Still Lifes – Page 12

Juliette Steele

1909-1980

Theme/Style – Still lifes, landscapes, Abstraction

Media – Oils, lithographs

Artistic Focus – Juliette Steele’s paintings depict a range of subjects from still lifes and landscapes to circus scenes and interiors. Whatever their subject matter, her works are characterized by their boldness, both in shape and color. Steele’s work is inventive and original, and she ranks as one of the extremely talented but underappreciated California women modernists.

Career Highlights –

Juliette Steele was born Juliette Eleanor Wilm in Union City, New Jersey in 1909.
After arriving in San Francisco, Steele studied at the California School of Fine Arts.
Steele’s work was included in 1944 in exhibitions held by the San Francisco Art Association, the San Francisco Women Artists, the Oakland Art Gallery and the Laguna Beach Art Association.
In 1946, Steele’s work was exhibited at San Francisco’s California Palace of the Legion of Honor.
Steele’s work also was included in the 1951 Bay Region Painting and Sculpture exhibition.
Juliette Steele passed away in San Rafael, California, in 1980.

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Jerre H. Murry

1904-1973

Theme/Style – Figurative art, portraits, still lifes, murals

Media – Oils, watercolors, mosaics, lithography

Artistic Focus – Though not as well-known as many of his fellow Southern California Modernists Jerre Murry’s gifts in the area of color and design were highly prized by gallerists, collectors and his Federal Art Project supervisors. He was extremely versatile, painting arresting portraits, attractive still lifes, and more abstract or Cubist figural works and landscapes with equal skill and energy. One of Murry’s greatest champions was Los Angeles Times art critic Arthur Millier, who said of Murry, “He lives in a world of ideal forms, a world in which figures move with rare rhythm, in which distances and colors have lovely measure.”

Career Highlights –

Jerre Murry was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1904 and studied at the Detroit Academy of Art in Michigan. He then worked as an artist for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, and also painted portraits of the city’s prominent citizens.
Murry traveled to the Bahamas, where he was inspired to paint Modernist scenes of island life and people.
The Los Angeles Synchromist painter Stanton Macdonald Wright, State Supervisor for the Southern California Art Project, took an interest in Murry’s work, and after a period of private art study in Chicago, Murry settled in Los Angeles in the 1930s and worked as a muralist for the Federal Art Project. He also found employment designing stage scenery for a movie studio and did other freelance work as an artist.
His island-inspired painting Sun Image was included in an exhibition of the works of Federal Art Project artists at the Los Angeles Museum in 1936; and Murry was also included in the FAP exhibit at the Paris Exposition in 1937.
Murry exhibited in Federal Art Project shows at the Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles and the Chamber of Commerce Gallery in Santa Barbara in 1937, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1939.
In 1938 Murry created a mural for the Los Angeles Water & Power Co. The subject matter was to be “Sources of Water,” and the finished mural was titled Aquae Benedictae (Blessed Waters). Murry also created a mural for the Post Office in Boise, Idaho, and a petrachrome mural for Glendale Junior College.
In 1939, Murry’s work was exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition on San Francisco’s Treasure Island and the “American Art Today” show at the New York World’s Fair. He also was included in the “All California Exhibition” at the Los Angeles Museum that same year.
He went on to exhibit in Los Angeles at the Foundation of Western Art’s “Trends in Southern California Art” shows in 1940 and 1941, at Raymond and Raymond Gallery in Hollywood and USC’s Elizabeth Holmes Fisher Gallery (1940), and at Stendahl Galleries and the Pasadena Museum of Art (1941). Also in 1941, Murry had a solo show at En’s Gallery, and exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the Oakland Art Gallery’s Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings.
Murry exhibited in the Second and Third Annual Exhibitions of the Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1941 and 1942
Murry became the director of the Spokane Art Center in Washington state, but it seems that he only remained there a short time before returning to the Los Angeles area.
In 1942, Murry had a critically-acclaimed solo show at the Stendahl Galleries, comprising 71 of his oil paintings, watercolors and drawings; and in 1945 he again received critical notice for his exhibition at Los Angeles’s Screen Cartoonists’ Gallery.
By the 1960s Murry was teaching art at the Inglewood Adult High School and also held private classes.
Jerry Murry passed away in Los Angeles in 1973.

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John Emmett Gerrity

1895-1980

Theme/Style – Synchromism, Abstraction, figurative art, still lifes

Media – Oils, murals, watercolors, drawings

Artistic Focus – Noted for his use of vivid, lush, primary colors and his figurative abstractions, John Emmett Gerrity saw himself as a progressive, modern artist and strove throughout his career to find a visual idiom that was not wholly reliant on European or other stylistic traditions. The influence of Stanton Macdonald Wright is evident in all phases of Gerrity’s work, in which he consistently created form, depth and movement through controlled patterning and complexly organized chromatic juxtapositions.

Career Highlights –

John Emmett Gerrity was born in 1895 in Los Altos, California, and in 1919 he began studying art both on his own and at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
After working in stage set design, first in the Bay Area and then in New York, by 1926 Gerrity was back in California, teaching art from his home and studio in Berkeley.
Throughout this early period there was correspondence between Gerrity and Macdonald Wright – Gerrity being the foremost exponent of Synchromism in the Bay Area.
His work was frequently included in the Annual San Francisco Art Association Exhibitions from 1927 to 1931.
In 1929 Gerrity was designated director of the San Francisco branch of the Los Angeles Art Students’ League, and in 1931 he wrote an art column for the San Francisco Call Bulletin and gave a series of fifteen lectures on color in Oakland.
1932 marked the opening of the first of Gerrity’s two one-man shows at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the second taking place in 1955.
Gerrity completed several WPA mural projects, culminating in his monumental mural Inventions of Man at the San Francisco State Teachers College.
Despite the fact that Gerrity’s health and his intensely personal artistic vision often alienated him from the main currents of the San Francisco art community, he worked enthusiastically through the 1970s. He passed away in Walnut Creek, California in 1980.

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Helen Clark Oldfield

1902-1981

Theme/Style – Figurative art, landscapes, still lifes, portraits

Media – Oils, acrylics, drawings

Artistic Focus – A pupil of Otis Oldfield, a master of the urban landscape and portraiture genres, Helen Clark Oldfield developed a unique palette and approach to her modernist subjects. Her still lifes combined deep, rich colors with diffused detail, giving the viewer a sense of mystery. Her portraits and landscapes drew upon a similar palette and are rich in color and have an uncommon depth.

Career Highlights –

Born Helen Clark in Santa Rosa, California, Helen Clark Oldfield first studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and later at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where she was a pupil of Otis Oldfield. They were married in 1926.
Preferring that her husband be the professional painter of the family, Helen did not exhibit frequently during their marriage, and from 1945 to 1971 she taught art and art history at the Sarah Dix Hamlin School in San Francisco.
After the death of her husband in 1969, Helen Clark Oldfield exhibited often in the San Francisco Bay Area and is only now getting the recognition she has long deserved.

The Gallery proudly represents the Estate of Helen Clark Oldfield.

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Raphael Gleitsmann

1910-1995

Theme/Style – Modernism, Surrealism, Abstraction, still life, landscapes, portraits

Media – Oil, watercolor, pastel, ink

Artistic Focus – Raphael Gleitsmann’s earlier works were idealized presentations of life in Middle America during the Great Depression in the Regionalist style, though some possessed an ominous quality that hinted at the underlying alienation and melancholy of the times. After his experiences in World War II, Gleitsmann focused on powerful post-Apocalyptic imagery which was well-received, but ultimately took its toll on his creative impulse and shortened his career as a skilled and provocative artist.

Career Highlights –

Born in Dayton, Ohio in 1910, Raphael Gleitsmann moved to Akron with his family as a child. He was largely self-taught, his only formal training coming from his high school art class taught by respected local artist Katherine Calvin, along with guidance from artist Paul Travis, an instructor at the Cleveland School of Art.
During the 1930s and 1940s Gleitsmann exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, PA; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Herron Art Museum in Indianapolis, IN; and in Ohio at the Akron Art Institute, the Dayton Art Institute, and the Butler Art Institute in Youngstown.
In 1939, Gleitsmann’s painting The White Dam was exhibited at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and in 1942-1943 Gleitsmann was included in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Art” in New York.
Gleitsmann served as a combat engineer in Patton’s Third Army in World War II from 1943 to 1945. Wounded at the Rhine River, he received the Purple Heart, and returned to live in Akron. Gleitsmann’s art was radically changed by his experiences as a soldier, and he turned to abstracted, expressionistic renderings inspired by the death and desolation he saw in Europe.
Gleitsmann received national recognition for his war-inspired paintings when he took first prize in the prestigious Carnegie Institute Invitational exhibition “Painting in the United States 1948.” Also in 1948, Gleitsmann had his first solo shows at the Macbeth Gallery in New York and the Akron Art Institute, and served as president of the Akron Society of Artists.
In the early 1950s Gleitsmann continued to exhibit, including a second solo show at the Macbeth Gallery. He also taught at the Akron Art Institute, and held private art classes in his studio.
After a brief sojourn in St. Petersburg, FL in pursuit of a “change of thought,” by 1956 Gleitsmann was back in Akron, teaching painting classes, serving on art show juries, and working as a framer and art restorer. He did not paint again after 1957, explaining that his war experiences had affected his outlook on life and art, and that “… I just found I really had nothing to say anymore.”
In spite of this, Gleitsmann remained a highly-respected painter, and a retrospective exhibition of his oeuvre took place at the Butler Institute of American Art in 1971; and the exhibition “Early Works by Raphael Gleitsmann” was held at the Akron Art Museum in 1990.
Gleitsmann passed away in Akron in 1995. In 1999, the Akron Art Museum presented a survey exhibition of Gleitsmann’s paintings entitled “Raphael Gleitsmann: Recent Acquisitions,” and in 1999 Gleitsmann’s watercolors were featured in the museum’s exhibition “Close to Home: Watercolors by William Sommer and Raphael Gleitsmann.”
Gleitsmann’s works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Academy of Design, New York; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Akron Art Museum; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, and others.

Thomas Flavell

1906-1975

Theme/Style – Modernism, landscapes, townscapes, still life

Media – Oils, watercolors, pastels, charcoal

Artistic Focus – Thomas Flavell was an energetic and active member of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania art community throughout the 1930s and 1940s, making a thoroughly original and unique contribution to his milieu through his jewel-like, intense landscapes in oil and pastel. Depicting rural scenes as well as old Philadelphia neighborhoods, Flavell’s renderings often evoked what one critic described as “a moody inanimate world” that was “unusually quiet,” and yet vibrating with life from within its dark shadows and geometric compositions.

Career Highlights –

Thomas Flavell was born in 1906 in Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. He studied in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Graphic Sketch Club, and under Grace Thorpe Gemberling; and while still an art student in 1932, he had a show of his charcoal drawings at the Warwick Galleries, receiving a favorable review in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Flavell worked as an artist for the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and then the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and throughout the 1930s and early 1940s his work traveled extensively in WPA exhibitions to cities throughout the eastern and southern United States.
Around 1934 one of Flavell’s oil paintings was among those exhibited at the White House under PWAP, and received special recognition by President and Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt; and one of his pastels was chosen by them to hang in the White House and remain in its permanent collection.
Following the White House exhibition, the PWAP works were shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and another of Flavell’s artworks was selected for the Museum’s permanent collection.
Later in 1934 Flavell was included in New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art’s second regional exhibition of American painting, featuring Philadelphia artists.
In 1936 Flavell was included in the Museum of Modern Art, New York’s “New Horizons in American Art,” a comprehensive exhibition of work done under the Federal Art Project of the WPA during the past year. The show featured three of Flavell’s pastels, and his pastel entitled “The Station” was illustrated in the show’s catalog.
Later that year, Flavell was included in a show spanning the history of American paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and he also had one of his first solo shows at the Gimbel Galleries of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Here, his painting “White Barn” was shown, along with 13 other landscapes in pastel.
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s Flavell exhibited frequently in Philadelphia, continuing to show work at Gimbel Galleries of Contemporary Art, and also at the Art Alliance, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and the annual Philadelphia artists’ exhibitions at the Friends’ Central School.
His work was also exhibited in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Woodmere Gallery in Chestnut Hill, in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and in Washington, DC at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Besides the institutions mentioned above, Flavell’s work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, among others.
Flavell also worked as a decorator at Philadelphia’s Snellenburg’s department store for 22 years, during the 1940s and 1950s. He passed away at his home in Flourtown, Pennsylvania in 1975.

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