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WILLIAM MEYEROWITZ (1885-1981) AMER. EXPRESSIONIST browse these categories for related items... All Items: Fine Art:Paintings:Oil:N. America:American: Pre 1970: item # 780726 Please refer to our stock # Meyerowitz when inquiring.
Shelton Gallery and Fine Silver 5133 Harding Road B-10, PMB #392 Nashville TN 37205 (615) 477-6221 Guest Book $2250 |
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| William Meyerowitz was born in the Ukraine, Russia 1885 or 1887 and died in New York City in 1981. He emigrated from Russia with his father to New York in 1908, leaving the rest of his family behind. They took up quarters in the Lower East Side of New York on Orchard Street. Through a childhood job with an architect, he began to show promise with his drawing. He studied at the National Academy of Design from 1912-1916, and won honorable mention in the Prix de Rome in 1917. He was elected to full membership to the National Academy in 1953. His talent showed early in his student years, and he was awarded several first prizes in both drawing and etching. During this time of development, he also taught art and earned money by performing in the Metropolitan Opera Chorus in its Italian and German repertoire. In 1917 Meyerowitz was a founding member of the People’s Art Guild and a member of the Society of Independent Artists. He married fellow artist Theresa Bernstein (who had attended the Philadelphia Academy of Art) in 1919. Meyerowitz spent 1922-23 in Europe visiting art galleries and gathering material for his work. On his return, he won honorable mention at the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts. Critics were pleased with his interpretation of the American Scene. He was doing etchings with his own method, applying color directly to the metal plate. Among his most famous etchings are a series on Supreme Court Justices. Meyerowitz made a definite contribution to the technical development of the art of etching. His works were featured in various exhibits around the country and purchased for private collections. The subject matter had wide appeal. In New York, he painted and drew the vibrant Jewish life of the Lower East Side, musicians, dancers and artists with whom he associated. He also enjoyed painting the horses in Central Park. When at his studio in Gloucester, the varied colors and shapes of the harbor and hills, boats and trees offered him constant material to stimulate his talent. His approach to the composition evokes Cézanne’s views of rooftops in Southern France. Whereas Cézanne used the cone, sphere and the cube as his means for expressing nature, Meyerowitz conveyed dynamic relations between the forms. Meyerowitz enjoyed placing motion within the structure of his paintings and he felt that the viewer would grasp the notion of motion in seeing the totality of the picture. While the Meyerowitz paintings seem at first glance cheerful, decorative, scenic, they disclose a studious manipulation. They are worked out with consummate care so that planes are interrelated as though they had a structural bearing one upon another. The painter has handled the material with a moderate degree of abstraction after the manner of analytical cubism. The artist’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Columbus Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Phillips Collection, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, among others. He belonged to numerous organizations including the Audubon Society of Artists, which he served as director from 1960 to 1967; the Rockport Art Association, and the North Shore Art Association at Gloucester. From 1930 to 1940, he taught at the Settlement House in New York and from 1940 to 1945 taught at the Modern School of Self Expression. | ||||||||
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