Circa 1930s Original Ink Drawing by American-Polish Artist Philip Reisman

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Circa 1930s Original Ink Drawing by American-Polish Artist Philip Reisman (1904-1992)
Title: "Harry Shoulberg Painting"
Aprox. dimensions:
Frame: 22"H x … Read more Circa 1930s Original Ink Drawing by American-Polish Artist Philip Reisman (1904-1992)
Title: "Harry Shoulberg Painting"
Aprox. dimensions:
Frame: 22"H x 18"W
Visible area: 16"H x 13"W
Good vintage condition! The drawing has been professionally repaired (see pic #4) and custom framed with acid free materials! The last two pictures (# 7, 8) display the drawing before it was framed.
Philip Reisman
1904 - 1992

Born the sixth of seven children in Warsaw, Poland, in 1904, Philip Reisman was the son of Max Reisman and Helen Zeidler Reisman. He was four years old when the family moved to New York.

The Reismans settled in a tenement on New York's Lower East Side. Reisman recalls seeing an older brother practicing “perspective" for an art correspondence course. At age ten Philip had decided on art as a career. His father was extremely upset by Philip's decision and urged him to consider a more practical trade. "Why don't you become a machinist and paint part-time?"

Starting with an art class in Brooklyn at the Manual Training High School, Reisman became bored quickly. As a teenager he ventured into the Art Students League and was well satisfied by the unstructured format. He studied art by day and did various jobs by night to support himself. He worked as a soda jerk and later as a waiter at Gertner's Restaurant. Soda Fountain (No. 41) and Restaurant(No. 39) depict, from memory, those places. Paying twenty-five cents per hour and all he could eat, these jobs served their purpose, but not without hard work. "I worked hard. It was hard, physical work. I was always walking, walking, walking. I was a fast soda jerker. And when I got hungry, I'd mix myself a shake. I'd put in syrup and a huge scoop of ice cream, a big handful of chopped nuts, and two raw eggs. That's how I existed." At the Art Students League Reisman learned composition and illustration from the respected illustrator Wallace Morgan and anatomy from George Bridgman. He was also influenced by George Luks, another League teacher. Later, Reisman studied graphics privately with Harry Wickey.

Reisman began painting in 1929. He was intrigued by composition with figures in motion. His subjects are never static—they are always in motion. In 1936 he was among a group of ten artists to be commissioned by the Work Projects Administration (WPA) to paint a series of murals for the new psychiatric building at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. The mural, painted in egg tempera, depicted various American industrial scenes and showed a productive, hopeful portrayal of life. Reisman's other paintings of the period depict the homeless and the downtrodden. "I do not see any romance or poetic sentiment in this very harsh economic system," he said. "I have tried to paint things as they are, and I am dissatisfied with things as they are." Reisman adhered to this strong social context throughout his painting career, unlike many of his contemporaries who moved into abstraction or landscapes when the market for lighter subjects dominated the art scene.

Reisman was drawn to the ordinary man on the street, the fishermen of Gloucester, the seedy bars, the hungry, the prostitutes. Later he chronicled the '60s, '70s, and '80s drug culture, the hippies and the punks at a time when pop art was the rage. Geometric patterns didn't interest Reisman: people ignited him. His paintings are chronicled in a 1986 book entitled Philip Reisman—People Are His Passion by Martin H. Bush. Reisman's work—graphics and paintings—has enjoyed a long, consistent, and varied exhibition history and is represented in many major collections. The recent revival of interest in American art of the 1930s has heightened the interest in Reisman. Many current economic conditions parallel those of the '30s, making his works more poignant than ever.

Credit: Georgetown University Library See less