David Hare Figurative Paintings

David Hare Summer Land, 1970 Acrylic or oil paint and collage on board Dimensions: 26 X 36 inches. Framed measuring 29 x 38 inches. Hand signed, dated and titled on tape to verso 'Summer Land 1970 Hare'. Provenance: Hamilton Gallery of Contemporary Art, New York David Hare (1917 – 1992) was an American artist, associated with the Surrealist movement. He is primarily known for his sculpture, though he also worked extensively in photography and oil painting. The VVV Surrealism Magazine was first published and edited by Hare in 1942. Born March 10, 1917 in New York City, New York to father Meredith Hare, a lawyer and mother Elizabeth Sage Goodwin, an art collector. In the 1920s the family moved first to Santa Fe, New Mexico and later to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in hope that the fresh air would help heal Meredith Hare's tuberculosis. His mother founded the Fountain Valley School, where David attended high school. After high school Hare married and moved to Roxbury, Connecticut where he worked as a color photographer. He attended Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson from 1936 to 1937, studying biology and chemistry. In the late 1930s, with no previous artistic training, he began to experiment with color photography. Using his previous education in chemistry Hare developed an automatist technique called "heatage" in which he heated the unfixed negative from an 8 by 10-inch plate, causing the image to ripple and distort. Hare's Surrealist experiments in photography were only one of his many projects. In 1938 he met Susanna Winslow Wilson and the couple soon married. Both David and Susanna pursued their interests in Surrealism and regularly attended Surrealist gatherings in New York Larre French restaurant on 56th street and at Breton's Greenwich Village apartment. In 1940 he received a commission from the American Museum of Natural History to document the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest, for which he eventually produced 20 prints developed using Eastman Kodak's then-new dye transfer process (a time-consuming and complicated technique). In the same year, he also opened his own commercial photography studio in New York City and exhibited his photographs in a solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery. In the next few years, through his cousin the painter Kay Sage, he came into contact with a number of Surrealist artists who had fled their native Europe because of World War II. Hare became closely involved with the émigré Surrealist movement and collaborated closely with them on projects such as the Surrealist journal VVV, which he co founded and edited from 1941 to 1944 with André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp. With numerous illustrations by Breton, Leonora Carrington, Marc Chagall, Roberto Matta, Giorgio de Chirico, MarcelDuchamp, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Enrico Donati, Dorothea Tanning, and others. Published in only four issues between 1942-44, VVV was an experimental New York-based magazine devoted to the dissemination of Surrealism. Edited by David Hare, the short-lived magazine featured contributions from some of the leading avant-garde artists of the period. David and Susanna divorce in 1945 and Breton’s wife Jacqueline Lamba...

David Hare Cronus Waiting, 1990 Acrylic on linen 72 x 42 inches “Freedom is what we want,” David Hare boldly stated in 1965, but then he added the caveat, “and what we are most afraid of.” No one could accuse David Hare of possessing such fear. Blithely unconcerned with the critics’ judgments, Hare flitted through most of the major art developments of the mid-twentieth century in the United States. He changed mediums several times; just when his fame as a sculptor had reached its apogee about 1960, he switched over to painting. Yet he remained attached to surrealism long after it had fallen out of official favor. “I can’t change what I do in order to fit what would make me popular,” he said. “Not because of moral reasons, but just because I can’t do it; I’m not interested in it.” Hare was born in New York City in 1917; his family was both wealthy and familiar with the world of modern art. Meredith (1870-1932), his father, was a prominent corporate attorney. His mother, Elizabeth Sage Goodwin (1878-1948) was an art collector, a financial backer of the 1913 Armory Show, and a friend of artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Walt Kuhn, and Marcel Duchamp. In the 1920s, the entire family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and later to Colorado Springs, in the hope that the change in altitude and climate would help to heal Meredith’s tuberculosis. In Colorado Springs, Elizabeth founded the Fountain Valley School where David attended high school after his father died in 1932. In the western United States, Hare developed a fascination for kachina dolls and other aspects of Native American culture that would become a recurring source of inspiration in his career. After high school, Hare briefly attended Bard College (1936-37) in Annandale-on-Hudson. At a loss as to what to do next, he parlayed his mother’s contacts into opening a commercial photography studio and began dabbling in color photography, still a rarity at the time [Kodachrome was introduced in 1935]. At age 22, Hare had his first solo exhibition at Walker Gallery in New York City; his 30 color photographs included one of President Franklin Roosevelt. As a photographer, Hare experimented with an automatist technique called “heatage” (or “melted negatives”) in which he heated the negative in order to distort the image. Hare described them as “antagonisms of matter.” The final products were usually abstractions tending towards surrealism and similar to processes used by Man Ray, Raoul Ubac, and Wolfgang Paalen. In 1940, Hare moved to Roxbury, CT, where he fraternized with neighboring artists such as Alexander Calder and Arshile Gorky, as well as Yves Tanguy who was married to Hare’s cousin Kay Sage, and the art dealer Julian Levy. The same year, Hare received a commission from the American Museum of Natural History to document the Pueblo Indians. He traveled to Santa Fe and, for several months, he took portrait photographs of members of the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni tribes that were published in book form in 1941. World War II turned Hare’s life upside down. He became a conduit in the exchange of artistic and intellectual ideas between U.S. artists and the surrealist émigrés fleeing Europe. In 1942, Hare befriended Andre Breton, the principal theorist of surrealism. When Breton wanted to publish a magazine to promote the movement in the United States, he could not serve as an editor because he was a foreign national. Instead, Breton selected Hare to edit the journal, entitled VVV [shorth for “Victory, Victory, Victory”], which ran for four issues (the second and third issues were printed as a single volume) from June 1942 to February 1944. Each edition of VVV focused on “poetry, plastic arts, anthropology, sociology, (and) psychology,” and was extensively illustrated by surrealist artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Roberto Matta, and Yves Tanguy; Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp served as editorial advisors. At the suggestion of Jacqueline Lamba...