By Edward Marecak
Located in Denver, CO
Semi-Abstract figurative oil on burlap painting titled 'Sybil (The Prophetess)' by Edward Marecak (1919-1993) painted in 1976. Signed and dated by the artist in the lower right corner. Portraying a single figure holding a crystal ball in their hand, painted in shades of blue, red, pink, and green. Presented in the original artist frame with outer dimensions measuring 37 ½ x 49 ½ inches; image size is 36 x 48 inches.
Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Edward Marecak
Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report.
About the Artist:
Born Ohio 1919
Died Colorado 1993
Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. His junior and senior high projects earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute.
Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson’s specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49.
At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High City. For the next twenty-five years he taught art at Skinner, Grove, East, George Washington and Morey Junior High Schools.
Prior to coming to Colorado, Marecak did watercolors resembling those of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Charles Burchfield. However, once in Colorado Springs he decided to destroy much of his earlier oeuvre, embarking on a totally new direction unlike anything he had previously done. His first one-person show at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs in 1949 featured paintings and lithographs rendered in the style of Magic Realism and referential abstraction. In addition to paintings and works on paper, Marecak produced hooked rugs, textiles, and ceramics. He likewise produced designs for ceramics, tableware, and furniture created by his wife Donna, an accomplished Colorado ceramist.
The Kirkland Museum staged a retrospective of Edward and Donna Marecak...
Category
1970s American Modern Edward Marecak Figurative Paintings