On permanent display at the DAAP Library is the a collection of paintings donated by Rose and Erwin Wolfson. These works are from the 1950s and 1960s.
George Grammer
Dusk (Building at Dusk)
oil on canvas
c. 1950-60
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
George Grammer (American, b. 1928) came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Hailing from Texas, Grammer works in a multitude of media and his work can be described as semi-abstract. He is best known for his still lifes and streetscapes, such as Dusk (Building at Dusk). The subject matter of this painting, like many of his works, is urban life and, more specifically, modern architecture. The painting’s dark blues stand in contrast with the starkness of the white streetlights. The color contrast highlights urbanity, modernity, and city life. The starkness of this contrast is much like the starkness of the inner city—the rigidity and spatial dominance of its architecture. In this way, the painting represents both the awe-inspiring nature of city life and the anxiety it might produce.
Carroll James Cloar
The Old and the New
tempera on Masonite
c. 1950-60
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
Carroll James Cloar (American, 1913-1993) was a 20th century painter born in Earle, Arkansas. His work focused on surreal views of the Southern United States. Cloar studied at what was later known as Rhodes College, Memphis College of Art, and the Art Students League. Like many of his contemporaries, Cloar contributed to the American war effort in WWII by joining the Army Air Corp. Cloar described his work as “American faces, timeless dress, and timeless customs…the last of old America that isn’t long for this earth.” Much of his work can be interpreted as having a sense of loss. The Old and the New is very much a representation of this idea. The juxtaposition of the modernist buildings and the cemetery has an eerie sense of progression, as well as loss, leaving the viewer contemplating the implications of modernism and industrialism in America.
Edmund Lewandowski
Hydroelectric-Turbine
Oil on canvas
c. 1950-60
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
Edmund Lewandowski (American, 1914-1998) was born in Milwaukee in 1914 and was a prominent member of the American Precisionist movement. The artist attended the Layton School of Art, also in Milwaukee, and graduated in 1934. Lewandowski served as a professor of art at Layton and Florida State University, before eventually becoming the chairman of the art department at Winthrop University in South Carolina. During World War II, he made maps and camouflage for the Air Force, contributing to the war effort like many of his contemporaries. As a member of the American Precisionist movement, Lewandowski focused on America’s rapid industrialization and increasingly modernized landscape, which is a prominent theme in Hydroelectric Turbine.
George L. K. Morris
Inverse Projection
oil on canvas
1957
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
George L.K. Morris (American, 1905-1975) studied art at Yale, the Art Students League, and the Académie Moderne in Paris, under the tutelage of Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. Morris had a lifelong passion for art and art criticism, becoming the first art critic for the restructured Partisan Review. As an artist, he detested Social Realism and Regionalist art, choosing instead to advocate American modernism. His work has been described as precise with cool linearity. Works like Inverse Projection recall elements of the work of his teacher Léger, with his own personal form of cubism.
Gregorio Prestopino
Time-Out
oil on canvas
c. 1950-60
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
Gregorio Prestopino (American, 1907-1984) was an American painter whose primary focus was the human condition. Prestopino is regarded as a Social Realist, drawing attention to the condition of the poor and working classes. Many artists working in this tradition are particularly critical of social structures that maintain these conditions; Prestopino was one such artist. He studied at the National Academy of Design and became influenced by French impressionism, the Ashcan School, and the MacDowell Colony. By the late 1950s, his work took a cubist turn and his realist subject matter intertwined with the brightly contrasting colors of cubism. Time-Out is a mixture of these styles, blending the working class theme with the influence cubist sensibilities.
Jimmy Ernst
Vibrations (N.Y. Tel and Tel)
oil on canvas
c. 1950-60
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
Jimmy Ernst (German, 1920-1984) was born Hans-Ulrich Ernst in Cologne, Germany. The son of famed surrealist Max Ernst, Ernst was surrounded by surrealism and was introduced to Salvador Dali, Alberto Giacometti, and Joan Miró, amongst others. Ernst moved to New York City in 1941 from Nazi-occupied France. As an abstract painter, Ernst became a member of the Irascible 18 (also known simply as the Irascibles). The group was formed in protest to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s anti-abstractionist bias. Famous members of this group included Willem de Kooning, Hedda Sterne, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. His inspiration and influence comes from his lifelong involvement with the avant-garde, but also from personal experience and his love of jazz music.
Karl Zerbe
Power Station
oil on paper
c. 1950-60
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
Karl Zerbe (German, 1902-1972) was an expressionist painter born in Berlin in 1903. He eventually relocated to Boston and worked alongside Hyman Bloom and Jack Levine, achieving national recognition as part of the first generation of Boston Expressionists. Though these artists were stylistically different from one another, they were all linked in their interest in humanism. The Boston Expressionists stood in stark contrast to the older established Boston artists, like John Singer Sargent and Edmund C. Tarbell. Much of Zerbe’s work concerns architecture and modern cityscapes. This painting is a prime example of his preoccupation with the changing scenery of America. Power Station is an abstract rendering of a power plant, which, in the first half of the twentieth century, became a fixture of the American landscape.
Ralston Crawford
Construction–Steel
oil on canvas
c. 1950-60
Gift from Erwin and Rose Wolfson to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
Ralston Crawford (Canadian, 1906-1978), abstract painter, lithographer, and photographer, was born in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. He studied art at the Otis Art Institute, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Barnes foundation, where he was exposed to Picasso and Matisse. Crawford was best known for abstract representations of industrialism and urban life. His style, particularly in his earliest work, placed him with Precisionist artists due to his use of sharp lines and his realistic portrayal of factories, bridges, and buildings. Construction-Steel is a representation of Crawford’s work in this style. His use of sharp angles and shapes reveals the austerity of modern architecture.