Hiss Sullivan THE ^ ETROPOLITAN NEWS AT WILL USEUM OF ART FOR Eakibitlon oyone to public M RELEASE Friday, March 24, 1950 FIFTHAYE.at82STREET • NEW YORK
PRESS VIEW; Tuesday, March 21, 1950 from 2 to 4:30 p.m.
PAINTINGS BY 52 YOUNG AMERICAN ARTISTS TO GO ON VIEW AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM; WORKS CHOSEN FROM 131 CANVASES SUBMITTED TO LIFE MAGAZINE BY ARTISTS UNDER 36
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has selected for exhibition 52 paintings by
American artists under 36 from a group of 131 canvases assembled from throughout the nation by LIFE magazine. This special five-week exhibition of work considered their best by a group of the country's most promising young painters begins Friday,
March 24th.
Robert Beverly Hale, Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture in the Mu seum's American Art Department, made the selection for the Metropolitan. He says he feels the display will help to indicate "where the future strength of painting lies in America."
Several of the artists represented have already gained recognition. Among them are Walter Stuempfig, Hedda Sterne, William Kienbusch, Reuben Tarn, Mitchell
Jamieson, Edward Melcarth and Theodoros Stamos. Others, including 25-year-old
Hubert Raczka and 25-year-old Siegfried* Reinhardt, are just beginning to be known.
When LIFE magazine recently asked the heads of schools, museums and leading college art departments to suggest the names of American painters under the ,age of
36 whose work they considered exceptionally promising, a total of 450 names were sent in. These artists were asked by LIFE to send in photographs of their best work
On the evidence of more than 1,000 photographs, 131 artists were asked to send a painting. Mr. Hale then selected 52 of the 131 paintings for exhibition at the
Metropolitan. Among them are the 19 pictures illustrated in the feature story
appearing in the current issue of LIFE magazine.
Of the 52 paintings at the Metropolitan, only a small portion are abstract
in an extreme sense. Many record familiar scenes, landscapes and people in a fresh
and modern style.
Typical of these semi-realistic paintings is the bold Flying Red Harrows,by
Franklin Boggs, who was born in Warsaw, Indiana, in 1914, and now lives in Beloit,
Wisconsin. Boggs uses sharply contrasting colors and angular forms to dramatize the
fury of an enraged bull, who tosses a red spring-tooth harrow in the air.
(more) American Artists Under 36—2
El Candy Store by Joseph Lasker, 30, New York City, depicts the tragic plight of a poor child in the Puerto Rican section of New York. The small figure is seen huddled against the store which is garishly decorated with Hallowe'en masks,
An interesting study of a negro woman, a native of the sea islands off the
South Carolina Coast, is the painting The Room Number Five, by Eldzier Cortor.
Cortor, 34, who was born in Richmond, Virginia and now is in Haiti, won two
Rosenwald Fellowships which made it possible for him to spend 1944 and 1945 paintinf the life of the Gullah negroes in the coastal regions of the southeastern United
States.
Wrecked Automobiles by Howard Warshow, 29, Los Angeles, shows a Jumbled mass of cars in a junk heap near Pomona, California. An effect of speed and motion highlights the painting, which won first prize at the Los Angeles County Museum last fall.
Several of the paintings utulize an abstract technique to dramatize recog nizable forms. The Refinery by Kenneth Nack, 27, who was born in Chicago and now lives in Paris, ia an abstract variation of a mural done for a Chicago oil pro* cessor. Gray and somber colors are used to depict the smoke-filled oil field.
A graceful semi-abstraction is seen in The Chinese Swan by Edward Stevens,
Jr., who evolves a decorative pattern in the painting. Stevens, 27, now lives in i»9W Jersey. The Bier by Theodoros Stamos is a further break-down of form and shows a black shape symbolizing death and a blue area suggesting hope. Stamos, 28, lives In New York City.
One of the interesting figure compositions is the painting The Doll by
Stephen Greene, 31, New York City. The artist depicts the features of the doll in lifelike fashion and then shatters the human qualities by separating the arms from their sockets. Greene won the Prix-de-Rome in 1949-1950.
Modern variations of traditional religious themes are seen in the Crowning with Thorns by David Aronson, 27, Boston, Massachusetts, and The Resurrection by
Siegfried Reinhardt, 25, St. Louis, Missouri.
A warmly-colored composition of a typical Pittsburgh scene is 'Long the
Pennsy Line by Aleta Cornelius, 27, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The painting won an award in the Pepsi-Cola contest in 1947. Moonlight by Hedda Sterne shows the work of another woman artist. This abstraction suggests towering buildings against a sky and is handled in a luminous tone.
The Blue Bench, by Hubert Raczka, 2 5, Buffalo, N. Y. is the work of one of the youngest artists in the show. It is a scene of a slum section in Buffalo.
Raczka takes photographs in the tenement streets and later utilizes the details in his work.
The exhibition will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum through April 30. -000-