Category: design

María and Eduardo Dávila Portillo

Textiles by María and Eduardo Dávila Portillo

María and Eduardo Dávila Portillo are Venezuelan textile artists who create complex textile works fashioned from multiple materials. They have studied all aspects of their artwork from the sources of their materials to the traditional dyeing and weaving techniques of India, China, and the Andes Mountains of Venezuela.  

Maria Eugenia Dávila was born in Mérida, Venezuela in 1966; Eduardo Portillo, also born in 1966, is from the more northern city of Jajó, Venezuela. Since 1983, they have been devoted to creations fashioned from silk and natural dyes. Twenty years later, Dávila and Portillo studied and integrated their own country’s fibers, derived from bromeliads, palms and roots, into their silk fabric works. 

Long-lasting fibers from the moriche palm, the perennial curague, and the cactus family’s chique-chique had traditionally been used to produce threads, cords, and fishing nets. The incorporation of these fibers into the silk works of Dávila and Portillo gave their work a new look but also required new techniques for inducing color into the fibers. They eventually developed “Mosaics”, a convergence of all previously used patterns and natural dyes in their projects, which became a template for the integration of silk and Venezuelan fibers.

At the beginning of their career, María and Eduardo Dávila Portillo traveled to China and India to better understand the properties and production of silk as well as the traditional techniques of indigo dye making. They spent several years studying sericulture, or silk farming, in order to produce their own silk from a vertical integrated model in the mountains of Mèrida, Venezuela. Their silk farming project developed from silkworm larvae found in the Canary Islands and seeds from Morera trees, commonly known as mulberry trees. The leaves of these mulberry trees provide food for the silkworms, which when grown produce the silk threads that are transformed into textiles. 

Dávila and Portillo see color as an essential element of textile work, one that interacts smoothly with the work’s surface, fiber, texture and structure. Already fascinated by their local natural dyes, they became inspired by lecturer and artist Jenny Balfour-Paul’s 1998 botanical study “Indigo”. Dávila and Portillo traveled to Thailand, India and China to study this traditional organic source of blue color. The indigo plant is a shrub, either annual or perennial depending on the climate, whose leaves are processed to obtain the dye. Soaked in water and fermented, the leaves convert the colorless compound glycoside indican, naturally present in the plant, to the blue dye indigotin. 

María and Eduardo Dávila Portillo returned to Venezuela with indigo paste, powder, recipes, indigo seeds and the understanding that the process of indigo dye is more a culture than the color itself. Recognizing that the color blue one sees depends on the setting as well as the time of day, they created indigo tapestries of shaded mosaics and blocks to represent the various color perceptions. Dávila and Portillo’s tapestries from this project, depicting specific times of the day, were showcased in an exhibition that highlighted indigo’s historic color and culture, the December 2012 “Azul Indigo”, held at Caracas, Venezuela.

Dávila and Portillo are now experimenting in the colors of metal. Using metals as textile material, they are working with steel, bronze and copper in casting sculptural works of varied patinas and colors. Dávila and Portillo use their woven textiles to create shapes with folds and wrinkles. Molds of these textile shapes are then prepared for bronze casting. Dávila and Portillo’s exploration of the patina process led to the mixing of copper ribbons with metallic threads of copper, steel, gold and silver which are then woven into their tapestries.

María and Eduardo Dávila Portillo are recipients of a Smithsonian Art Research Fellowship and a Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency. Their work is recognized by UNESCO as a contribution to sustainable practices. Dávila and Portillo are members of the Textile Society of America, a platform dedicated to the exchange and diffusion of textiles. They share their vast knowledge by lecturing in conferences across the US, Central and South America, and Europe.

Dávila and Portillo’s work is part of public and private collections worldwide, including the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, England; Longhouse Reserve, a sixteen-acre garden and sculpture museum in East Hampton, New York; the Cooper Hewitt-Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City; the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Notes:  The Art Institute of Chicago has an interview with textile artists Dávila and Portillo led by Associate Textile Conservator Isaac Faccio, entitled “Anatomy of a White Dwarf: On Life, Home, and Weaving” at: https://www.artic.edu/articles/1134/anatomy-of-a-white-dwarf-on-life-home-and-weaving

Wilton, Connecticut’s sculpture and textile gallery Browngrotta Arts is a representative of Dávila and Portillo’s work in the United States. An article on the artists’ work and an inventory of available textiles can be found at the Browngrotta Arts site: https://browngrotta.com/artists/Eduardo-Maria-Eugenia-Davila-portillo

Second Insert Image: Dávila and Portillo, “Océano Cósmico”, 2022, Detail, Silk, Moriche, Alpaca, Cotton, Indigo and Copper Leaf, 150 x 79 cm, Browngrotta Arts

Third Insert Image: Dávila and Portillo, “Encontrada”, 2013, “New Territories” Series, Cast Bronze, 21 x 22 cm, Museum of Art and Design, New York 

Bottom Insert Image: Dávila and Portillo, “Clev 1”, 2019, Detail, Silk, Alpaca, Moriche, Metallic Fiber, Silver Leaf, Natural Dyes, 209 x 63cm, Private Collection

Dmitri Bouchène

The Artwork of Dmitri Bouchène

Born in St. Tropez, France at the Villa of General Allard in April of 1893, Dmitri Dmitriévitch Bouchène was a Russian painter and theatrical costume and set designer who worked in both the Russian Federation and France. In 1947, he became a naturalized citizen of France where he remained for the rest of his life. 

Dmitri Bouchène was a descendant of a French Huguenot family. His  great-grandfather had relocated from France to Catherine the Great’s Russia in 1685 due to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes which effectively expelled the Huguenots from France. After the death of his mother in 1895, Bouchène was raised by his aunts in St. Petersburg. He attended the Second Imperial Gymnasium and evening classes at the art school established by the Society for Encouragement and Promotion of Arts. It was at the Imperial Gymnasium that Bouchène met fellow  student Sergey Rostislavovich Ernst, with whom he would remain a loving partner for the rest of his life. 

Through a personal recommendation from Russian painter Nicolas Roerich to French painter Maurice Denis who was teaching at the Académie Ranson in Paris, Bouchène was able to attend the academy and study at Denis’s workshop. There he met and received lessons on intuitive painting from Henri Matisse. After returning to St. Petersburg in 1913, Bouchène resumed his studies in history and philology, the study of language in oral and written historical sources. From 1915 to 1917, he continued his drawing studies at the Society for the Promotion of Arts. 

Dmitri Bouchène, through the sponsorship of painter and theatrical designer Alexandre Benois, became part of the staff at the Hermitage Museum where he curated the department of porcelain, silver and jewels until 1925. A member of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) group since 1917, Bouchène was invited by Benois, under appointment by art critic Sergei Diaghilev, to participate in the group’s exhibitions at St. Petersburg’s Anichkov Palace. Bouchène entered paintings in the Mir Iskusatva exhibitions of 1918, 1922, and 1924.

Bouchène’s style of painting incorporated the motifs and methods of Catalan modernist painter Antoni Gaudí and Venetian painter Giovanni Canal. He executed easel paintings of still lifes and landscapes as well as set and scene designs for the theater. Bouchène also created graphic work for publishers, including bookplates for Akvilon Publishing in Petrograd. He participated in Russian landscape exhibitions, the 1922 First State Independent Art Exhibition at Berlin’s Galerie van Diemen, bookplate art exhibitions in Petrograd and Kazan, and the 1924 Russian Art Exhibition held at New York.

In 1925, Dmitri Bouchène asked for a leave of absence from the Hermitage Museum to travel with Sergey Ernst to Paris for a three month study program of art history. Permission was granted and they left Russia by way of the Estonian city of Tallinn, never to return. While exploring Paris, Ernst purchased a Delacroix painting he found at a low cost in a Parisian flea market; the resale of this work enabled them to buy a home. In 1926, Bouchène began his career in France with costume designs for prima ballerina Ann Pavlova.

In 1930 following this success, Bouchène began work as a costume and set designer for the Paris Opéra and Teatro alla Scala. He also created interior decor for Paris-based Maison Jansen and haute couture work for such fashion designers as Lucien Lelong and Nina Ricci. During the Second World War, both Bouchène and Ernst took an active part in the French Resistance. Bouchène continued his painting and design work after the war; Ernst established himself as an art critic and historian with three published monographs on noted Russian Silver Age artists: Zinaida Serebriakova, Alexandre Benois and Nicolas Roerich.  

Dmitri Bouchène was deeply affected by the 1980 death of his longtime partner Sergey Ernst. He had considered Ernst and theatrical designer Alexandrer Benois as the two pillars that supported his life. Ernst was interred in a tomb located in the thirteenth division of the Montparnesse Cemetery in Paris. Bouchène died, thirteen years later, in February of 1993 at the age of ninety-nine. He was buried in the Montparnesse tomb alongside Sergey Ernst. Their tomb was inscribed with the words “What a Joy / You have Arrived” in honor of their long lives together.

In 1947, Bouchène’s friend, the art collector Frederik Johannes Lugt, established the Fondation Custodia at the eighteenth-century Hotel Turgot in Paris; this foundation is the custodian of Bouchène’s archives. Numerous private collection hold Bouchène’s paintings and graphic works.

The Dmitri Bouchène website, established by Pascal Davy-Bouchène, is located at: https://dimitri-bouchene.com

Tope Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Dmitri Bouchène in His Studio”, 1960, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Dmitri Bouchène, Costume Design for Claudio Monteverdi’s Opera “l’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea)“, 1953, Charcoal and Gouache on Paper, 33 x 23.5 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Dmitri Bouchène, “Flowers Against the Blue Background”, Gouache on Paper on Canvas, 105 x 76 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Dmitri Bouchène, Costume Design for Leoš Janáček’s 1954 Opera “Z Mrtvého Domu (House of the Dead)”, Charcoal and Gouache on Paper, 32 x 24 cm, Private Collection

Feliciano Centurión

The Textile Art of Feliciano Centurión

Born in the city of San Ignacio, Misiones in March of 1962, Feliciano Centurión was a Paraguayan artist known for his painting and textile work that incorporated painting, knitting, crocheting and embroidering. He was raised in a matriarchal household where he was taught the traditional crafts normally associated with women’s work.

Feliciano Centurión’s family fled to Formosa, Argentina to escape the military dictatorship of Paraguayan President Alfredo Stroessner. He received his initial art education in the visual arts at Formosa’s Oscar R. Albertozzi School of Fine Arts. Centurión permanently relocated to Buenos Aires where he studied painting at the Ernesto de la Cárcova Superior School of Fine Arts and the Prilidiano Pueyrredón School of Fine Arts. He earned the National Professor and Superior Professor of Painting degrees. 

Centurión incorporated ordinary household items into his artwork, such as blankets (frazadas), handkerchiefs, and pillowcases which he purchased at local street markets. His textile work followed the weaving traditions held by the indigenous Guaraní people of the interior regions of South America, particularly those of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. Centurión also integrated the technique of ñandutí, an intricate method of lace weaving that was traditionally taught from mother to daughter. His design motifs included images of both flora and fauna as well as diaristic texts. 

After surviving the dictatorships in both Paraguay and Argentina, Feliciano Centurión thrived in Argentina after the collapse of the country’s authoritarian regime in 1983. He became associated with the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, a cultural center operated by the University of Buenos Aires, where he became acquainted with the work of other young artists. Centurión incorporated the kitsch references and queer aesthetics of these artists into his painting and embroidery work now being done on inexpensive, patterned blankets. Established as an artist, he participated in thirty-one solo exhibitions in Argentina and Paraguay between 1990 and 1996. 

Diagnosed with HIV in 1992 at a time when no accessible treatments were available, Centurión began chronicling his declining health by weaving texts into increasingly smaller and more intricate fabrics. At a time when government policies and media reports stigmatized the virus and its victims, he expressed humanizing, sentimental notions of comfort and intimacy into his fabric work. Centurión’s works were composed of bright colors and animals, such as snails and crocodiles, remembered from his childhood. His blankets celebrated both his matriarchal upbringing and Paraguay heritage; he used his embroidered work to express his queer identity and elevate the status of textile art. 

Feliciano Centurión had his first solo exhibition in 1982 at the Estimulo del Belles Artes in Asunción, Paraguay, and represented Paraguay at the fifth Havana Biennial in 1994. His final works, a series of embroidered pillows, were made while he was hospitalized. Centurión died on the seventh of November of 1996 at the age of thirty-four in Buenos Aires. 

A retrospective of Centurión’s work was exhibited in 2018 at the 33rd São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. The Americas Society/Council of Americas (AS/COA) held the first solo exhibition of his work in the United States from February to November of 2020. Held at its Park Avenue gallery in New York City, this exhibition received the support of the WaldenGallery, Galeria Millan, and Cecilia Brunson Projects as well as the City of New York. Centurión’s work is included in the current 2024 exhibition, “The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art”, at London’s Barbican Art Gallery until the 26th of May.

Notes: The exhibition catalogue “Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo” from the Americas Society/Council of Americas’s 2020 exhibition, which contains the exhibited work and an extensive biography, can be located at: https://www.as-coa.org/sites/default/files/archive/FelicianoCenturionPocketBook.pdf 

The Visual AIDS site has a tribute page to Centurión which contains a short biography and an online collection of over fifty images of his work: https://visualaids.org/artists/feliciano-centurion

Second Insert Image: Feliciano Centurión, “Flamencos”, circa 1990, Acrylic on Blanket, 42 x 53 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Feliciano Centurión, “Surubí”, 1992, Acrylic and Varnish on Blanket, 200 x 190 cm, Private Collection

Valdemar Andersen

The Artwork of Valdemar Andersen

Born at Copenhagen in February of 1875, Valdemar Anderson was a Danish illustrator, painter, graphic and decorative artist. The son of a working-class family, he began an apprenticeship in painting under C. C. Møllmann. Andersen continued his education at the Copenhagen Technical School where he studied under naturalist illustrator Henrik Grønvold. In the autumn of 1894, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts for one semester. 

As an illustrator, Andersen was influenced early in his career by Skønvirke, an aesthetic art movement that combined elements of the German Jugendstil, French Art Nouveau and English Arts and Crafts with the Nordic National Romanticism. He began his career by drawing portraits for a stereotype printing firm that produced work for provincial newspapers. In 1902, Andersen joined the graphic department of “Klokken”, a local magazine for which he created its daily poster.

Recognized for the quality of his work, Valdemar Andersen began to receive private commissions, the first of which was from Ernst Bojesen, the co-director of Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, the oldest and largest publishing company in Denmark. Andersen illustrated numerous books and also created book covers. He created illustrations for the 1905 and 1906 editions of Danish author Carit Etlar’s novels and, between 1906 and 1908, illustrated an edition of Finnish author and historian Zacharias Topelius’s “Feltlgens Historier (Field Doctor’s Stories)”.

As a decorative artist, Andersen collaborated with Danish architect and Academy professor Anton Rosen on such projects as Copenhagen’s 1908 Metropol Building; the murals for the Danish National Exhibition of 1909 in Aahus; and the 1910 vestibule of the Palace Hotel at Copenhagen’s City Hall Square. Andersen created decorative works for many of architect Ejnar Pacness’s public buildings in Jutland, among which was the 1912 Administration Building for the Aalborg Municipality. 

The murals Valdemar Andersen created for the 1909 international exhibition in Aahus led to his mural commissions for the 1914 Malmö-Baltic Exhibition and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. He designed murals for many private homes, restaurants, and business offices including the City Hall Square headquarters for “Politiken”, the leading Danish daily broadsheet newspaper.

Andersen had the first showing of his paintings at the 1906 Spring Exhibition at Charlottenborg in which he presented his portrait of his life-long friend, Danish author and painter Johannes Vilhelm Jensen. This portrait, highlighted with gouache and pencil, was also exhibited in 1906 at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Other portraits done by Andersen include those of author and journalist Henrik Cavling, German missionary Ludvig Kraft, novelist Peter Nansen and stage director Henri Nathansen.

Valdemar Andersen presented his paintings at Charlottenborg’s spring exhibition in 1908 as well as its 1914 spring and autumn shows. In 1912, he and fellow artist Harald Moltke had a successful show in one of Copenhagen’s many exhibition halls. Andersen later received a commission from Hafnia, the first life insurance company in Denmark, for five paintings depicting accidents for which insurance might provide some relief. 

Andersen is primarily known today for developing the modern Danish poster design. Between 1906 and 1907, he shifted his poster design to a lighter graphic style. Emphasis was placed on the white surface, a limited range of clear colors and a sparse typeface of the characteristic script that became his trademark. Over the years Andersen was a leading poster artist for many companies and organizations such as Carlsberg, Asta Lampen, Trivoli Gardens, Danish Airlines, Fisker & Nielsen and the Copenhagen Zoo. He was also responsible for many of the designs on Danish stamps and banknotes of the early twentieth-century. 

Valdemar Andersen died stricken by leukemia in Copenhagen in July of 1928 at the age of fifty-three. His son, Ib Andersen, was trained as an architect. However, he established his career as a graphic designer who created aggressively-designed posters strongly influenced by Cubism and the Bauhaus School.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Valdemar Andersen”, Date Unknown, Vintage Photo, Det Kongelige Bibliotek

Second Insert Image: Valdemar Andersen, “Journalistforbundets Rundskuedag (Journalist Association Circular Ski Day”, 1911, Lithograph, 64.2 x 88.8 cm, Publisher Andreasen & Lochmann Ltd

Third Insert Image: Valdemar Andersen, Lithograph, Palle RosenKrantz’s crime novel “Judge Amtsdommer Sterner”, 1906, Publisher Gyldendalin Boghandel Nordisk

Bottom Insert Image: Valdemar Andersen, “The International Air Traffic Exhibition”, 1927, Lithograph, 84 x 62 cm, Publisher Christian Cato, Copenhagen

William Bruce Ellis Ranken

The Artwork of William Bruce Ellis Ranken

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in April of 1881, William Bruce Ellis Ranken was a British painter and Edwardian of the English aesthetic movement of the late 19th century. Originated in the 1860s German Romanticism, Aestheticism valued the appearance of music, literature and the arts over their functions. The movement, which included such artists as William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, challenged Victorian culture by asserting Art did not have any instructive or ethical purpose; rather, the basic factor of art was beauty.

The son of Mary and Robert Burt Ranken, a wealthy and successful lawyer, William Ranken spent his childhood living on vast estates in Scotland and England. He attended Eton College and later the Slade School of Art where he studied under draftsman and painter Henry Tonks, one of the first British artists influenced by the French Impressionists. Among Ranken’s fellow students was Ernest Thesiger, the grandson of the 1st Lord Chelmsford and drama student who became a lifelong friend.

At the age of twenty-three, Ranken had his first exhibition of work at London’s Carfax Gallery which well received by artists and art critics. In his career, he worked in the mediums of watercolors, oils and pastels. In 1907, Ranken moved to the Chelsea area of London where he and his friend Thesiger began to associate with the Edwardian Aesthetes. They moved in London’s artistic, literary, and theatrical circles and became frequent guests at John Singer Sargent’s studio and friends with stage actress Beatrice Tanner, better known by her stage name Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Ranken also became a close friend with photographer Baron Adolph de Meyer, famed for his portraits of Queen Mary, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish and other celebrities.  

After the outbreak of World War I, William Ranken and John Singer Sargent traveled to America. Sargent introduced him to one of America’s leading patron and collector of the arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner, known for her intellectual curiosity and unconventional behavior. Through his connection with Gardner, Ranken received commissions to paint portraits of the wealthy, including the Vanderbilts, the Asters, and the Whitneys. Upon his return to England in the 1920s, he was given commissions from the British royal family and the aristocracy for portraits as well as interior images of their homes.

After the success of his American visit and his commissioned work in England, Ranken purchased Warbrook House, a historical estate built in 1724 by architect John James and located in Eversley, Hampshire. He undertook a considerable amount of repair work on the building; he also created paintings depicting several of its rooms. These works were included in Art Deco architect Basil Ionides’ 1926 “Color and Interior Decoration”. During England’s depression years of the 1930s, Ranken found the maintenance costs too extensive and made the decision to sell the estate in 1935 to Isabella Rosalind Humphreys-Owen, the daughter of Sir Edward Elias Sassoon, 2nd Baronet of Bombay. 

In addition to portraiture, William Ranken painted landscapes and did interior design work for architects. He worked alongside Basil Ionides on the remodeling of the renowned Claridges Restaurant, the height of luxury dining in London. Rankin pursued interests in music, embroidery, antiques and gardening. Among his many friends and patrons were such notables as songwriter Cole Porter; writer Violet Keppel Trefusis,; art collector Henry Davis Sleeper; William Lygon, the 7th Earl Beauchamp; Hugh Patrick Lygon; and American actress and interior designer Elsie de Wolfe. 

In March of 1941, William Bruce Ellis Ranken died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage in London. He was buried near his former Warbrook estate at the historic St. Mary’s Church in Eversley, North Hampshire. His sister, Janette Ranken-Thesiger, donated over two-hundred of his works to public galleries and museums in the United Kingdom. Ranken’s other works are in private collections and either damaged or destroyed during the air raids of World War II. His work can be found in the public collections of the National Museums of Northern Ireland, Glasgow Museum, Portsmouth Museum and the Government Art Collection of the United Kingdom, among others. 

Notes: Ernest Thesiger, who was bisexual, married Ranken’s sister, Janette Mary Fernie Ranken in 1917. The next year, Ranken painted Thesiger’s portrait; this painting is now housed in the Manchester City Galleries. Thesiger became a well-known English film and stage actor with appearances in Noël Coward’s 1925 “On with the Dance” and George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 “Saint Joan”. Friends with director James Whale since 1919, Thesiger was cast in Whale’s 1932 “The Old Dark House” and later given the role of Dr. Septimus Pretorius in Whale’s 1935 “Bride of Frankenstein”. 

As a member of the 2nd Battalion of the 9th London Regiment, Queen Victoria’s Rifles, Thesiger was sent to the Western Front in 1914, where he was wounded in the trenches. With his hands damaged, he developed sewing kits for soldiers similarly injured to provide activity and pain relief. In addition to his career as an actor, Thesiger became Vice Patron of the Embroiderers Guild. In 1960, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In January of the following year, Ernest Thesiger died in his sleep from natural causes and was buried at Brompton Cemetery in London.

Top Insert Image: Baron Adolph De Meyer, “William Bruce Ellis Ranken”, 1903, Vintage Print, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: William Bruce Ellis Ranken, “Battersea Power Station, London”, circa 1940, Oil on Canvas, 68.6 x 56.1 cm, Forens Art Gallery, Hull, England

Third Insert Image: William Bruce Ellis Ranken, “Hibiscus Flower”, 1922, Oil on Canvas, 137.2 x 106.7 cm, Nottingham Castle, England

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer  Unknown, “William Bruce Ellis Ranken”, circa 1900-1910, Gelatin Silver Print, Kirkcudbright Galleries

Albert Wainwright

The Artwork of Albert Wainwright

Born in the historic market town of Castleford, West Yorkshire in 1898, Albert Wainwright was painter, illustrator, and designer of theatrical costume and sets. A prolific artist, his body of work includes thousands of watercolors, drawings, painted ceramics, costume and theatre designs and book illustrations, which reveal him to be an artist of powerful inventiveness and ability.

The youngest of three children, Albert Wainwright had a Methodist upbringing and an early interest in art. He attended Castleford’s Secondary School where he met classmate Henry Moore and began a friendship secured by their mutual interest in art. Until 1920, Wainwright and Moore would correspond to each other through illustrated letters, even as soldiers in the first World War. Although encouraged by his father to seek a profession as an engineer, Wainwright was given permission to train in the arts through the persuasive efforts of his secondary school’s art teacher.  

In 1914, Wainwright entered Leeds Arts University in West Yorkshire. Through his studies, he was influenced by the works of illustrator Aubrey Beardsley and Russian painter and theatrical designer Léon Bakat, as well as, the new works created by the Viennese Secessionist artists. Wainwright was also drawn to the fluid use of line, exaggerated forms, and dynamic use of pattern and color in the works of painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. 

After his service in the Royal Flying Corps, Albert Wainwright rejoined his family who now lived in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. He transformed a room in the family home for use as a studio where he continue his work as artist and designer. In 1920 at the age of twenty-two, Wainwright had his first solo exhibition at Leeds City Art Gallery which, well received, gained him the support of Leeds University’s Vice Chancellor Sir Michael Sadler and influential art critic Frank Rutter. He also gained representation by London’s Goupil Gallery which held solo exhibitions of his work in 1921 and 1922.

In 1927, Wainwright was appointed temporary art master at Castleford’s Secondary School for two years. During this period, he went on a school excursion to Germany, the first of his many journeys to Europe, both alone and with his partner. This was a time of great social and political change in Europe, particularly in Austria and Germany with the rise of fascist movement. Beginning with this trip to Germany, Wainwright began a regular practice of illustrating sketchbooks with people he contacted and landscapes he admired. After his family bought a cottage in 1930 at Robin Hood’s Bay, he would spend every summer there to paint watercolors of people on holiday, beach scenes, and depictions of the town’s red roofs. 

As a gay man, Albert Wainwright exercised discretion in his life, a necessity felt by many during that era due to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 which had made homosexuality illegal; often a letter of affection was sufficient to bring prosecution. He did have a life-long lover, George Collins, who was a schoolmaster and friend of the Wainwright family. Wainwright often refers to his sexual identity as a gay man in his work. His sketchbooks contain not only landscapes but also studies of men in uniforms at rest or play. Although generally clothed, Wainwright’s portraits of men were sensitively painted with alluring expressions. He considered these sketchbooks as personal and private documents and not intended for public view. 

Wainwright received many commissions to design costumes and sets for local theaters including the Leeds Art Theater and the Leeds Civic Playhouse. He designed for plays ranging from Greek tragedies to modern dramas by Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekov and Bernard Shaw. Wainwright designed sets and costumes for over one-hundred productions which included seven-hundred costumes for a single play in 1927, the “Miracle Play” held at Kirkstall Abbey on the north bank of the River Aire. 

Wainwright never achieved the same level of commercial success and recognition as his school friend, sculptor and lithographer Henry Moore, and had to supplement his art with teaching. In March of 1943, he applied for and was offered a teaching post for the duration of the war as an art teacher at the historic Bridlington School in Yorkshire. After teaching for only three months, Albert Wainwright was stricken with meningitis and died on a bus on his way to his Harrogate home in September of 1943. His work is in many private collections; the largest public collection of his work is housed at the Hepwotth Wakefield Gallery in West Yorkshire, England.

Notes: An extensive online collection of Albert Wainwright’s work can be found at “Albert Wainwright: The Unseen Archive” located at: https://sites.google.com/view/albertwainwrightunseenarchive/home

A short video on his life is available at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery site located at: https://hepworthwakefield.org/our-art-artists/collections/highlights/albert-wainwright/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Albert Wainwright”, circa 1912, Vintage Print on Card Stock, Hepworth Wakefield Collection, West Yorkshire, England

Second Insert Image: Albert Wainwright, “Portrait Study of George Collins”, Date Unknown, Watercolor on Paper, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Albert Wainwright, “The Dragon Slayer”, circa 1927-1938, Gouache on Paper, 39 x 54.3 cm, Wolfsonian-FIU, Miami Beach, Florida

Bottom Insert Image: Albert Wainwright, “Boy Sleeping”, Date Unknown, Watercolor on Paper, 23 x 27.5 cm, Private Collection

Charles de Sousy Ricketts

The Artwork of Charles de Sousy Ricketts

Born in Geneva in October of 1866, Charles de Sousy Ricketts was a versatile British illustrator, author and printer known for his work as a book designer, typographer, and designer of theatrical sets and costume. He was the only son of Charles Robert Ricketts, a Royal Navy veteran and amateur painter, and Héléne Cornélie de Sousy, daughter of the Marquis de Sousy. Ricketts spent his formative years mainly in France and received his education through his governesses. 

After the death of his mother in 1880, Charles Ricketts relocated with his father to London where, considered too frail for school, he became largely self-educated through reading and visiting museums. In 1882, Ricketts entered the City and Guilds of London Art School where he apprenticed to wood-engraver Charles Roberts. Later that year, his father died and he became dependent on the modest support of his paternal grandfather. On his sixteenth birthday, he met his lifelong partner Charles Haslewood Shannon, a fellow student three years his senior who was studying painting and lithography. The two men lived together in both a personal and professional partnership until Ricketts’s death.

After finishing their studies, Ricketts became a commercial and magazine illustrator; Shannon took a teaching post at London’s newly founded Croyton School of Art. In 1888, Ricketts took possession of painter James Whistler’s former house, The Vale, in Chelsea which soon became a gathering place of contemporary artists. Starting in 1889 until its final issue in 1897, Ricketts and Shannon produced “The Dial”, a journal of poetry, prose, and English Pre-Raphaelite and French Symbolist illustrations. This portfolio became a major publication of the Aesthetic Movement. 

Charles Ricketts, in collaboration with Shannon, illustrated their close friend Oscar Wilde’s 1891 ”A House of Pomegranates” and the 1894 “The Sphinx”. Ricketts and Shannon worked together on the type and illustrations for editions of “Daphnis and Chloe” in 1893 and “Hero and Leander” in 1894. After initially running a small press, they founded London’s Vale Press in 1896 which published more than seventy-five books including a thirty-nine volume edition of Shakespeare’s work. Ricketts designed illustrations as wells fonts, initials, and borders specific to Vale Press. He also executed woodcut illustrations of Art Nouveau design and androgynous figures for their publications. After a 1904 fire at their printer Ballantyne Press destroyed their engraving woodcuts, Ricketts and Shannon made the decision to abandon publishing; Ricketts destroyed all the typefaces he had designed for Vale Press.

Beginning in the early 1900s, Ricketts placed his focus on painting and sculpture. He had a deep knowledge of earlier painters and was particularly influenced by the works of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau and the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix. Among Ricketts’s many paintings are the 1904 “Betrayal of Christ”, the 1911 “The Death of Don Juan”, “Bacchus in India” painted in 1913, “Jepthah’s Daughter” painted in 1924, and the 1915 “Montezuma”, now at the Manchester Art Gallery. Over the course of his career, Ricketts produced about twenty sculptures among which are “Silence”, a memorial to his friend Oscar Wilde, and two bronze works entitled “Paolo and Francesca” and “Orpheus and Eurydice”.

From 1906 to his death, Charles Ricketts was a celebrated theatrical set and costume designer. His first commission was for a private production of s double billing of Oscar Wilde’s plays, “Salome” and “A Florentine Tragedy”, at King’s Hall in Covent Garden. In 1907, he designed costumes and stage sets for Aeschylus’s “The Persians” also performed at King’s Hall. During the early 1900s, Ricketts designed both costume and sets for many commercial theater productions including Hugo Hofmannsthal’s “Electra” in 1908, “King Lear” at the Haymarket in 1909, and two of Bernard Shaw’s plays, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets” in 1910 and “Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress” in 1918.

After World War One, Ricketts continued his theatrical design with Shaw’s “Saint Joan” at the New Theater in 1924, “Henry VIII” at the Empire Theater in 1925 and “Macbeth” at the Princess Theater in 1926. He also designed costumes and sets  for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s 1926 production of “The Mikado” at the Savoy Theater. Most of Ricketts’s designs for “The Mikado” were retained by other designers of the company for more than fifty years. Ricketts final theater designs were for the 1931 production of Ferdinand Bruckner’s “Elizabeth of England” preformed at London’s Cambridge Theater and a production of Donald Tovey’s opera “The Bride of Dionysus” staged posthumously in Edinburgh after Ricketts’s death.

As a writer, Charles Ricketts published two monographs on art as well as essays and articles  on a wide range of subjects for publications. Using the pen-name of Jean Paul Raymond, he wrote and designed two collections of short stories published in 1928 and 1933. Under the same pen-name, Ricketts wrote the 1932 “Recollections of Oscar Wilde”, an extremely personal memoir that was published after Ricketts’s death. Ricketts’s last years were were greatly effected by Charles Shannon’s serious fall and resulting permanent brain damage. The strain of the situation with the addition of overwork to finance the household contributed to the decline of Ricketts’s health and ultimately his death.

Charles de Sousy Ricketts died suddenly at age sixty-five from coronary heart disease on the 7th of October in 1931 at the Regent’s Park house. He was cremated and his ashes partly scattered in London’s Richmond Park, and the remainder buried at Arolo, Lake Maggiore in Italy. Charles Shannon outlived him by six years and died in March of 1937.

Note: The New York Public Library’s assistant curator Julie Carlsen, along with Henry W. and Albert A. Berg of the English and American Literature Collection, have written an interesting article on Ricketts and Shannon’s designs for the bindings of Oscar Wilde’s work published by Vale Press. The article can be found at: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2021/10/12/publishers-bindings-oscar-wilde-charles-shannon-charles-ricketts

Top Insert Image: George Charles Beresford, “Charles de Sousy Ricketts”, October 1903, Sepia-Toned Platinotype Print, 15.5 x 10.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Charles de Sousy Ricketts, Page from Ricketts’s “The Prado and Its Masterpieces”, 1923, Published by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Charles de Sousy Ricketts, Illustration and Text from Michael Field’s “The Race of Leaves”, 1901, Woodcut, The Ballantyne Press, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: George Charles Beresford, “Charles Haslewood Shannon and Charles de Sousy Ricketts”, October 1903, Modern Print from Original Negative, 11 x 15.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

François Louis Schmied

The illustrations of François-Louis Schmied

Born in Geneva in November of 1873, François-Louis Schmied was a French painter, wood engraver, illustrator and bookbinder of Swiss origin. He is considered a major artist of the Art Deco era, particularly for his work in the publishing field. Schmied established himself in Paris whee he later was naturalized. He is the father of engraver Théo Schmied, who directed his father’s workshop beginning in 1924. 

François-Louis Schmied began his formal training at the Guillaume Le Bé School, named after the notable engraver and designer who specialized in Hebrew typefaces. Schmied next studied under Swiss painter and draftsman Barthélemy Menn who introduced the principles of plein air painting into Swiss art. Through his studies with Menn, Schmied became acquainted with such artists as Eugène Delacroix, Henri Rousseau, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. The enlivening use of color by these artists made a lasting impression on the young Schmied who continued his studies under painter and wood engraver Alfred Martin.

In 1911, Schmied’s work was brought to the attention of one of the period’s most elite book clubs, Les Sociétés du Livre Contemporain. These French societies were comprised of the elite members of the country whose function was to sponsor the production of lavish, limited editions by outstanding authors and artists. Impressed with Schmied’s previous work, the club commissioned Schmied to collaborate as engraver and typographer with artist Paul Jouve on an illustrated version of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”. A painter, sculptor and illustrator, Jouve was most notable for his works of Africa’s animals. 

“The Jungle Book”, like its medieval predecessors, took years of preparatory work. The project came to a halt with the outbreak of World War One; Schmied enlisted in the French Foreign Legion for his service. After being wounded at the Battle of Somme and suffering the loss of an eye, he returned to Paris to complete work on “The Jungle Book”. The volume was finally published in 1919 and won accolades from the French book world. Schmied’s reputation was assured and commissions began to arrive. Always a perfectionist, he never compromised his high technical standards in his search for each book’s perfect match of illustrations and text. 

One of Schmied’s most tasking projects was the 1922 “Salonique, la Macédoine, L’Athos”. As printer and engraver, he was responsible for converting the pointillist-inspired paintings of Jean Goulden into forty-five woodcut engravings for printing. Schmied meticulously executed the illustrations with large areas composed entirely of dots and slashes. This work was followed in the same year with a commission from George Barbier, famous for his fashion illustrations. This collaboration produced two of Schmied’s best works “Les Chansons de Bilitis” and “Personnages de Comédie”, both published in 1922. The books embodied Barbier’s elegant Art Deco style with an exotic palette of sienna, teal blue, jet black and luminous gold, all printed accurately in color by Schmied.

François-Louis Schmied emerged as the leading Art Deco book designer with his 1924 “Daphné”. In order to draw the reader into the Byzantine world of the book’s hero, Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus, he used a bold typeface highlighted with strong initial letters. Schmied’s borders, vignettes, and tailpieces used an austere and geometrically abstract form to embellish the text. Rich somber colors and rigorous design in his full-page illustrations harmonized with all the other elements. This volume, together with the 1925 “Le Cantique des Cantiques”, are considered by collectors as the pinnacle of his career. 

Schmied continued to design, print and publish several major volumes until the early 1930s. The ensuing Depression era began a chain of events that led to Schmied’s financial ruin, and ultimately to his demise. Luxury items, like Schmied’s books, were among the first commodities that lost their value in the depressed market. Although he tried to buy his books back to maintain their monetary worth, Schmied was caught in an economic downward spiral. By the mid-1930s, he had lost his workshop and his prize possession, his yacht La Beau Brune.

François-Louis Schmied’s friends in the government gave him support in the form of a minor commission at a desert outpost in Morocco, over two-thousand kilometers from his Paris home. Part of his duties was to help alleviate the misery of the people under his authority. In January of 1941, as a result of his ministrations to his public during an epidemic, François-Louis Schmied died of the plague.

Top Insert Image: François Louis Schmied, “Self Portrait”, 1904, Pencil and Charcoal on Paper

Second Inset Image: François Louis Schmied, “Bathers, Valleè du Draa, Morocco”, 1938, Tempera on Board, 40 x 19.5 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: François Louis Schmied, “Le Vanneur”, 1936, Tempera on Paper on Masonite, 111 x 140.5 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: François Louis Schmied, Illustration for Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”, Woodcut Engraving with Gold Highlights, 1919, Private Collection

Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly, “Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance VI”, 1951, Cut and Pasted Color Coated Paper and Pencil on Four Sheets of Black Paper, 94.6 x 94.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Born in Newburgh, New York in May of 1929, Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, printmaker and a sculptor who was associated with Color Field painting, Minimalism, and the hard-edge painting style. Introduced to ornithology, the study of birds, at an early age by his grandmother, he developed a passion for form and color which he carried into his future works. Encouraged by his early teachers to pursue an artistic career, Kelly studied, starting in 1941, at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, which he attended until his induction into the Army in 1943.

Entering into military service, Kelly requested to be assigned to the 603rd Engineers Camouflage Battalion which took many inducted artists. During World War II, he served with others in its deception unit, known as the Ghost Army, which used inflatable tanks and other elements of subterfuge, including the art of camouflage, to mislead the enemy forces. Kelly served with the unit until the end of the war’s European phase. From 1946 to 1947, he used the G.I. Bill to study at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts. 

During his time in Boston, Ellsworth Kelly exhibited in his first group show at the Boris Mirski Gallery and taught art classes at the Norfolk House Center in Roxbury. In 1948, he moved to Paris to study at its School of Fine Arts. Kelly immersed himself in Paris’s artistic resources and met such American artists as composer John Cage and dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, French surrealist artist Jean Arp and Romanian abstract sculptor Constantin Brâncuși , whose simplification of natural forms had a lasting influence on him.

In 1954 Kelly returned to the United States and settled in New York City. In May of 1956, and again in the fall of 1957, he had exhibitions at Betty Parson’s gallery. Three of Kelly’s works, “Atlantic”, “Bar” and “Painting in Three Panels”,  were selected for the Whitney Museum of American Arts’s exhibition entitled “Young America 1957”; all three works were considered radically different from the other entries in the show.

Ellsworth Kelly left New York City in 1970 and settled in Spencertown, a hamlet about one hundred-thirty miles north of the city. His husband, the photographer Jack Shear, joined him in 1984. Kelly worked in a twenty-thousand square foot extended studio in Spencertown until 2005. At that time, the couple moved to a small 1815 colonial house which they shared until Kelly’s death in December of 2015, at the age of ninety-two.

Ellsworth Kelly made his first abstract paintings in 1949. His 1950 “Seine”, consisting of black and white rectangles arranged by chance, was inspired by the dispersal of light on the surface of water. This was followed by a series of eight collages in 1951 entitled “Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance I to VIII”, produced  by using number slips of different colors arranged on a large square grid. Kelly’s work gradually increased in size and became more abstract with a focus on shape and masses of color on the canvas plane.

Starting in the 1960s, Kelly started painting on angular and, later,  shaped canvases; the first shaped work was his 1966 “Yellow Piece”. His 1968 “Green White” marks the first appearance of the triangle in his work, a shape which reoccurs throughout his career.  In 1971, Kelly produced a series of fourteen paintings entitled “Chatham Series”, each painting consisting of two panels painted in balancing monochrome colors and joined together. In 1979, he used curves in two-color paintings made of separate panels. In his later works Kelly distilled his palette and worked on rectangular panels of many coats of white, on top of which is placed a shaped black canvas.

An artist of many mediums and styles, Ellsworth Kelly produced many drawings of plants from the late 1940s onward. In the 1960s, he took up printmaking and, from 1964 to 1966, produced his “Suite of Twenty-Seven Lithographs”, during his stay in Paris. His 1988 “Purple/Red/Gray/Orange” at eighteen feet in length may be the largest single-sheet lithograph ever made. From 1959 onwards, Kelly made freestanding folded sculptures; in 1973 for his large-scale outdoor sculptures, he switched mediums to steel, aluminum, or bronze. Kelly produced a total of one hundred and forty sculptures in his lifetime.

Top Insert Image: Onni Saari, “Ellsworth Kelly in his Broad Steet Studio, New York”, 1956, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Ellsworth Kelly, “Colors for a Large Wall”, 1951, Oil on Sixty Four Canvas Panels, 240 x 240 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Third Insert Image: Ellsworth Kelly, “Spectrum IV”, Oil on Thirteen Canvas Panels, 297.2 x 297.2 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Bottom Insert Image: Ellsworth Kelly, “Meschers”, 1951, Oil on Camvas, 149.9 x 149.9 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Pier Luigi Nervi

Architectural Designs by Pier Luigi Nervi

Born in the Alpine town of Sondria in June of 1891, Pier Luigi Nervi was an Italian engineer and architect known for his innovative use of concrete and thin-shelled structures. In 1913, he earned his degree in engineering from Bologna’s Civil Engineering School, and upon graduation, joined the Society for Concrete Construction. Nervi considered building construction to be both an art and a science, and as such, dedicated his career to the innovative use of reinforced concrete.

During World War I, Nervi served from 1915 to 1918 as a lieutenant in the Italian Army’s Corps of Engineering. After the war, he worked, beginning in 1923, as a civil engineer in both Bologna and Florence. Nervi’s first significant work was the Augusteo Cinema Theater on the Vomero hill in Naples, which  was completed in 1927. This work was followed by Florence’s Stadio Artemio Franchi, originally named Studio Giovanni Berta. Built between 1930 and 1932, its boldly cantilevered roof and helical staircases won critical acclaim and popular attention throughout Italy. 

In 1932, Pier Luigi Nervi formed a contracting firm, called Società Ingg. Nervi e Bartoli, with his cousin, engineer Giovanni Bartoli, with whom he would work for the remainder of his career. In 1935, Nervi won a competition held by the Italian Air Force for the construction of a series of hangers to be built throughout Italy. His conception of the hangers as concrete vaults with huge spans of reinforced concrete, constructed at low cost, were built between 1935 and 1941. After finishing the first hanger in Orvieto, he improved the design of the hangers in Obertello and Torre del Lago by using precast ribs, a lighter roof, and a modular construction method.

Nervi’s conceptual designs continued to grow through his search for new solutions to structural problems. Through his research, he developed a material of his own invention, a dense concrete called ferrocemento, which was heavily reinforced with evenly distributed steel mesh that gave both lightness and strength. This material played a vital role in Nervi’s design for the Palace of Labor, a collaborative project with his son Antonio Nervi for an exhibition space at the 1951 Turin Exhibition. A prefabricated structure in the form of a corrugated cylindrical arch, the Palace of Labor contained eighty-five thousand feet of exhibition space under a roof divided in sixteen structurally separated squares edged by continuous skylights. Sixty-five foot concrete columns were fixed in the center of each square and held these squares through small arched ribs. The use of arched ribs became a characteristic of Nervi’s oeuvre.

Pier Luigi Nervi’s solutions to construction problems was always direct; he transmitted the stresses developed within his structures to the ground by the shortest path. He used insights from his study of geometry to develop a new form of shell construction, one which generated three-dimensional lattices from concrete ribs. Nervi’s innovative use of pre-made concrete modules was cost-effective and resulted in both functional and ornamentally-geometric structures. Although his primary concern was never aesthetic, his works achieved a forceful expression to a great degree. Nervi introduced a creative three-dimensional quality into architectural design by his use of warping surfaces, folded plates, and intersecting planes. He emphasized functional needs, the technology of construction, knowledge of materials and statistics, and efficiency in building as the mainstays of an architect’s career.

Nervi was awarded Gold Medals by the United Kingdom’s Institution of Structural Engineers, the American Institute of Architects, and the Royal Institute of British Architects. in 1961 Harvard University appointed Nervi  to the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry. Towards the end of his career, Nervi, assisted by his two sons, the engineer Antonio and the architect Mario, confined his activities to design work in association with other architects. He died in January of 1979, at the age of eighty-seven, in Rome, Italy.

Nervi’s works include the UNESCO headquarters in Paris; Milan’s Pirelli Tower which was the first skyscraper in Italy; the Palazzetto dello Sport in Rome; the Sacro Cuore Bell Tower in Florence; the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco,;the cylindrical Australian Square tower, at the time the tallest concrete structure in the world; Vatican City’s Paul VI Audience Hall; and the Australian Embassy in Paris. 

Piero Fornasetti

The Artwork of Piero Fornasetti

Born in Milan, Italy in November of 1913, Piero Fornasetti was an eclectic artist who was an important figure in the Italian design scene. A prolific creator of designs, he was involved in many aesthetic disciplines including painting, drawing, graphic design, and product design. In the course of his career, Fornasetti created over ten thousand works and was responsible for one of the largest outputs of diverse objects and furniture of the twentieth-century. 

The first child of a wealthy family, Fornasetti was already at the age of ten drawing and displaying an innate inclination towards art. In 1932, he enrolled at the Academia di Brera, Milan’s public academy of fine arts; however, two years later he was expelled for insubordination. Although he applied to Milan’s Superior School of Arts Applied to Industry, Fornasetti was unable to adhere to the schools dogma due to his rebellious nature. 

Beginning in the early 1930s, Piero Fornasetti began a individual and comprehensive study of  engraving and printing techniques. With this knowledge and his developed technical skill, he began to print artist books and lithographs for many of the great artists of the time, including composer and playwright Alberto Savinio, painter Fabrizio Clerici, and painter and writer Giorgio de Chirico. The Fornasetti Art Printshop became the source of quality printing for many artists of his generation. Fornasetti, through his constant experimentation, later developed a printing method for graphic effects on silk; this innovation brought him  to the attention of designer and publisher Gio Ponti, with whom Fornasetti would develop a close creative partnership. 

From the early 1940s and onward, Fornasetti produced a vast series of limited edition graphic works, which included calendars, holiday gifts, and images for advertising, theater, posters, and publications. He produced sketches and drawings for the Esino Lario School of Tapestry, whose fine silk tapestries were produced by local village girls. In 1940 Fornasetti began to publish his own work in the architectural design magazine Domus, and for two years designed a series of almanacs for Gio Ponti. Taking refuge in Switzerland in 1943 during the war, he continued his graphic work, expanding into watercolors, oil portraits, drawings in ink, and the creation of theatrical sets for Albert Camus’s 1938 “Caligula”.

Upon his return to Milan, Piero Fornasetti and Gio Ponti began a close creative partnership which centered on architectural concepts in design and decoration. With the beginning of the 1950s, they put their theories into practice developing new simple and functional designs for the interiors of homes, apartments, cinemas and even ship cabins. Their initial project, the “Architettura” trumeau, a furniture design concept seen in an image above, was exhibited at the 1951 Triennale IX in Milan. This piece of furniture became an icon of Italian design in the interwar years of economic growth. 

Fornasetti is best known for his designs using fanciful motifs such as the moon, sun, playing cards, animals, and other surrealist imagery; most of which were executed in black and white. In 1952, he began work on his iconic and best known series, “Tema a Variazioni (Theme and Variations)”, a facial portrait of opera singer Lina Cavalieri, who was renowned at the time as a true archetype of a classical beauty. This image continues to appear today on a series of everyday objects from porcelain and fabrics to furniture and wall coverings. This portrait series entered into the world of theater as set designs in  Fornasetti’s production of Mozart’s two-act opera, “Don Giovanni”. These designs were used in the December 2016 performances at Milan’s Teatro dell’ Arte and in the  January 2017 performances at Florence’s Teatro della Pergola.

In 1970, Piero Fornasetti, along with a group of friends, operated the Galleria dei Bibliofili, where he exhibited his own work and the work of other contemporary artists. His paintings at this time contained both layered abstractions, with interacting colors done in various techniques, and figurative works done in a new pictorial style, where bodies and faces were composed of fruits and bottles. After the death of Gio Ponti in 1979 and the opening of London’s “Themes and Variations” design gallery in 1980, Fornasetti’s work and his idealogical concepts of form/function gained new interest both at home and abroad. 

Piero Fornasetti died in October of 1988 during a minor operation in hospital. In 2013, Silvana Annicchiarico, the director of the Triennale Design Museum, dedicated a first retrospective of Fornasetti’s work at the museum; this exhibition later went on tour to Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza. A 1987 collaboration between Fornasetti and fashion writer and publisher Patrick Mauriés, which became a monograph entitled “Fornasetti: Designer of Dreams”, was published posthumously in 2015 with an introduction by Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass. Piero Fornasetti’s work can be seen in the collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. 

Note” An example of the range of Piero Fornasetti’s oeuvre can be found at the online Fornasetti website located at: https://www.fornasetti.com/bd/en/

Frank Steeley

 

Frank Steeley, “Lettering for Schools and Colleges”, 1902, G.W. Bacon and Company, Limited, London

Born in Birmingham in 1863, Frank Steeley was a draftsman and graphic designer. The son of a goldsmith who worked in the jewelry trade, he illustrated a set of thirty-six first grade drawing cards for the publisher G. W. Bacon and Company, Ltd, which was published circa 1893 as Bacon’s “Excelsior” Drawing Cards.

Steeley, in collaboration with Bernard H. Trotman, produced the 1901 design book “The New Art Geometry: or, Geometrical Drawing Applied to Design”, which was also published by Bacon and Company. The exercises in this book, which used common tools such as t-squares and protractors, formed a graduated syllabus for upper level elementary classes and for classes in schools of art.

In 1902, Frank Steeley produced the book “Lettering for Schools and Colleges”, a collection containing his designs for forty-two complete alphabets, with sets of numerals, initials, and monograms. Between 1903 and 1904, he published his two-volume series “Nature Drawing and Design”. These books, examples of early Art Nouveau design work, described the process of using the natural forms of flowers and leaves to create patterns and simple line drawings. Both the book and the two-volume series were published by G.W. Bacon and Company.

Frank Steeley passed away in 1951 at the age of eighty-eight. Due to the historical and artistic significance of the work, Steeley’s books have been reprinted frequently and are still used as a basis for design study.

Susi Leeton

Susi Leeton, The Birch Tree House

Susi Leeton graduated with honors in a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from Melbourne University. After gaining international experience in Rome and Singapore, she returned to Melbourne and began working on a range of residential, retail and commercial projects. In 1997, Leeton established her office, Susi Leeton Architects and Interiors, where she has creatively explored both urban and rural settings. 

Susi Leeton Architects and Interiors is a small practice, located in the South Yarra area of Melbourne, Australia, which focuses on high-end residential projects. The practice encompasses all the disciplines of architecture and interior design: conceptual design, regulatory, town planning, engineering, documentation, and furnishing. Working with clients on a holistic level, the practice ensures design continuity within strict budget parameters throughout the project. 

The Birch Tree House is a sculptural, four bedroom, family home approached along a pathway aligned with a row of birch trees. The entry is sheltered within an arch containing an oversized door. The focus of the house is towards the northern wall of large steel sliding doors which open onto the yard with its large oval pool. The volumes of space are soft, sculptural forms that overlap and intersect creating workable family zones both inside and out. 

Natural light and soft materials, whose finishes were deliberately refined and tonal, were selected to create a chiaroscuro of light and shade. Texture was a main consideration in the design. Natural limestone, oak timber flooring, polished plaster walls, and linen curtains were the understated palette. The walls of polished concrete create a shimmering effect throughout every space. 

Birch Tree House was on the 2020 shortlist for the Australian Interior Design Awards. Construction was done by Visioneer Builders, an Australian award-winning construction group located in Richmond, Victoria Province, which is  focused on unique, highly-specified single residences, multi=residential developments and commercial structures. 

The photography was done by Felix Mooneeram, a freelance photographer from the United Kingdom with a focus on design, architecture and lifestyles, and Nicole England, a Melbourne-based architecture and interiors photographer who has worked with many of the industry’s top architects and designers worldwide. 

Robert Winthrop Chanler

Robert Winthrop Charler, “Leopard and Deer”, 1912, Gouache or Tempera on Canvas on Wood, Single Panel Screen, 194.3 x 133.4 cm, Rokeby Collection

Born in February of 1872 into the Astor family, one of America’s oldest and wealthiest, Robert Winthrop Chanler was a largely self-taught decorative artist, designer, and muralist. One of eleven children in the family, he and his siblings became orphans after the death of their mother, Margaret Astor War, in 1875 and their father, John Winthrop Chanler, in 1877, both of whom succumbed to pneumonia. They were raised at their parents’ Rokeby Estate in Barrytown, New York, and amply provided for by their father’s will with twenty-thousand dollars a year for each child, equivalent to approximately four hundred seventy thousand dollars today.

Coming of age, Chanler traveled to Europe, where he stayed in Paris in the 1890s and associated with the artists of the city. His formal training in the arts was done at Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts, where he produced his best known work, the screen “Giraffes”, which was exhibited later at the 1905 Salon d’Autumne and  purchased by the French government. Returning to the United States in the early 1900s, he purchased a townhouse in New York City on East 19th Street. This townhouse, decorated with his own works, became a social center for the art community of the city. Whole living in the city, Chanler was a member of the New York State Assembly  in 1904 and the sheriff of Dutchess County from 1907 to 1910. 

Robert Chanler’s work involved the use of sculpted gesso, gilded finishes, and transparent glazes  to produce highly ornamental and decorative designs. His work included paintings, fresco murals, stained glass windows, and architectural interiors whose compositions featured fantastical avian, jungle, and aquatic creatures, many overlaid with iridescent metallic finishes. However, Chanler’s specialty was exotic and brilliantly colored, multi-paneled,  lacquered screens.

Chanler painted what interested and entertained him; his work attracted the wealthy Gilded Age patrons, which included Gertrude Vanderbilt and Mai Rogers Coe, and earned him both critical and popular acclaim at many exhibitions. He exhibited his works at the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris; his refined work, with its glazes and lacquered finishes, balanced the salon’s exhibition which was dominated by the  bold colors and aggressive brushwork of the Fauvist painters.  Chanler exhibited his painted screens, with great success, at the legendary “International Exhibition of Modern Art” in New York City, known as the 1913 Armory Show. 

His elaborately painted screens were placed in Gallery A near the entrance of the show, where they immediately captured the attention of the arriving public and critics. Chanler exhibited twenty-five screens during the three weeks of the Manhattan show and at least nine at the show when it relocated to Chicago. Two of these exhibited screens were his five-panel “Hopi Indian Snake Dance”, one of two works that focused on Native American subjects,  and  the single-panel, oil on wood  “Porcupines”, currently in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. 

Robert Winthrop Chanler was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters and a member of the New York Architectural League. Known for both his artistic prominence, bohemian lifestyle, and eccentricity, he was a close friend of novelist and poet Hervey White, who was one of the original founders of the Byrdcliffe Art Colony in Woodstock, New York.  Founded in 1902, it is the oldest operating arts and crafts colony in America.  Chanler became a member of the colony in the early 1920s and, toward the end of his life, owned a house in Woodstock, where he participated in local exhibitions. Robert Winthrop Chanler died, after having lain in a coma for twelve hours, at the Byrdcliffe Colony on October 24th in 1930.

Top Insert Image: Robert Winthrop Chanler, “Before the Wind”, 1919, Painted Screen, Private Collection

Middle Insert Image: Whitney Cox, “Robert Winthrop Chanler”,  circa 1900, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Robert Winthrop Chanler and Hunt Diederich, “Mille Fleurs”, 1919, Painted Screen, Private Collection

Étienne-Louis Boullée

Architectural Design by Étienne-Louis Boullée

Born in Paris in February of 1728, Étienne-Louis Boullée was a architect, theorist, and teacher. Though regarded as one of the most visionary and influential architects in French neoclassicism, he saw none of his most extraordinary designs come to life. 

Throughout the late 1700s, Boullée taught, theorized, and practiced architecture in a characteristic style consisting of geometric forms on an enormous scale, an excision of unnecessary ornamentation, and the use of repetitive columns and other similar elements of regularity and symmetry. Boullée’s focus on polarity, offsetting opposite design elements, and his use of light and shadow were highly innovative for the period.

Boullée studied under architects Germain Boffrand of the Académie Royale d’Architecture, and Jacques-François Blondel of the Ecole des Arts, where he studied until 1746. He was immediately appointed a professor of architecture at the newly established Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, under its director, civil engineer Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, This professorship gave Boullée access to public commissions and an opportunity to engage his architectural vision within France’s social and economic progress.

Étienne-Louis Boullée was elected to the Académie Royale d’Architecture in 1762, and was appointed chief architect to Frederick II of Prussia. From 1762 to 1778, he designed a number of private houses, most of which no longer exist, and several grand Parisian hotels, which included the Hôtel de Brunoy, demolished in 1939, and the still-existing Hôtel Alexandre, on the Rue de la Ville-l’Évèque. 

Boullèe’s reputation and vision as an architect rests mainly on his teachings and his drawn designs which span the years from France’s Revolution in 1784 to Napoleon’s rise to power and Egyptian expedition in 1790. Boullée’s project drawings, as a collection, represented  the necessary institutions for an ideal city or state. They displayed no direct political affiliations with any of the reigning doctrines or parties during this span of time; rather they adopted a belief in scientific progress symbolized in monumental forms, a dedication to celebrate the grandeur of a Nation, and, more often than not, a meditation on the sublime sobriety of death.

During this period, Boullée produced a continuous series of elaborate architectural designs beginning with a metropolitan cathedral and a colosseum for Paris, both designed in 1782. He designed a monumental-sized museum in 1783, which was followed by a cenotaph, or memorial tomb, for Isaac Newton in 1784. The design for a new reading room at the Royal Library was finished in 1785; and in 1787, Boullée finished plans for a new bridge over the Seine River.

In the late 1780s after the Revolution, severe illness forced Boullée to retire to his country house outside of Paris, where he finished the final architectural designs of his career. These included design plans for: a monument in celebration of the “Féte Dieu”, one of the most popular of the Revolutionary festivals; a monument to ‘Public Recognition’; and plans, finished in 1792, for both a national and a municipal palace. In silent protest against the terror spread by  the Revolution, Boullée also designed a reconstruction of the Tower of Babel which took the from of a pure cone on a cubic base, with a trail of figures winding in a spiral, hand to hand to the top; this sturcture would by seen by the nation as a symbol of hope for a unified people with a common language.

Étienne-Louis Boullée died in Paris on February 4th of 1799, at the age of seventy. During his life, he taught some of the most prominent architects of his day including Jean Chalgrin the designer of Paris’s Arc de Tromphe, and Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, who anticipated the use of simple modular elements in construction,. Boullée’s book “Architecture, Essai sur l’Art”, a collection of papers, notes and letters arguing for an emotionally committed Neoclassicism, was posthumously published in 1953.

‘Yes, I believe that our buildings, above all our public buildings, should be in some sense poems. The images they offer our senses should arouse in us sentiments corresponding to the purpose for which these buildings are intended.” — Étienne-Louis  Boullèe