid watercolours were used to sketch shapes below the surface. The red surface treatment reacted with t...

Large semi-abstract expressionist painting. The palette of warm yellow, gold and blues colour tones with a light textured surface. Contemporary art directly from the artist's studio...

Most mornings we wake up to a physical reality of sharp contrast and clear-cut edges. Defined outlines help us navigate everyday life and the world around us. But the blurry fringes ...

Most mornings we wake up to a physical reality of sharp contrast and clear-cut edges. Defined outlines help us navigate everyday life and the world around us. But the blurry fringes ...

Bold, Bright, Bursting with Color! Original, One of a Kind Painting, Acrylic on Canvas by Renowned Canadian Artist Jasmin Aldin. Date of Creation: 2008 Medium: Acrylic on gallery w...

Acrylic on canvas.