Peter Krasnow, Art Deco Expressionist Bronze Judaica Rabbi Sculpture Los Angeles Modernist, c.1930s

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Bronze Jewish Rabbi. Original Patina. Art-deco wood carved base. It is signed with initials P.K. and marked "Calif Art Bronze … Read more Bronze Jewish Rabbi. Original Patina. Art-deco wood carved base. It is signed with initials P.K. and marked "Calif Art Bronze Fdry LA" (California Art Bronze Foundry Los Angeles). it is not dated. PETER KRASNOW (1886-1979), Russian-Ukrainian, American artist painter and sculptor, born Feivish Reisberg, was a California modernist and colorist artist known for his abstract wood sculptures and architectonic hard-edge paintings and drawings which were often based on Hebrew calligraphy and other subjects related to his Jewish heritage. Krasnow lived in Los Angeles for most of his life. Born in Novohrad-Volynskyi, Zawill, Ukraine, Krasnow immigrated to the United States in 1907, apprenticing with his father who was an interior decorator. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduating in 1916. While in New York exhibiting at the Whitney Club, he met photographer Edward Weston and began a lifelong friendship. Krasnow and his wife Rose drove cross-country in 1922 to settle in Los Angeles, where he quickly became part of a small but active art community. His notable peers included Weston, fellow artists Henrietta Shore, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Lorser Feitelson, and Helen Lundeberg, and architects Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra. Other avant garde artists in Krasnow’s circle included Nick Brigante and Boris Deutsch. Krasnow’s early works, largely realist portraits and symbolic carved sculptures, are accomplished examples of social realism and Art Deco. In 1934, after a three-year stay in France, he spent the next decade carving abstract wood sculptures. By the mid-1940s he had returned to his easel, creating architectonic hard-edge paintings and drawings. His mature works dating from the 1950s through the 1970s were often abstract paintings based on Hebrew calligraphy and other subjects related to his Jewish heritage. His “Demountables” of the 1930s and 40s—hand-carved wood sculptures assembled from interlocking component parts—are organic abstractions drawing on traditions of folk and tribal art. His abstract paintings, whose bright, synthetic colors he chose to contrast with the dark political realities of the 1940s, are schematic tableaux that employ calligraphic symbols referencing spiritual ideas and organic processes. In both sculpture and painting, Krasnow developed styles that have surprising contemporary currency. Select Notable Exhibits: 1974 Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California: Nine Senior Southern California Painters - Peter Krasnow, Nicholas Brigante, Lorser Feitelson, John McLaughlin, Florence Arnold, Helen Lundeberg, Emerson Woelffer, Han Burkhardt. Peter Krasnow: Maverick Modernist Laguna Art Museum show of painting and sculpture curated by Michael Duncan, independent curator and corresponding editor of Art in America. Duncan has curated and co-curated over thirty exhibitions, most recently An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, 2013 (awarded Best Thematic Exhibition Nationally by the International Association of Art Critics, United States); and LA RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles, 1945–1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy, Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2012. His work was included in the inaugural exhibit at MOCA. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1977. Peter Krasnow received a $7,500 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1977 toward the end of his career. Exhibitions 1922, Whitney Studio Club, New York 1922, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 1923, MacDowell Club, Los Angeles (solo) 1926, The Print Rooms, Los Angeles 1927, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 1927, Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco 1928, Oakland Municipal Art Gallery, Oakland (solo) 1928, Seattle Society of Fine Arts, Seattle (solo) 1928, Dalzell Hatfield Gallery, Los Angeles (solo) 1928, Zeitlin Bookstore, Los Angeles (solo) 1929, Scripps College, Claremont (solo) 1930, Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles (solo) 1931, California Palace of Legion of Honor, San Francisco (solo) 1934, Galerie Pierre, Paris (solo) 1935, UCLA, Los Angeles 1935, The Print Rooms, Los Angeles 1935, California Pacific International Expo, San Diego 1939, Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego 1940, Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles (solo) 1940, UCLA, Los Angeles 1954, Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena 1964, Scripps College, Claremont (solo) 1975, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles 1976, San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco 1977, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley 1978, Skirball Museum, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles 1986, 1989, 1991, and 1993, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles Artistic legacy In 2000, the Laguna Art Museum acquired over 500 pieces of his work. See less