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Paul (Harry Paul) Burlin (American Painter, 1886-1969)

Paul Burlin was born in New York in 1886. He received his early education in England before returning to New York at the age of twelve. He worked for a short time as an illustrator under Theodore Dreiser at Delineator magazine, where he was exposed to Progressivist philosophy and politics. He soon grew tired of commercial work and enrolled at the National Academy of Design. There, he received a formal education and refined his technical skills; though he later dropped out to pursue his artistic studies more informally with a group of fellow students. He was also a frequent visitor at Alfred Steiglitz’s ‘291’ gallery.

Burlin achieved a great deal of early artistic success. He visited the Southwest for the first time in 1910. Paintings from this visit were received warmly in New York and exhibited in a 1911 exhibition. As a result of his early success, he was the youngest artist (at twenty-six years of age) to participate in the 1913 – the revolutionary exhibition of avant-garde European work that can be credited with introducing modern art to the and stimulating the development of modernism in America. There, Burlin’s work was exhibited alongside works by such artists as Picasso, Monet, Cézanne, and Duchamp.

Later that year, Burlin returned to the Southwest to live. With the images and ideas of the Armory Show still prominent in his mind, Burlin was impressed and moved by what he described as the ‘primeval, erosive, forbidding character of the landscape’. In 1917, he met and married , a prominent ethnomusicologist specializing in the songs and chants of the whose 1907 The Indians’ Book is still a classic study of music and poetry. Like many other modernists of his time, Burlin was fascinated by “primitive” art. While still in New York, Burlin was profoundly affected by the African tribal art that he saw at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, as well as the Marius de Zaya collection of African sculpture. His frequent visits to Stieglitz’s gallery ‘291’ also exposed him to Picasso’s ‘primitive’ work. Once in

In the historic Spiegelberg House . Palace Avenue at Paseo de Peralta

237 East Palace Avenue Santa Fe, NM 87501

800 879-8898 505 989-9888 505 989-9889 Fax [email protected] the Southwest, Burlin became intensely interested in Native American art and culture. Visually, Burlin was drawn to the color and abstract geometry of Native American designs. Contemplating the abstract decoration of Indian pottery, he observed that “by contrast all other picture-making seemed like story telling trivia. These disturbing factors – none of which had anything to do with ‘representation’ were the vague beginnings of an esthetic credo…” Emotionally and intellectually, Burlin was influenced by the spirituality of the Southwestern Indian cultures, which inspired a preoccupation with symbols and myth that remained with him throughout his career. During his time in , Burlin painted landscapes and portraits of Indians which varied from relatively conventional to increasingly expressionistic, with a strongly Fauvist-influenced color palette. At this point, Burlin’s work was ‘defined’ by ‘the contrast between early modern European art and the visual and spiritual influence of the Pueblo Indians plus the harsh Southwest landscape’ (Wedell 2007; 1).

Burlin’s time in New Mexico had a profound impact, not only on his own work, but on the development of modernism throughout the Southwest. According to University of New Mexico art historian Sharyn Udall, Burlin was the first Armory Show participant to reach New Mexico, and that fact, coupled with his confident handling of local subject matter, made a definite impression on newcomers [Marsden] Hartley and B.J.O. Nordfeldt…It is clear, moreover, that Burlin’s stature as the first modernist painter in New Mexico was unquestioned; his was the pivotal role in introducing fauve and expressionist modes to the art of New Mexico” (Udall 1984; 28).

Though living in New Mexico, Burlin maintained contact with his colleagues in New York and exhibited his work at New York’s Daniel Gallery. As a result of a 1916 visit to the Colorado Fuel and Oil Company in Pueblo, CO and through his exposure to the New York modern scene, Burlin also became familiar with the ‘machine aesthetic’ – the artistic possibilities of industrial scenes. Burlin’s experimentation with almost abstract depictions of industrial machinery with subtle anthropomorphic imagery can be seen in much of his work of this time period. A selection of these industrial works was shown in a 1919 exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to a violently negative critical reception.

For much of his life, Burlin felt a profound ambivalence about American art, admiring its vitality, energy, and freedom from the ‘aesthetic baggage’ of European art (Sandler 1961; 5), while remaining wary of what he considered its crudeness and ignorance of the past. In 1921, Burlin and Natalie moved to as part of an exodus of expatriate artists responding to what Burlin called a ‘palsy of the spirit’ in America after World War I, exemplified by the hostile reaction to his abstract work and other modern art. In Paris, Burlin arrived at the geographical locus of modern art. He studied European abstract artists, working with the Cubist Albert Gleizes, and further developed some of the intellectual and symbolic elements that he had begun in the Southwest. Later that year, Natalie was killed in an automobile accident, setting Burlin ‘emotionally adrift’. He returned briefly to the Southwest, but found little comfort or ‘nourishment as an artist’ there. He continued to live in Paris until 1932, when he moved back to

In the historic Spiegelberg House . Palace Avenue at Paseo de Peralta

237 East Palace Avenue Santa Fe, NM 87501

800 879-8898 505 989-9888 505 989-9889 Fax [email protected] the United States in the midst of the Great Depression to work for the WPA. During this time, Burlin’s work tended toward social-realism, experimenting with political and urban themes. Throughout the war, Burlin employed themes of war and persecution, drawing much of his inspiration from Picasso’s war paintings.

Throughout the 1940s, Burlin’s work became less dependent on subject matter and more and more preoccupied with the expressive possibilities of shape and color. During this time, he began to develop his characteristic style of merging abstract expressionistic forms with metaphysical subjects and ideas. By the 1950s, he had moved almost entirely into abstract expressionistic work. His work was increasingly focused on mythological themes and deeply influenced by more abstract artists, such as Kandinsky and Picasso. His work also became increasingly autobiographical. It was at this time that Burlin began to lose his eyesight, a theme that recurred prominently in his work for the rest of his life.

Burlin’s paintings from the last decades of his life are filled with energy and movement, restlessness and cacophony, balanced with technical mastery and clarity of vision. They exhibit Burlin’s unique combination of the symbols and spiritual themes that he discovered in the Southwest with the artistic style developed through his time in Europe. In these works, ‘the world of natural appearances [is] completely swallowed up in the vehemence of the painting’ (Sandler 1961; 8). According to Burlin, ‘We live in an age of treacherous, harrowing notions of mutability, death and decay…All of the old realities have dissolved…all rigidities of form disappear and enter into a new metamorphosis’. This metamorphosis of form and reality is manifested in shape and color, which ‘destroy visual reality and…shape themselves into a reality of their own’.

Burlin exhibited throughout his career, including the 1930 ‘Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans’ exhibition and the 1944 ‘Art in Progress’ show, both at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He was a member of the American Congress of Artists and was active in both the Provincetown Artists Colony and the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He was represented by several prestigious New York galleries during his lifetime, including Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery and the Grace Borgenicht Gallery. He taught at the Art Students League of New York, the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, the University of Wyoming, Washington University at St. Louis, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among other institutions. A prominent retrospective of his work was sponsored by the American Federation of the Arts at the Art Alliance and the Whitney Museum in 1962, and his work is included in the collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of New Mexico.

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Murry, Jesse. “Paul Burlin: The Late Paintings”. Grace Borgenicht Gallery, 1981. Sandler, Irving. Paul Burlin. The American Federation of Arts, New York, 1961. Udall, Sharyn Rohlfsen. Modernist Painting in New Mexico 1913-1935. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984. Wedell, Gene & Barbara Burlin Wedell. Paul Burlin: Catalog and Introductory Essays, Abstract Expressionist Period, 1946-1958+. San Rafael, CA: The Paul Burlin Art Trust, 2008.

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Paul Burlin (American, 1886-1969)

CHRONOLOGY

1886 Born September 10, in New York, son of a German mother and English father. 1903 Worked as an illustrator for Delineator when Theodore Dreiser was the editor. 1913 Exhibited in the Armory Show. 1914 Married Natalie Curtis, musician and ethnologist (died, 1921, in Paris). 1913-20 Lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Exhibited periodically in the Daniel Gallery, New York. 1921-32 Lived, worked, and exhibited in Paris, France. Traveled in England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Spain, and North Africa. 1922 Married Margot Koop in Paris. (Later divorced); one daughter, Barbara (Mrs. Walter Benson of Sausalito, California). 1932 Returned to the United States. 1944 Exhibited in the Art in Progress Show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 1945 Won first prize of $25,000 in the “Portrait of America” competition sponsored by the Pepsi-Cola Company and the Artists for Victory, Inc., for The Soda Jerker. 1947 Married Margaret Timmerman from Batesburg, South Carolina. 1949 Visiting artist at the . 1949-54 Artist in residence at Washington University, St. Louis. 1951 Visiting artist at the University of Colorado (summer). 1952 Visiting artist at the University of Wyoming (summer). 1954 Visiting artist at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (summer). 1954-55 John Hay Whitney Foundation Visiting Professor at Union College, Schenectady, New York. Founded Department of Art. 1959 One of three first prize winners of $1,000, Art: U.S.A.:59, New York, for Rose, White Upright. 1960 Visiting artist in residence, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Won the Watson F. Blair award of $2,000 for It Is, Art Institute of Chicago. 1960 Revisited London, Paris, and traveled throughout Spain. 1961 Lived in , summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Work handled by Gallery Mayer, New York City. 1969 Died.

In the historic Spiegelberg House ƒ Palace Avenue at Paseo de Peralta ONE – MAN EXHIBITIONS

1913-20 Daniel Gallery, New York City 1926-27 Kraushaar Art Galleries, New York 1927 Westheim Gallery, Berlin, Germany 1928 De Hauke Gallery, New York 1942/43 Associated American Artists 1944 Vincent Price Gallery, Los Angeles 1946 Downtown Gallery, New York 1949 Downtown Gallery, New York 1949 University of Minnesota 1950 University of Southern Illinois 1952 University of Wyoming 1952 Downtown Gallery, New York 1953 Downtown Gallery, New York 1954 Washington University, St. Louis University of Southern California, Los Angeles Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco The Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego The Schweig Gallery, St. Louis Union College Gallery, Schenectady Louisiana State University Gallery, Baton Rouge The Stable Gallery, New York 1958 Poindexter Gallery, New York University of Mississippi State University College of Education, New Paltz, New York 1959 Poindexter Gallery, New York Alan Gallery, New York 1960 The Art Institute of Chicago Southern Illinois University Holland Goldowsky Gallery, Chicago 1961 Retrospective Exhibition, The American Federation of the Arts, The Philadelphia Art Alliance

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

References are arranged alphabetically by author or title, with exhibition catalogs listed under the name of the city in which the museum or gallery is located. The place of publication of books is New York unless otherwise noted.

Abbreviations: Ag August, Ap April, D December, F February, il illustration(s), Ja January, Je June, Jl July, Mr March, My May, N November, O October, p page(s), per portrait, S September.

WRITINGS BY BURLIN

The Artist’s Point of View. College Art Journal 9:49-51 1949 The Artist as Teacher. College Art Journal 9:265-7 1950

In the historic Spiegelberg House ƒ Palace Avenue at Paseo de Peralta Two Addresses: On Amateurism. On the Teaching of Painting. Perspectives (Washington University, St. Louis) Spring 1954. 4 il.

BOOKS

GENAUER, EMILY: Best of Art, 1948, p. 151 KOOTZ, SAMUEL: New Frontiers in American Painting, 1943, p. 55 MYERS, BERNARD: Modern Art in the Making, 1950, p. 391 PEARSON, RALPH: Experiencing American Pictures, 1943, p. 175-181 The Modern Renaissance in American Art, 1943

PERIODICALS

American Artists at Paris. Formes (Paris-Philadelphia) 22:225-227 F 1932. 1 il. BRACE, ERNEST: Woodstock Annual. Magazine of Art 31:536 S 1938. 1 il. CHEW, PAUL A.: Paul Burlin. Perspectives (Washington University, St. Louis), Spring 1954 CLEMENTS, G.: Exhibition, Beverly Hills. Arts and Architecture 61:14 Mr 1944. Document: On Amateurism. Arts Digest 29:14 D 15, 1954. Por. H.L.F: Exhibition, Downtown Gallery. Art News 48:49 Ap 1949. FARBER, MANNY: Exhibition, Associated American Artists Gallery. Magazine of Art 36:109 Mr 1943. 1 il. FIELD, HAMILTON EASTER: Decorations by Burlin in Residence of George A. Harris. Arts 1:30-31 F-Mr 1921. 4 il. S.G.: Exhibition at Poindexeter Gallery. Arts 32:53 F 1958. 1 il. GOODRICH, LLOYD: New York Exhibitions. Arts 15:124 F 1929. 1 il. B.D.H.: Recent Drawings at Alan. Arts 33-65 Ja 1959. HARTT, FEDERICK: Die Neueren Werke von Paul Burlin. Werk (Zurich) 39:27-32 Ja 1952. HEWETT, EDGAR L.: Opening of the Art Galleries in Santa Fe. Art and Archaeology 7:66 Ja-F 1918. 1 il. F.P.: Abstractions at Downtown Gallery. Art News 52:37 Mr 1953. MYERS, BERNARD: The Painting of Paul Burlin, Perspectives (Washington University, St. Louis), Spring 1954. PEARSON, RALPH: Burlin-Pioneer American Modern. Forum P 37:367 Je 1938. PEMBERTON, MURDOCK: Exhibition at De Hauke Galleries. Creative Art 4:52-54 F 1929. 1 il. Prize Winners—The Big Shows. Am Artist 10:16 Ja 1946. 1 il.

In the historic Spiegelberg House ƒ Palace Avenue at Paseo de Peralta Reviews and Previews. Art News 45:54 Ap 1946. 1 il. I.H.S.: Armory Show Veteran at Alan Gallery. Art News 57:11 F 1959. Recent Canvases at Poindexter. Art News 56:11 F 1958. SCHULZE, FRANZ: Art News from Chicago. Art News 59:46 My 1960. SCHNAKENBERG, H.E.: New York Exhibitions. Arts 7:173, 174 Mr 1925. 2 il. SECKLER, DOROTHY GEES: Problems of Portraiture. Art in America 46:35, Winter 1958. Statement. Chain of Generations; Contrast and Continuity. Art in America 48:97 Spring 1960. WALTER, PAUL A.F.: Art in War Service. Art and Archaeology 7:398 N-D 1918. 1 il.

EXHIBITION CATALOGS

Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota Paul Burlin. Ja 7-28 1949. 20pp. Por. Statement. New York, The Downtown Gallery Paul Burlin. Mr 26-Ap 13, 1946. 4pp. 1 il. Statement.

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