Area of Design

AOD showcases artists & designers. Inspiring others by encouraging, educating, and nurturing the creative community.

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Perspective Reflective Sky // Photo: Katie Glantz

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RAW ARTIST // Katie Glantz June 12th 2014 in Austin, Texas. Tickets: www.rawartists.org/katieglantz

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Marsden Hartley painter (1877-1943) Born: Lewiston, Maine Painter, poet, and pioneer American modernist, Marsden Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, in 1887. Displaying an early talent in draftsmanship, at the age of fifteen Hartley won a scholarship to study at the Cleveland School of Art. In 1898 he moved to New York City and attended the art school of painter William Merritt Chase before studying at the National Academy of Design. Returning to Maine, he painted landscapes in postimpressionist and modernist styles that reflected his artistic training as well as his recent exposure to groundbreaking artists and ideas. His first solo exhibition was held in 1909 at Alfred Stieglitz' influential gallery 291.  With financial support from Stieglitz, Hartley was able to make two trips to Europe between 1912 and 1915. He went to Paris, where he experienced postimpressionism, fauvism, and cubism first-hand. Unlike most of his fellow Americans in Paris, Hartley sought the company of German artists working there. Not only did they share his affinity for expressing emotion in their work, but they were intrigued with the theories of mysticism. These concerns ran counter to cubism's highly intellectualized approach, but for Hartley German expressionism proved to be a complementary influence. During a second visit to Germany in 1914-1915, the artist forged a personal style in which he combined the tightly structured arrangement of flat planes--a concept borrowed from synthetic cubism--with the dramatic color and loose brushwork of expressionism. Returning to the United States in 1915, Hartley traveled across the country painting mostly abstract landscapes. In 1921 he returned to Europe where he remained for about ten years, restlessly moving from France to Italy and then Germany. Hartley continued to experiment with European styles, often using recollections of the American landscape as his subject matter. After coming back to Maine in the mid-1930s, Hartley reverted to a more straightforward interpretation of nature. His bold and expressive paintings of New England's mountains and coastlines began to win critical acclaim. Not until after his death did the artist gain widespread critical success.

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Milton Glaser: graphic designer (1929-present) Born: New York, New York

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man — one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work. * Born in 1929, Milton Glaser was educated at the High School of Music and Art and the Cooper Union art school in New York and, via a Fulbright Scholarship, the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy. He co-founded the revolutionary Pushpin Studios in 1954, founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968, established Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974, and teamed with Walter Bernard in 1983 to form the publication design firm WBMG. Throughout his career, Glaser has been a prolific creator of posters and prints. His artwork has been featured in exhibits worldwide, including one-man shows at both the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums. Glaser also is a renowned graphic and architectural designer with a body of work ranging from the iconic logo to complete graphic and decorative programs for the restaurants in the World Trade Center in New York. Glaser is an influential figure in both the design and education communities and has contributed essays and granted interviews extensively on design. Among many awards throughout the years, he received the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, for his profound and meaningful long-term contribution to the contemporary practice of design.

* Excerpted from CSD, August/September, 1999 — "Milton Glaser: Always One Jump Ahead" by Patrick Argent

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William J. Glackens painter (1870-1938) Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Born in Philadelphia, William J. Glackens (1870-1938) is an artist whose oeuvre is so diverse, it defies labeling. Was he a realist with a penchant for grit and sordidness or an impressionist who celebrated the simple joys of family life in his radiant canvases? He was both and much more. During a career spanning more than four decades, Glackens studied, assimilated and reinterpreted the works of many notable painters. Such masters as Manet, Hals, Goya, Renoir and Matisse influenced him. Glackens' inquisitiveness was matched by his thirst for experimentation. To him, painting was not a craft but a passion. Despite his marrying into wealth, Glackens continued to work for close to thirty years as a newspaper, magazine and book illustrator. His income as a graphic artist afforded him the luxury of painting to fulfill his creative needs rather than to satisfy a capricious market. Thus, he accomplished every painter's dream of conceiving art for art's sake. Glackens' formative years started at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1892-93). There, like his contemporaries John Sloan, Everett Shinn and George Luks, fell under the spell of Robert Henri, a gifted painter and superb teacher. Henri enticed his young students to capture with swiftness the 'reality' around them, blemishes and all. Their seamy portrayals of down-to-earth themes gained them the nicknames of The Black Gang and Devotees of the Ugly. By 1906, Henri's allure began to wane and Glackens proceeded to immerse himself in French culture and art. His Francophile phase, which fully blossomed by 1912, lasted until his demise. This period spawned his most rapturous landscapes and sensuous nudes - all of them featuring feathery brushwork and a glowing palette. During his lifetime and beyond it, William Glackens has enjoyed the admiration and praise of his peers, as well as of curators and audiences. Every major museum in the United States, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Chicago Art Institute, owns at least one of his canvases. Furthermore, no serious survey on either Realism or Impressionism in America is mounted, without including Glackens. His ubiquitous presence denotes his rank and significance in a fickle art world where fame is often fleeting.

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Eric Fischl: painter (1948-present) Born: New York, New York Born in New York City in 1948, Eric Fischl grew up in the suburbs of Long Island , his parents having moved there shortly before his second year."Safer place to raise a family", they used to say. Against a backdrop of alcoholism and a country club culture obsessed with image over content, Fischl became focussed on the rift between what was experienced and what could not be said. Until the late 70's, suburbia was not considered a legitimate genre for art. With his first New York show at the Edward Thorp Gallery, epithets like "psycho-sexual suburban dramas" became velcroed to his disturbing images of dyfunctional family life. Fischl began his art education in Phoenix, Arizona where his parents had moved in 1967. First at Phoenix Junior College, then a year at Arizona State University, and finally getting his BFA in 1972 at the recently opened California Institute of the Arts in Valencia,California. After graduation he moved to Chicago where he worked as a guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was in Chicago that Fischl was exposed to the non-mainstream art of the Hairy Who. "The underbelly, carnie world of Ed Paschke and the hilarious sexual vulgarity of Jim Nutt were revelatory experiences for me.", Fischl has said. In 1974, he got a job teaching painting at the highly touted Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. It is there that he met his future wife, the painter, April Gornik. In 1978 they moved to New York City where they continue to live and work.

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Charles Eames designer and architect (1907-1978) Born: Saint Louis, Missouri Charles Ormond Eames, Jr. was born in 1907 in Saint Louis, Missouri. By the time he was 14 years old, while attending high school, Charles worked at the Laclede Steel Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture (and also first entertained the idea of one day becoming an architect).

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Walt Elias Disney: cartoonist (1901-1966) Born: Chicago, Illinois

Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago Illinois, to his father Elias Disney, and mother Flora Call Disney. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl. After Walt's birth, the Disney family moved to Marceline Missouri, Walt lived most of his childhood here. Walt had very early interests in art, he would often sell drawings to neighbors to make extra money. He pursued his art career, by studying art and photography by going to McKinley High School in Chicago. Walt began to love, and appreciate nature and wildlife, and family and community, which were a large part of agrarian living. Though his father could be quite stern, and often there was little money, Walt was encouraged by his mother, and older brother, Roy to pursue his talents. During the fall of 1918, Disney attempted to enlist for military service. Rejected because he was under age, only sixteen years old at the time. Instead, Walt joined the Red Cross and was sent overseas to France, where he spent a year driving an ambulance and chauffeuring Red Cross officials. His ambulance was covered from stem to stern, not with stock camouflage, but with Disney cartoons. Once Walt returned from France, he began to pursue a career in commercial art. He started a small company called Laugh-O-Grams, which eventually fell bankrupt. With his suitcase, and twenty dollars, Walt headed to Hollywood to start anew.  After making a success of his "Alice Comedies," Walt became a recognized Hollywood figure. On July 13, 1925, Walt married one of his first employees, Lillian Bounds, in Lewiston, Idaho. Later on they would be blessed with two daughters, Diane and Sharon. In 1932, the production entitled Flowers and Trees (the first color cartoon) won Walt the first of his studio's Academy Awards. In 1937, he released The Old Mill , the first short subject to utilize the multi-plane camera technique. On December 21, 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Theater in Los Angeles. The film produced at the unheard cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Depression, the film is still considered one of the great feats and imperishable monuments of the motion picture industry. During the next five years, Walt Disney Studios completed other full-length animated classics such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.  Walt Disney's dream of a clean, and organized amusement park, came true, as Disneyland Park opened in 1955. Walt also became a television pioneer, Disney began television production in 1954, and was among the first to present full-color programming with his Wonderful World of Color in 1961. Walt Disney is a legend; a folk hero of the 20th century. His worldwide popularity was based upon the ideals which his name represents: imagination, optimism, creation, and self-made success in the American tradition. He brought us closer to the future, while telling us of the past, it is certain, that there will never be such as great a man, as Walt Disney.

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Charles Demuth: painter (1883-1935) Born: Lancaster, Pennsylvania Charles Demuth was one of the most stylistically innovative watercolor artists of the 20th century. The son of a wealthy Lancaster (Pennsylvania) tobacco merchant, Demuth never had to seek social approval or work for a living. His introverted, imaginative character was strengthened by a childhood hip illness that left him partly lame and emotionally dependent on his mother. He received some art lessons as a teenager but, two years after graduating high school (1903), he enrolled in introductory art courses at Philadelphia's Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry, then (from 1905-10) completed his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. There he trained in painting under Thomas Anshutz (a pupil of Thomas Eakins), came in contact with Japanese art, and perfected his persona as a dandyfied and world weary esthete after the manner of James McNeil Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde. He twice voyaged to Paris and Berlin, in 1907 and 1912-13, where he saw firsthand works by Cezanne, the Fauves, the German Expressionists, met expatriate Americans such as John Marin and Marsden Hartley, and enrolled in drawing courses at the Académie Moderne. He returned to live in Lancaster after the death of his father in 1912, and began a lifelong relationship with the architect Robert Locher. But he also frequented the artistic circle around Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) in New York City, and spent summer vacations at New England's seaside resorts. He had his first solo exhibition in 1914, in New York, and quickly expanded his watercolor style toward bright colors, expressive drawing, and socially complex subjects. He also began to tackle more ambitious and serious landscapes in an increasingly refined and abstract style. In 1920, Demuth was diagnosed with diabetes and was often incapacitated by diabetic attacks, yet he continued to work in Lancaster and travel to New York. He made a final trip to Europe in 1921, fell seriously ill, and was brought home by his mother for insulin treatment at the Morristown Sanitarium in New Jersey. He never regained full health, and spent most of the rest of his life working at home, a diabetic invalid. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Demuth created large works in oil that range from prophetic Pop iconography (his famous I Saw The Figure 5 in Gold, 1928) and poster art to the urban industrial visions of Precisionism. He exhibited in numerous solo shows and in group shows with artists such as Marin, O'Keeffe, Dove, Hartley, and Alfred Stieglitz. Over a period of two decades he produced more than one thousand drawings and paintings. Demuth died of complications from diabetes in 1935, at age 51. In his will he bequeathed his watercolors to Robert Locher and all his other works to Georgia O'Keeffe.

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Stuart Davis: painter (1892-1964) Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Stuart Davis (1892–1964) was born in Philadelphia. His father was the art editor for the Philadelphia Press and encouraged his young son's talent. Davis studied art with Robert Henri in New York, and his new friends included members of "The Eight", such as John Sloan, George Luks, Everett Shinn and William Glackens. The novice artist thrived in the relaxed atmosphere of Henri's studio, where academic rules meant less than individual expression. Together with his fellow students, he roamed the streets of New York, discovering the raucous side of Chinatown, the Bowery, and the various haunts of Broadway as sources of stimulation. His early paintings were broadly brushed city scenes. His style was turned in another direction, however, by the Armory Show of 1913, which began his conversion to Modernism. In the 1950s, Davis simplified his earlier semi-abstract style. In looking at ordinary objects, he saw their lines, planes, and shapes crossing in an endless succession of geometric patterns. These he painted with bold, splashing colors, striking a balance between recognizable images and complete abstraction. Davis gave Modernism a distinctively American feeling through his rendering of urban landscape, commercial signs and jazz music which he interpreted with bold color in abstract design.

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Seymour Chwast American Graphic Designer, Illustrator, and Type Designer (1931 - Present) Born: Bronx, New York As co-founder (with Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel) of Push Pin Studios, Seymour Chwast developed a playful, expressive approach to type and layout. During the mid-to-late sixties, Push Pin was on the leading edge of popular art, producing high-profile advertisements, book jackets, posters, record covers, and magazine covers. In 1970, Push Pin Studios was honored at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Decorativs in a historic retrospective entitled “The Push Pin Style.” After Milton Glaser left Push Pin in 1975, Mr. Chwast continued the Push Pin tradition, founding Push Pin Press (later Push Pin Editions), and eventually transforming Push Pin Studios into The Pushpin Group. Seymour Chwast’s colorful and witty designs and illustrations have been used in advertising; animated films; and editorial, corporate, and environmental graphics. He has created over 100 posters; designed, written, and illustrated numerous children’s books; and developed many typefaces. In addition, he designed and illustrated The Push Pin Graphic and his current publication, The Nose. Many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, have collected his posters. Mr. Chwast continues to lecture and exhibit worldwide and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker.

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Alexander Calder: sculptor/artist (1898-1976) Born: Lawnton, Pennsylvania

Alexander Calder was born July 22, 1898, in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, into a family of artists. In 1919, he received an engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken. Calder attended the Art Students League, New York, from 1923 to 1926, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton and John Sloan, among others. As a freelance artist for the National Police Gazette in 1925, he spent two weeks sketching at the circus; his fascination with the subject dates from this time. He also made his first sculpture in 1925; the following year he made several constructions of animals and figures with wire and wood. Calder’s first exhibition of paintings took place in 1926 at the Artist’s Gallery, New York.

Later that year, he went to Paris and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In Paris, he met Stanley William Hayter, exhibited at the 1926 Salon des Indépendants, and in 1927 began giving performances of his miniature circus. The first show of his wire animals and caricature portraits was held at the Weyhe Gallery, New York, in 1928. That same year, he met Joan Miró , who became his lifelong friend. Subsequently, Calder divided his time between France and the United States. In 1929, the Galerie Billiet gave him his first solo show in Paris. He met Frederick Kiesler, Fernand Léger , and Theo van Doesburg and visited Piet Mondrian ’s studio in 1930. Calder began to experiment with abstract sculpture at this time and in 1931 and 1932 introduced moving parts into his work. These moving sculptures were called “mobiles”; the stationary constructions were to be named “stabiles.” He exhibited with the Abstraction-Création group in Paris in 1933. In 1943, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, gave him a solo exhibition. 

During the 1950s, Calder traveled widely and executed Towers (wall mobiles) and Gongs (sound mobiles). He won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the 1952 Venice Biennale. Late in the decade, the artist worked extensively with gouache; from this period, he executed numerous major public commissions. In 1964–65, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, presented a Calder retrospective. He began the Totems in 1966 and the Animobiles in 1971; both are variations on the standing mobile. A Calder exhibition was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1976. Calder died November 11, 1976, in New York.

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Charles E. Burchfield watercolorists (1893 - 1967) Born: Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio. One of the most original watercolorists of the 20th century, Charles Burchfield was born in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, and moved to Salem, Ohio at the age of five. Burchfield developed his passions for nature and art early in life through his reading of the transcendentalist writings of John Burroughs and Henry David Thoreau. Between 1912 and 1916 Burchfield studied at the Cleveland School of Art, where he was advised to seek subjects that were personally meaningful. Unlike many of his American contemporaries, Burchfield did not travel abroad or depend on other paintings for inspiration. Extremely sensitive to nature’s varying moods as well as to his own, he found his subjects in nearby countryside and towns. Burchfield left Salem permanently in 1921 to take a job in Buffalo, N.Y. as a wallpaper designer. Although he enjoyed modest recognition for his early watercolors of Ohio, it was not until 1929 that Burchfield gained enough financial success to devote himself to painting full time. Working primarily in watercolor, Burchfield’s vision was poetic, and he discovered unexpected beauty in familiar and ordinary places. He responded to sights he knew well and attempted to convey more than just visual impressions. Edward Hopper recognized his friend’s gift for capturing what artists generally overlooked—the jumble of eaves and gables formed by his neighbor’s roofs, the sag in a barn door, the tilt of the weathered drain spout on the side of a house. Burchfield’s subjects are unsophisticated but gain immediacy through energetic two-dimensional patterns that animate the surface of his pictures and evoke sensations of the subject’s particular play of light, weather conditions, and even sound. His emphasis on synaesthetic experiences has an affinity with Arthur Dove, another artist widely collected by Duncan Phillips. Duncan Phillips was an admirer of Burchfield and elaborated on the artist’s early accomplishments: “He was, in his technic [sic], both daring and deliberate, both whimsical and precise. When he wished he could conjure up the essence of a scene indoors or out.” Phillips’s regard was also implicit in his correspondence with the artist … “I have never had the pleasure of meeting you but I feel that I know you through your very expressive art.” "As an artist grows older, he has to fight disillusionment and learn to establish the same relation to nature as an adult as he had when a child." – Charles E. Burchfield

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Saul Bass: graphic designer (1920-1996) Born: New York, New York Early Life Saul Bass was born in May 8, 1920 in New York City. He studied at the Art Student's League in Manhattan until attending classes with Gyorgy Kepes at Brooklyn College. He began his time in Hollywood doing print work for film ads, until he collaborated with filmmaker Otto Preminger to design the movie poster for his 1954 film Carmen Jones. Preminger was so impressed with Bass’s work that he asked him to produce the title sequence as well. This was when Bass first saw the opportunity to create something more than a title sequence, but to create something which would ultimately enhance the experience of the audience and tell the beginning of the story within the opening credits. Bass was one of the first to realize upon the storytelling potential of the opening and closing credits of a film. Movie Title Sequences Bass became notorious in the industry after creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). The subject of the film was a jazz musician's struggle to overcome his heroin addiction, a taboo subject in the mid 50's. Bass decided to create a controversial title sequence. He chose the arm as the central image, as the arm is a strong image relating to drug addiction. The titles featured an animated, black paper cut-out arm of a heroin addict. As he expected, it caused quite a sensation. For Alfred Hitchcock, Bass provided effective, memorable title sequences for North by Northwest, Vertigo, and Psycho. Bass famously claimed that he directed the highlight of Psycho, the tightly edited shower-murder sequence, though many on set at the time (including Janet Leigh) dispute this contention. It was this kind of innovative, revolutionary work that made Bass the revered graphic designer he is today. His later work with Martin Scorsese saw him move away from the optical techniques that he had pioneered and move into computerised titles, from which he produced the stunning sequence for Casino. He had been designing title sequences for 40 years before his death in 1996, from films as diverse as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) to Casino (1995). He also designed title sequences for films such as Goodfellas (1990), Doc Hollywood (1991), Cape Fear (1991) and The Age of Innocence (1993), all of which feature new and innovative methods of production and startling graphic design, and all of which attempt to tell some of the story, be it introducing characters or giving plot clues, in the first few minutes of the film. He also designed the Student Academy Award for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 1974, Bass made his only film as a director, the visually splendid science fiction film Phase IV.

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Rolf Armstrong pin-up illustrator (1889-1960) Born: Seattle, Washington Born in Seattle in 1899, Armstrong grew up in the rugged environment of the Pacific Northwest. He moved to Chicago in 1908 and later enrolled at the Art Institute, where he studied for three years under the master draftsman John Vanderpoel. He then went on to New York, where he became a student of Robert Henri. Athletic as well as artistic, Armstrong both boxed and sketched at the New York Athletic Club. After a trip in 1919 to study art at the Académie Julian in Paris, Armstrong established a studio in Greenwich Village and started to paint Ziegfeld Follies girls. In 1921, he went to Minneapolis-St. Paul to study calendar production at Brown and Bigelow. A perfectionist all his life, Armstrong mastered the technical aspects of modern publishing because he wanted his work to have the same "freshness and beaming color" on paper as on canvas. Not surprisingly he refused to work from photographs, and his search for the perfect model was unending. During the 1920s and 1930s, Armstrong's work appeared on numberless pieces of sheet music as well as on the front covers of many mainstream theater and film magazines. All the great stars posed for his glamorous portraits – Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn. He even persuaded Boris Karloff to pose for him on the set of Frankenstein. Armstrong's covers for Pictorial Review were largely responsible for the magazine's achieving, by 1926, a circulation of more than two million copies per issue. A year later Armstrong emerged as the best-selling calendar artist at Brown and Bigelow. RCA hired Armstrong in 1930 to paint pin-ups to advertise their products, and by 1933 his popularity was so great that the Thomas D. Murphy Company signed him up to produce a series of ten paintings for their line, an honor shared only by Billy De Vorss. Armstrong maintained a "fantasy mansion" on Little Neck Bay in Bayside, Long Island, complete with a lagoon and sailboats for his friends to enjoy. Because light was so crucial to his work, he often painted his models outdoors in the glow of the setting sun. Employing an extraordinary selection of pastel colors for most of his work, Armstrong also at times utilized charcoal, pencil, and oils. In the mid-1930s, the artist realized his quest for the "perfect, dream-come-true model" when he met Jewel Flowers, whom he later adopted. He lived in Hollywood from 1935 to 1938, then returned to New York. In 1943, Armstrong joined Earl Moran, Zoë Mozert, and Norman Rockwell as the guest artists at a War Advertising Conference in Minneapolis-St. Paul. With Jewel Flowers by his side, the articulate and elegant Armstrong generated a lot of press. When asked why he insisted on a live model, Armstrong said: "When I paint, I want the living person in front of me. As I look at her again and again and again while I work, I get a thousand fresh, vivid impressions...all the glow, exuberance, and spontaneous joy that leaps from a young and happy heart". Armstrong was inspired by the glitter of society and he appreciated beauty in people, cars, furniture, fabrics, and, of course, in art. A collector of swords and antique lances, he built one of the greatest private collections of ancient weapons in America. He died on 22nd February 1960, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, surrounded by his beloved blue ocean and tropical winds. Armstrong's artistry was an amalgam of brilliant lighting techniques, magnificent vivid colors, superior craftsmanship, and beautiful subjects – his vivacious, spirited ideals of American femininity.

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Thomas Hart Benton painter (1889-1975) Born: Neosho, Missouri Biography Named after his great-uncle, Missouri's first senator, Thomas Hart Benton was born on 15 April 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, an Ozark town of 2,000 people. His father was Maecenus Eason Benton, a Congressman and storyteller known as "The Little Giant of Ozarks." Thomas quit high school when he was 17 and that same year started his first job as an artist at The Joplin American . After attending the Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois, in 1907 he left for Chicago to study at the Art Institute for one year. At the age of 19 Benton traveled to Paris where he studied at the Académie Julian and remained for 3 years. In 1912 he returned to the U.S. and set up a studio in New York at 65th St. and Broadway, where he supported himself by painting movie queens for $7 a day. During World War I Benton served at the Naval Base in Norfolk, Virginia. In the 1920's and early 1930's, he taught at the Chelsea Neighborhood Association, in public schools, and at the Art Students League in New York. On 19 February 1922, Benton married Rita Piacenza, one of his students. In 1935 they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where Benton directed the Art Institute until 1941, and where he continued to live for the rest of his life. Albert Barnes, the Philadelphia collector, purchased some of his paintings, which raised the level of public success for the artist. Benton published his autobiography, An Artist in America , in 1937. He completed several murals in the midwest and on the east coast. Shortly before Harry Truman's death in December 1972, Benton finished a portrait of the former President. Thomas Hart Benton died on 19 January 1975 in Kansas City, the day he completed a large mural for the Country Music Foundation of Nashville.

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Peggy Bacon: American illustrator, caricaturist, and etcher. (1895-1987) Born: Ridgefield, Connecticut

Biography

 An American illustrator, caricaturist, and etcher, born in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Peggy Bacon illustrated more than 60 books including works by George Ade, Carl Sandburg, and Louis Untermeyer, as well as her own poems and her stories for children. Much of her work is satirical and lighthearted and frequently a commentary on the New York art world in the 1920s and 1930s. She also chose many ordinary events in the lives of city people, giving these pieces a wry twist. Her shrewd and caustic observations have found expression in her writings and in her graphic work. Socialist Meeting (Metropolitan Museum) is characteristic. Among her published works are Off With Their Heads (1934); Cat-Calls (1935), a volume of light verse; and, for children, The Ghost of Opalina (1967) and Magic Touch (1968). Bacon was married (1920-40) to the painter Alexander Brook.