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BIOGRAPHY
1906 Born September 25th in Ontario, Canada
1910 – 1926 Moves to Buffalo, New York; works various jobs,
including employment as an architectural draftsman; during vacations
he travels with his father, a ship’s captain, around the Great
Lakes
1926 - 1927 Works as sailor on steamships to Central America, California,
and the Caribbean; studies in Los Angeles at Otis Art Institute,
1927; employed as illustrator in Walt Disney’s studio, 1927
1927 – 1930 Studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts in Philadelphia (under Hugh Breckenridge), and at the Barnes
Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania
1930 – 1932 Moves to New York to paint; summers in Gloucester,
Massachusetts; receives good reviews by Edward Alden Jewell of The
New York Times
1932 – 1933 Travels to Paris, Spain and Italy; returns to
New York to study at Columbia University
1934 First solo exhibition held at the Maryland Institute of Art,
Baltimore
1935 – 1939 Lives and paints in Chadds Ford and Exton, Pennsylvania;
subjects of paintings are mostly local barns and industrial images;
experiments with photography, which remains a lifetime interest;
continues to receive favorable reviews in The New York Times and
in the New York Sun
1940 – 1941 Participates in group exhibition A New Realism:
Crawford, Demuth, Sheeler, Spencer at the Cincinnati Art Museum;
produces paintings, book jackets and book illustrations in New York
1942 Teaches at the Albright Art School in Buffalo; enlists in the
603rd Engineers Camouflage Battalion, US Army
1943 – 1945 Serves as master sergeant, chief of the Visual
Presentation Unit of the Weather Division in the Army Air Force;
assigned to the China-Burma and India theatre; visits Curtiss-Wright
aircraft plant in Buffalo, and in ensuing years makes paintings
relating to his photographs of the assemblage of airplane wings
at the plant; solo exhibition at Downtown Gallery, New York, 1944
1946 Sent by Fortune to witness atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll
to paint his impressions; solo show at Downtown Gallery, New York
1947 – 1950 Teaches and paints in Honolulu, Brooklyn, Cincinnati,
Minneapolis and Baton Rouge; solo show at Downtown Gallery, New
York, 1950
1953 Retrospective at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
1954 Solo show at Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York (and again
in 1956 and 1958)
1951 – 1957 Travels in Europe and returns to New York, 1951-52;
teaches at New School for Social Research, New York, 1952-57
1954 – 1958 Lives in France; travels to Spain to study Goya’s
paintings; major retrospective at Milwaukee Art Center, 1958
1959 – 1961 Travels through Spain and Paris and the United
States; appointed consultant to the Archive of New Orleans Jazz
at Tulane University, New Orleans; included in major exhibition
The Precisionist View in American Art at The Walker Art Center,
Minnesota, 1961
1965 Solo exhibition at Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University
of Nebraska, Lincoln
1962 – 1967 Travels to Greece, France and Egypt to make prints
and photographs; visiting artist positions held at the University
of Nebraska in Lincoln and at the University of Illinois in Champaign
1968 Retrospective at Creighton University Fine Arts Gallery, Omaha,
Nebraska; travels include Guadeloupe, Shelter Islands and Martinique
1969 Lives in New York; solo exhibition at the Century Association,
New York (and again in 1978)
1970 – 1971 Receives award from National Academy of Arts and
Letters; travels through Spain and England; solo show at Zabriskie
Gallery, New York (and again in 1973 and 1976)
1972 Receives award from National Academy of Design, New York
1973 – 1978 Travels include: Europe; Asia; Nepal; Afghanistan;
and the South Pacific; dies April 27, 1978, in Houston, Texas; buried
in St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans |
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