'Pointillist Abstract' by Manfred Schwartz, Paris, Étretat, New York, Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

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Estate stamp, verso, for Manfred Schwartz (American, 1909-1970) and painted circa 1960.
Paper dimensions: 15 x 19.75 inches.

Born in … Read more Estate stamp, verso, for Manfred Schwartz (American, 1909-1970) and painted circa 1960.
Paper dimensions: 15 x 19.75 inches.

Born in Lodz, Poland, Manfred Schwartz immigrated to America in 1920 and first studied at the Art Student's League of New York, the Cape Cod School of Art and the National Academy of Design. In 1929, he moved to Paris where he continued his studies at the Sorbonne and the Académie de La Grande Chaumière. While in Paris, Schwartz became active in the School of Paris and exhibited with success including with Lilienfeld and Durand-Ruel Galleries (1947, 1949, 1950). He also had early success in the United States, exhibiting widely with the Society of Independent Artists (1931), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1940-1942, 1951, 1968 medal), Art Institute of Chicago (1942, 1944), Whitney Museum of American Art (1942-1963) and New York's Museum of Modern Art. Schwartz was a charter member of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, a member of the Société des Artistes Indépendants Américains et de la Société des Artistes Indépendants de Paris and was the recipient of the Silvermine Guild Award (1965), the Marine Award (1967) and a Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1968).

Prominent in the rapidly changing New York art scene of the middle decades of the 20th century, Schwartz's career was firmly intertwined with the major developments and figures of American modernism. His earliest teachers, John Sloan and Charles Hawthorne, were leaders of the Ashcan School. Early in his career, Schwartz exhibited with Maurice Vlaminck, Bernard Buffet, Edward Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth. Among his inner circle of artists were Marcel Duchamp and Roberto Matta. In the 1930s, Schwartz also owned and directed his own New York gallery. Manfred Schwartz's work has been the subject of two retrospective one-man exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

In 1950, at the suggestion of Henri Matisse, Schwartz visited Étretat on the Normandy coast which inspired the development of his, later, pointillist style Unlike previous visitors including Courbet, Monet and Matisse, Schwartz looked down instead of up at the imposing cliffs and discovered a universe of shifting color and light in the beach. A second visit to Étretat, in 1960, culminated in his exclusive adoption of Pointillism, the style so elegantly on display in the present work. Manfred Schwartz's work is held in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art among others.

"Only a confident colorist could have achieved such a rich painterly surface . . . . Without repudiating the impressionist heritage, Schwartz conferred on both his method and his subject a vision wholly his own--and wholly contemporary." Hilton Kramer, New York Times, 1971.

This work is accompanied by a 1st Edition copy of 'Étretat: An Artist's Theme and Development' by Manfred Schwartz, published by Shorewood Publishing (1965).

Reference:
E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, Jacques Busse, 1999 Nouvelle Édition, Gründ 1911, Vol. 12, p. 574; Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 3, p. 2949; Vollmer Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler des 20. Jarhhunderts, Hans Vollmer, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1992, Vol. 4, p. 238; Mallett’s Index of Artists, Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, Peter Smith: New York 1948 Edition, R.R. Bowker Company 1935, p 396; New York Times, 'Manfred Schwartz, 60, Is Dead; Noted Painter and Lithographer', Nov. 8, 1970; Etretat: an Artist's Theme and Development, Manfred Schwartz, Shorewood 1965; et al. See less