Boston Museum of Fine Arts School (studied under Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson)
Academie Julian
Exhibitions:
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1907-1909, 1915, 1924
Boston Art Club
Armory Show, 1913
Art Institute of Chicago
Cocoran Gallery of Art, biennial exhibitions, 1914-1928
Society of Independent Artists, 1930
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Collections:
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery
Biography:
Edwin Ambrose Webster was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and grew up in the suburbs of Boston. He attended art school at the Museum School, where he studied under Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson. Webster then followed in the footsteps of his teachers and went on to study at the Academie Julian and with Albert Gleizes in Paris for two years (1896-1898). These teachers, and his experience overseas, set Webster on the path to becoming the vanguard Modernist that he is known as today.
Webster was one of the first artists to settle in the now famous art colony of Provincetown. Struck by the quality of the coastal light, he took up residence there after returning from France in 1898. Shortly after, he began to teach summer classes, which quickly grew in popularity. In the winters, he traveled to the tropics and Bermuda, where he painted some of his most impressive and daring landscapes.
Webster, in insisting on the primacy of color, was truly among the vanguard Modernists in America. Two of his paintings hung in the 1913 Armory Show alongside other renowned Modernists such as Matisse, Derain, Van Gogh, Hopper, Demuth and Hartley. The novel and inspired approach to color presented in Webster’s Fauvist paintings influenced the development of a number of his contemporaries. Artist Houghton Cranford Smith observed of Webster’s color: “This was all new stuff in Provincetown—we were not used to such bright colors…[Webster] opened my eyes to the marvelous things color can do for objects.”
Following his Fauvist works, Webster began an exploration of Cubist techniques. He continued exploring this mode of representation until his death in 1935. His school he continued to run until 1934, inspiring the careers of numerous young artists in these later years. One of these students, an artist named Kenneth Stubbs, was particularly close to Webster. Stubbs recognized Webster’s genius and appreciated the analytical process with which he approached these new cubist inspired compositions. He once said of Webster: “He was by far the most inspiring teacher I had.” After Webster’s death, Stubbs remained an ardent admirer and organized a series of exhibitions of Webster’s work. These shows led to numerous private and museum purchases, and a new recognition of Webster’s contributions to the development of Modern art. Now the Stubbs’ collection continues to provide a unique and insightful view into the work of Ambrose Webster.
Image: Edwin Ambrose Webster painting in his studio, 192-? / unidentified photographer. Edwin Ambrose Webster papers, 1804-1970. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Charles Heinz in his studio. Source: Building Provincetown
EDUCATION
St. Louis School of Fine Art
Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (under Wellington J. Reynolds and Walter Goldbeck)
Cape Cod School of Art (under Richard E. Miller)
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1928, ’37-’38, ’42 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
1929-32, ’37-’38 National Academy of Design, New York, NY
1930, ’32, ’39 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1930, ’35, ’37, ’39, ’42, ’47 Cocoran Gallery, Washington, D. C.
1939 Federal Art Gallery, Boston, MA
BIOGRAPHY
Charles Heinz was a soft-spoken artist born in the rural town of Shelbyville, Illinois in 1885. he left grade school early, and only returned to school to study art later in his life. After attending the St. Louis School of Fine Art and the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago, Heinz moved to Provincetown to study under Richard Miller at the Cape Cod School of Art. Heinz took up residence there and became a prominent figure in the Provincetown art community in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to showing in a number of galleries, Heinz also completed works under the WPA. He died in 1953.
EDUCATION
University of Dresden
Royal Academy of Dresden (under Otto Dix)
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1955-56, ’58 Gallery Seventy Five, New York, NY
1960-62 Jacques Seligman Galleries, New York, NY
1960 The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
1962-63, ’65-’66 World House Galleries, New York, NY
1966 The Munich Kunstverein
1968 The Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
1972-76 Gallery 5, Paris
1973 Gallery Oxy, Geneva
1978, ’80 Gallery of Contemporary Masters, New York, NY
BIOGRAPHY
Michiel Gloeckner was born in Germany in 1915, and was the son of a prominent art collector. At university he first pursued mathematics and art history before studying painting. His academic background would prove to be a continued influence on his work. Following WWII Gloeckner moved to New York City, and successfully showed his work in a number of galleries, including Gallery Seventy Five, Jacques Seligam Galleris and the Gallery of Contemporary Masters. Later in life, Gloeckner withdrew from the city, choosing to live at his country home in North Cornwall, Connecticut until his death in 1989.
Education:
Baltimore Technical Institute
Maryland Institute, College of Art
Selected Exhibitions:
2003 University of Maryland, University College, Adelphi, MD
2001 James Graham and Sons, New York
2000 Cape Museum of Fine Arts, Dennis, MA
1998 Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
1997 Adirondack Community College, Queensbury, NY
1994 Provincetown Art Association Museum, Provincetown, MA
1991 Academy of the Arts, Easton, MD
1991 Susan Conway Gallery, Washington D.C.
1984 Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas
1981 University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, VA
1980 The Forum Gallery, New York
1977 University of Maryland Art Department Gallery, College Park, MD
1972 Franz Bader Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1967 Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
1964 John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
1962 Castellane Gallery, New York
1961 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
1957 University of Maryland Art Department Gallery, College Park, MD
1955 Philadelphia Art Alliance
1941 Everhart Museum of Art, Scranton, PA
1939 World’s Fair, New York
1932 Society of Independent Artists
Selected Public Collections:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
National Academy of Design
Whitney Museum of American Art
Baltimore Museum of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution
The Phillips Collection
The Newark Museum
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Peale Museum
Wichita Art Museum
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College
Howard University Gallery of Art
Hampton University
American University
University of Maryland
Johns Hopkins University
University of Arizona
Awards
Benjamin Altman Prize, National Academy of Design
Norman Wait Harris Bronze Medal, Chicago Art Institute
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2013 James Lechay: Flower Paintings, 1960s through 1990s, Spanierman Gallery,
New York, NY
1997 James Lechay, Paintings, Provincetown Art Association and Museum,
Provincetown, MA
1985 James Lechay, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, NY
1972 James Lechay: Selected Work, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
1971 Luther College Centennial Union
1955 James Lechay, January 24th through February 19th, Kraushaar Galleries,
New York, NY
1946 New York in Watercolor by James Lechay, Macbeth Gallery, New York, NY
1936 James Lechay: Exhibition of Paintings, Another Place, New York, NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2014 Still Life Invitational 2014, ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA
2013 Eye on UI Faculty: Byron Burford, Stuart Edie, and James Lechay,
FIGGE Art Museum, Davenport, IA
2012 Summer Selections, Spanierman Gallery, New York, NY
Selected Collections
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA
Ferargil Galleries, New York, NY MacBeth Gallery, New York, NY
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
National Academy of Design Museum, New York, NY
National Museum of American Art-Smithsonian, Washington, DC
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA
University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS
FIGGE Art Museum, Davenport, IA
Biography
James Lechay was born in New York, NY on July 5, 1907 to Russian immigrant parents.
He received a degree in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1928 and returned to
New York to study art privately with his elder brother, artist Myron Lechay, but otherwise was a self-taught artist. Lechay taught painting and drawing at the University of Iowa starting in 1945 until his retirement in 1971. He also taught workshops at various other institutions such as Stanford, New York University, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. During the course of his career he received countless medals, awards, and honors for his work. Lechay exhibited with the likes of Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jules Olitski, Nathan Oliveira, Helen Frankenthaler, and Alice Neel to name only a few. He lived out his retirement in Wellfleet, MA until his death on August 11, 2001 at the age of 94.
Art Students League
Academie Grand Chaumiere, Paris
MEMBER
Society of Independent Artists
National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors
Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors (founding)
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Edith Penman Memorial Prize, 50th Annual Exhibition of the National
Association of Women Painters and Sculptors
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Salons of America, 1931, 1932, 1933
Society of Independent Artists, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1937
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1934, 1935
National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, 1935, 1938, 1939
New York Society of Women Artists, 1936, 1938, 1940, 1941
World’s Fair, New York, 1939
Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1947, 1949, 1955, 1963, 1976
The Brooklyn Museum, 1975
New York University, 1980
Farnsworth Museum, 1992 (solo)
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ogunquit Museum of American Art
Farnsworth Museum
Museum of the College of the Atlantic
Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario
Harvard University
Wichita State University
Colby College Museum
Bryn Mawr College
Monhegan Island Museum
Central Wyoming Museum of Art
University of Lethbridge, Alberta
University of Southern Illinois
Born: March 23, 1913 in Balkbrug, Holland
To USA 1941
USA Citizen 1954
Died: December 26, 1963 in Provincetown, MA
Military Service in World War II
1941: Dutch Navy; 1942-1946: Lieutenant Commander in charge of the Dutch Port Authority in San Francisco
Selected solo exhibitions
1952: Saidenberg Gallery, New York;
1954, 55: Bertha Schaefer Gallery, NYC;
1956, 59, 60, 61, 64 (memorial): HCE Gallery, Provincetown, MA;
1957, 58, 59, 61: Parma Gallery, NY;
1960: October, Stamford Museum & Nature Center, Stamford, Connecticut;
1971: Jack Gregory Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts;
1982: Retrospective Exhibition, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts;
1987–2003: Julie Heller Gallery, Provincetown, MA.
2004: Nanno de Groot: The New York Years, ACME Fine Art, Boston MA
2007: Nanno de Groot: Earth Sea and Sky at ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA
Selected group exhibitions
1953 Saidenberg Gallery, NYC;
1953 Hansa Gallery, NYC;
1954, 55: Tanager Gallery, NYC;
1954, 55, 56, 57: New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals at the Stable Gallery, NYC;
1962, 63: HCE Provincetown, Massachusetts;
1953–1964: Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
1982: Everson Museum Provincetown Painters, principal collections;
1994: Re¬claim¬ing Artists of the New York School. Toward a More Inclusive View of the 1950s, Baruch College, City University, NY; New York-Provincetown: A 50’s Connection, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts; Anita Shapolsky Gallery, NYC;
1987–2003: Julie Heller Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts
2003: The New York School, ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA, Provincetown Painters, ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA; Summer Salon, ACME Fine Art, Boston MA;
2004: Beyond Likeness, ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA; Summer Salon, ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA; Reuniting an Era: Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s, Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL.
Works in Museums and Public Collections
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Chrysler Museum of Art, Provincetown, Massachusetts
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts
Olson Institute, Guilford, Connecticut
Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
Artist Statement
As a child I didn’t want to be anything. I later learned that small boys want to become engine drivers, soldiers, firemen, cowboys; but such aspirations were alien to me. I did not, however, actively want to be nothing when I grew up. The whole thing merely never occurred to me at all. People were, a house was, the canal was, the bridge was, the sky was and I was. Not becoming, not having been—anything, or something else.
In moments of clarity of thought I can sustain the idea that everything on earth is nature, including that which springs forth from a man’s mind, and hand. A Franz Kline is nature as much as a zinnia. Once that idea is thought it becomes clouded by the idea that this would include a paper-flower or a plaster Jesus.
I have now painted nearly 30 vases full of flowers and am still discovering many things. It is strange how completely abstract a completely true to nature painting becomes. It is probably that one is so little used to looking closely enough at the color of things that is has escaped one that a red flower, for instance, has about a dozen colors haphazardly put together—one next to the other. Every red flower (of the same red) has different reds in it and they are distributed differently and very crudely. Painted that way, reality is approached much more closely that trying to imitate the subtleties a flower contains. Those subtleties are there in the end, wonder of wonders, in the painting, and even the delicacies of texture.
Biography
Nanno De Groot was one of the formative but rarely seen artists of the great era of Abstract Expressionism in Provincetown. De Groot was one of many avant-garde artists who congregated seasonally in the lower cape art colony. They were largely drawn by cheap rent, great scenery and the school of Hans Hofmann. There was also subsidy through the GI Bill in the post war era of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. A focal point of this activity was Forum 49, a series of lectures and exhibitions during the summer of 1949 organized by Weldon Kees and others that debated the new art. Fellow artists were Peter Busa, Fritz Bultman, Jack Tworkov and artists of the older generation like Karl Knaths, Blanche Lazzell and Edwin Dickinson.
While some aspects of De Groot’s work are generic to the ideas of the time, he was a uniquely strong and gifted painter. There is wonderful facility and angst in his mark-making. In his early work the nervous black lines suggest forms or figures that make one think of European Post War artists like Dubuffet and Giacometti. The works are gestural and confined in palette and all are compelling enough to command respect and further study.
Some catalogue notes establish that he was born in 1913 in Holland, served in its Navy during the war and applied for US citizenship while stationed in San Francisco in 1946. He started to make art in 1948 and hit his stride in 1950-52 when he lived in New York City. He showed in 1953 with the seminal Hansa Gallery and in 1954 with Tanager and Bertha Schaefer. In 1956 he rented Fritz Bultman’s studio in Provincetown where he moved in 1962. While in the process of building a house on Commercial Street overlooking the water he died at the age of 50 in 1963.
Education:
Yale University, BA, 1950
Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, Italy, 1950-51
Instituto Statale d’Arte, Florence, Italy, 1950-51
Hans Hofmann School, New York, 1952-53
Selected Collections:
Issac Delgardo Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Union Carbide Corporation, New York, NY
Argus Chemical Corporation, New York, NY
AT&T Corporation, Boston, MA
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
Farleigh-Dickinson University, NJ
Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN
Walter Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
Awards:
Citation for service to the arts, Public Action on the Arts, Boston, MA
Sponsor’s Prize, 23rd Annual, Hunterdon Art Center, Clinton, NJ
Best of Show Award, Sugar Creek Biannual, Crawfordsville, IN
$1,000 Prize, N.E. Painting & Sculpture, Provincetown and Boston, MA
XL Grant, Purdue University
National Council on Art and Humanities Grant
Walter Gutman Foundation Grant
Biography:
Professor of Art and Art History at Purdue University in Indiana and a highly respected and well-loved artist with deep roots in Provincetown, Tony Vevers’ contributions to the art world and to the arts in his adopted home are legendary. His figurative and landscape paintings from the 1950s and ’60s have a simplicity and purity that marry narrative and formal eloquence. In the 1970s he began working with rope and sand, creating poetic canvases of mysterious beauty.
Born in London in 1926, Tony and his sister were evacuated to the U.S. in 1940 to escape the Blitz during World War II. By 1944 Vevers was serving in the U.S. Army, in Germany, and had achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant when he was honorably discharged. After leaving the army in 1946, Tony entered Yale University on the G.I. Bill where he studied art, graduating in 1950.
In the early 1950s Tony traveled to Italy to study art, and later lived in New York where he met many of the first generation Abstract Expressionist painters. In 1953 he met and married the artist, Elspeth Halvorsen. By 1954 Tony and Elspeth had established themselves in Provincetown and their two daughters were born over the next three years.
Although Vevers taught at Purdue University from 1964 to 1988, it was the summers in Provincetown that fed his creative spirit.
His astute insights into Modernism as it spread from New York and into Provincetown were fueled by his connection with virtually every artist who had been part of that era including Edwin Dickinson, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Jack Tworkov and Robert Motherwell. As Museum Director Chris McCarthy stated, “It is hard to imagine anyone who has had a more consistent hand in the life of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum over the past four decades. Tony’s insights and contributions to writing the history of art in Provincetown are unparalleled.”
Tony Vevers exhibited his work in over one hundred solo and group shows in New York, Boston, Provincetown and throughout the U.S. In 1977 he became one of the founding members and president of Provincetown’s legendary Long Point Gallery. His work is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, the Walter Chrysler Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the University of Massachusetts and many others.
He received awards from the National Council on the Arts and the Walter Gutman Foundation. He served as an advisor to the Fine Arts Work Center and as a trustee and curator of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.
Education
Cooper Union
National Academy of Design, with War, Maynard, F.C. Jones
American Artists Congress
People’s Art Gallery, 1915 (founding Member)
Exhibitions
Stieglitz Little Gallery, 1912
Armory Show, 1913
Society of Independent Artists, 1917-39
Salons of America
Whitney Museum of American Art
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1929, 1933-35
Art Institute of Chicago
Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1930, 1935
Brooklyn Museum, 1939 (retrospective)
Collections
Whitney Museum of American Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Addison Gallery of American Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Hirshhorn Museum
Library of Congress
Museum of Modern Art
Phillips Collection Gallery
Brooklyn Museum
New York Public Library
Museum of Fine Art, Boston
Newark Museum
Columbus Gallery of Fine Art
University of Minnesota
Kalamazoo Institute of Art
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Biography
An early modernist painter known for abstract figurative works, especially in watercolor, Abraham Walkowitz was born in Siberia where his father was a lay rabbi and cantor, who died while ministering in China to Jewish soldiers who had been conscripted into the Russian army.
Fearful of persecution and the possibility of her son being drafted into the Czar’s army when he came of age, Walkowitz’s mother decided to emigrate with her children to the United States. En route across Europe, one of her three daughters died. The remaining family traveled steerage for twenty days across the Atlantic, finally settling in the Jewish ghetto of New York City where mother and son worked long hours at a newspaper stand to support the family.
As a youth, Walkowitz studied the violin and drew continuously in chalk on any surface he could find. His formal art training began at age fourteen at the Artist’s Institute and continued at the National Academy of Design. His studies in life drawing, etching and painting, with concurrent study of anatomy at a Fifth Avenue hospital, resulted in precise, detailed renderings.
He made drawings of ghetto life which were published in local newspapers. To earn money for a trip to Europe, Walkowitz taught art classes and painted signs. When his figurative work was criticized as being too subjective and realistic at a juried Academy exhibition, he perceived the criticism as narrow-minded and became all the more open to the avant-garde ideas he encountered in Europe.
Walkowitz began to use watercolor early in his career, gradually moving from dark, subdued colors and realistic depictions, to fresher, lighter colors following the techniques of the Impressionists. According to biographer William Innes Homer, “Although [Walkowitz] eventually shifted from a figurative style to abstraction, his fine, inventive sense of color prevailed in both modes of painting, and indeed found its freest, most intuitive expression in the medium of watercolor.”
Another biographer, Martica Sawin, observed that while Walkowitz regarded his work prior to 1920 as the most significant period of his art, he continued to paint prolifically into the 1940s when his eyesight began to fail.
He was honored in 1963, three years before his death, by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an award annually given to a distinguished elderly artist. An account by Kent Smith of the event describes Walkowitz as a small, silky-haired blind man honored by a crowd that “rose to its feet and applauded in thunderous ovation for twenty minutes as the frail figure beamed in obvious delight . . .”
![[Edwin Ambrose Webster painting in his studio]](http://www.aaa.si.edu/assets/images/webse/reference/AAA_webse_23174.jpg)
