
“Untitled” by John Ferren
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“Untitled” by John Ferren
About the Item
Signed lower right
39 ½ by 67 ½in. w/frame 40 by 68in.
John Ferren was one of the few members of the American Abstract Artists to come to artistic maturity in Paris. A native of California, in 1924 Ferren went to work for a company that produced plaster sculpture. He briefly attended art school in San Francisco. Later he served as an apprentice to a stonecutter. By 1929, Ferren had saved enough money to go to Europe, stopping first in New York where he saw the Gallatin Collection.
He went to France and to Italy. In Saint-Tropez, he met Hans Hofman, Vaclav Vytlacil and other Hofmann students. When Ferren stopped to visit them in Munich, he saw a Matisse exhibition, an experience that was instrumental in shifting his work from sculpture to painting. In Europe, Ferren did not pursue formal art studies, although he sat in on classes at the Sorbonne and attended informal drawing sessions at the Académie Ranson and the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére. Instead, Ferren said, he "literally learned art around the café tables in Paris, knowing other artists and talking."
After this initial year in Europe, Ferren returned to California. By 1931 he was again in Paris, where he lived for most of the next seven years. Surrounded by the Parisian avant-garde, Ferren wrestled with his own idiom. His diaries from these years indicate far-ranging explorations---from a Hofmann-like concern for surface to the spiritual searches of Kandinsky and Mondrian.
Although Gallatin and Morris were the first Americans to buy his paintings, Ferren associated with members of the Abstraction-Création group rather than with the American expatriate community. He married the daughter of a Spanish artist, Manuel Ortiz de Zarate. Through this union he met the circle of Parisian-Spanish painters that included Picasso, Miró , and Torres-Garcia. With Jean Hélion, Ferren wrote manifestoes against Surrealism, although he remained friendly with Max Ernst and André Breton, and illustrated books by Surrealist poets. In Paris, he met Pierre Matisse, who in 1936 hosted a show of Ferren's work at his New York gallery.
Following his divorce in 1938, Ferren returned to the United States. He attended American Abstract Artist meetings, but felt little of the frustration that had prompted the organization's formation. After Ad Reinhardt used Ferren's name on a pamphlet passed out on the Museum of Modern Art picket line, Ferren broke from the group.
During World War II, Ferren served with the Office of War Information in the North African and European theaters. By this time, Ferren had reintroduced the figure into his paintings without giving up abstraction, and following the war he turned to Abstract Expressionism.
In moving from geometric abstraction to the academically based figure and still-life paintings he did after the war, and finally to the freely painted expressionist work of his later years, Ferren searched for a way to express moral truth. Throughout his life, he viewed painting as a means of seeking the reality behind appearance. His early appreciation of Kandinsky and a fascination with Zen that dated from his youth helped define the way he thought about painting throughout his life. He called art the "great common denominator between knowledge and insight," and said it should explore the intuitive---the spiritual, mental, social or psychological---forces of life.
Ferren's Untitled relief of 1937 reflects an approach he developed while working at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17. Hayter introduced Ferren to a nineteenth-century printing technique in which an etched and inked plate is imprinted on wet plaster. The plaster was then carved and painted, using the etched lines as a guide. Pierre Matisse showed several of these plasters in the 1936 exhibition of Ferren's work and gave Ferren a contract to do more. After a year, Ferren gave up the medium entirely, despite the positive reception this work received in the New York press. The lively surfaces, clear color, and unusual technique reflect Ferren's noncanonical search for new means of expression.
Ferren was an early member of the Club, an organization of Abstract Expressionists, and in 1955 served as its president. He taught at the Brooklyn Museum School, the Cooper Union, and Queens College.
This particular painting was in the collection of Mr. Nathan L. Halpern who resided in New York, NY and was one of the biggest collectors of Abstract and post world war II paintings. This is an example of his New York style painting. For at least a brief moment he produced truly original, vibrant work, the so-called "New York paintings" of the late '50s and early '60s.
Museums & Collections:
Smithsonian, Washington D.C.
Sheldon Art Gallery, Nebraska
Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Los Angeles County Museum
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Spanierman Gallery
Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery
Provenance: Los Angeles County Museum, Gift of Mr. Nathan L. Halpern
- Dimensions:Height: 40 in (101.6 cm)Width: 68 in (172.72 cm)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1907-1970
- Condition:Fine condition.
- Seller Location:Sheffield, MA
- Reference Number:Seller: Art F2161stDibs: U0812168339269
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