Harry Beckhoff Art

Medium: Watercolor and Pen and Ink on Paper Dimensions: 13.75" x 8.88" Signature: Signed Upper Right Exhibited: Masters of the Golden Age: Harvey Dunn and His Students South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, South Dakota May 5, 2015 - September 13, 2015 Norman Rockwell Museum...

Signed upper left

This Harry Beckhoff illustration is masterfully rendered and intricately designed in line and wash. It's as abstract as it's representational with its graphic style, clean lines, and flat patterning. Every element in the composition works in harmony without a line out of place. The flat and abstract nature of the work rivals that of the great modernist painters of the 1930s. Perhaps this was done for a major newsstand magazine like Collier's. Although he studied with Dean Cornwell and Harvey Dunn, he didn't pursue the style of painterly brushstrokes and impastos. Instead, he defined his forms with flat shapes, whose internal forms are defined by thin lines. The emphasis is more on silhouette and line than it is on texture and lighting. Beckhoff also described his work as having been influenced by illustrators like Pierre Brissaud...