Cubist Cityscape by Charles LeClaire
This is a fantastic mid-century painting by American artist Charles LeClair. It's a bold, colorful, abstract piece created in 1956 using watercolor and gouache. The image is buildings and warehouses, but they are rendered in a cubist manner with flattened perspective and geometric forms. While the buildings are a drab grey, blue many colors are applied in an abstract expressionist manner with drips, spatters, gestural trails and smears. The combination of styles explodes off the paper. It is signed and dated lower left LeClair '56. This is very typical of the artist's mature style. As he stated in the exhibit brochure for his 60 year retrospective, "You will find a frontal image in everything I do - an image pressed forward, its shapes and colors interacting within a shallow, shadow-box like space that is parallel to the picture surface itself … I have moved around, rather than sticking to a single genre, because exploring new themes often leads to new and intriguing technical discoveries." The piece is in very good condition. It is framed, but has not been examined out of the frame. The sheet is 31 x 22.5 inches and the framed size is 34 x 25 inches. The watercolor is 'floated' on a backing which seems to be archival. There are no issues, including no tears, paper loss, stains, foxing, or fading. A great mid-century modern piece.
Charles LeClair (1914-2007) was originally from Missouri but grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. His formal artistic studies were at the University of Wisconsin-Madison B. S. and M. S. in art), the Academy Ranson, and Columbia University where he received a doctorate in art education. He exhibited extensively, most notably at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He used watercolor as a favored medium, which was unusual at the time. This led to a piece being included at the International Watercolor Exhibit at Brooklyn Museum. He participated in many group shows at major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago; New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC. His work was recognized with several awards including the Pennell Memorial Award and an award from Associate Artists of Pittsburgh. Villanova University hosted his sixty-year retrospective in 1998. While not widely held, his work is represented in some important collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Provincetown Art Museum, and the McNay Art Institute. He also had interest in art education. He was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Advanced Education and taught painting at the University of Alabama, the Albright Art School in Buffalo, and Chatham College in Pittsburgh He served as Dean of the Tyler School of Art at Temple University from 1960-1974. In retirement, he wrote two books, The Art of Watercolor, and Color in Contemporary Painting.
Price: $675
Size: 31 x 22.5 inches
Framed Size: 34 x 25 inches
Condition: Very Good
Medium: Watercolor
Subject: Architecture & Cityscape
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