Peter Busa, Abstract Expressionist Oil Painting Peter Busa

Details

Description

Peter Busa, American (1914 - 1985) Oil on Panel Abstract Composition Hand signed Lower Right. Dimensions: Measures 23-1/4" x 19-1/4". … Read more Peter Busa, American (1914 - 1985) Oil on Panel Abstract Composition Hand signed Lower Right. Dimensions: Measures 23-1/4" x 19-1/4". Frame measures 30-3/4" x 26-1/2" Peter Busa was an American painter, known as one of the innovators of Indian space painting, a style developed from surrealist ideas combined with Native American tribal motifs and forms. Born June 23, 1914 in Pittsburgh, Busa began his formal art and architecture studies at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He moved to New York in 1933, where he studied at the Art Students League and befriended an extensive network of artists including Jackson Pollock, Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, and Roberto Matta. Busa’s growing friendships with surrealist and other experimental painters inspired his own artistic development. After participating in Federal Arts Projects under the Works Progress Administratio, the WPA, in the late 1930s, Busa began to pursue various surrealist and looser abstract expressionist styles. His earlier works primarily consisted of automatic drawings, and over the course of his career transitioned to include geometric abstractions, representational subjects, and assorted, flatforms. The Indian space painting practice gained attention and popularity following the surrealist movement and is considered the precursor to the development of abstract expressionism.The Indian Space Painters were a group of mid-century American modernist artists who were influenced by Native American art, European surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. They were primarily active in the post WWII years during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many of their works were inspired by the motifs of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast combined with non-objective forms. Their formal language was primarily organic rather than geometric. Colors were usually laid down in flat patterns in a bright palette that emphasized figure-ground relationships. Other indigenous influences include the art of the Puebloan peoples of American Southwest, as well as Peruvian textiles. Busa and his, Indian space painting colleagues only exhibited their works together once in 1946, at a gallery in New York. Busa’s work, however, was featured in numerous exhibitions throughout the country. In his Smithsonian interview he recalls Arshile Gorky, Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes and Gerome Kamrowski, and discusses his work being purchased by art patron Walter Chrysler in the late 1950's. He was friends with Joe Novack and Esteban Vicente, whom he met and befriended during the eighties while living and painting in East Hampton. His work was exhibited in galleries in New York, Minneapolis, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Busa also taught throughout his career at various universities including Buffalo State, the University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, and New York University. He also taught at the University at Buffalo from 1954-1956. In 1961 he began teaching at the University of Minnesota, where he remained until 1982. Peter Busa died in 1985. See less