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BEN MESSICK CIRCUS CLOWN PORTRAIT O/C(1891-1981)1940s browse these categories for related items... All Items: Fine Art:Paintings:Oil:N. America:American: Pre 1950: item # 962116 Please refer to our stock # MessickClown when inquiring.
Shelton Gallery and Fine Silver 5133 Harding Road B-10, PMB #392 Nashville TN 37205 (615) 477-6221 Guest Book $2500 |
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| Benjamin Newton Messick (American, 1891-1981) painted this terrific Modernist clown portrait in the 1940s. Oil on canvas, it measures 26 x 35 inches, sight size, and 21 x 29 inches framed. Messick grew up on a farm in Missouri, served in World War I and moved to Los Angeles to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in 1925 on scholarship. He won a cash prize that year at the Los Angeles County Fair for a group of pen and ink drawings done in the parks and streets of the city. He left Chouinard in 1930 and set up a studio on West Eighth Street. When asked what he was trying to accomplish in art, he replied, "If you should ask what is the message of my drawings, I should say that they may explain themselves or may be just a technical exercise." By the mid 1940s, Messick became well established as a teacher, painter, printmaker, writer and critic. He had over 400 shows and exhibitions, including the Metropolitan Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Springfield Museum of Art in Missouri. In 1939 he produced a number of lithographs that appeared as original drawings to the naked eye. Messick had a childhood fascination with the circus and began painting it in 1935. His circus work, especially his clown studies and lithographs became his trademark work in the 1940s and 1950s. The endless change caught in each clown's face and the underlying character shine through the layers of paint. As early as 1941, Messick's paintings showed elements of Modernism in that the brushwork was less labored and the style more expressionistic. Messick's work recorded fragments of life as he saw it being lived in Southern California----robust and earthy subjects amidst the streets, parks, cafes, polo fields and beaches. In the 1940s Messick was also a sketch artist for Disney Studios and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and taught at Chouinard from 1943-1951. From 1948 to 1953, he also taught classes at the San Diego School of Arts & Crafts. His vernacular work led him to work on a number of WPA murals during the Depression years in the Los Angeles area and did three murals for the United States Treasury Dept. in Washington, DC. | |||||||||||
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