Bernard Gussow, Judaica Pastel Portrait Rabbi Painting WPA Era Artist, Social Realist, c.1940s

Details

Description

Bernard Gussow 1881 -1957 Bernard Gussow was active/lived in New York, New Jersey / Russian Federation. Bernard Gussow is known … Read more Bernard Gussow 1881 -1957 Bernard Gussow was active/lived in New York, New Jersey / Russian Federation. Bernard Gussow is known for genre, landscape, figure, interior paintings. Bernard Gussow was born in 1881 in Russia. He studied at both the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design; He became friends with fellow artist Jacob Epstein and in 1902 their artworks were included in a book entitled The Spirit of the Ghetto. This book was a project of Hutchins Hapgood, a man who was seeking to document current Jewish life in America, and he chose Gussow and Epstein as his examples of New York Jewish artists. When the book was completed, Epstein and Gussow traveled to Paris where they would share a studio with fellow artists James Bolivar Manson and Charles Polowetski. During his time in Paris, Gussow also studied with the famous French painter Leon Bonnat at the École des Beaux-Arts. Gussow exhibited two works at the landmark Armory Show in 1913 (Movement and Figures). Additionally he exhibited at the Society of Independent Artists between 1917 and 1934 and at Salons of America in the 1930s. From 1912, he was a teacher at the Newark, New Jersey School of Fine and Industrial Art. By the mid 1930s Gussow stopped exhibiting. By that time, he had moved from abstract compositions to recognizable urban subjects. The Whitney Museum of American Art, for example, has his Subway Stairs. The Barnes Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art also have his paintings. Gussow even participated in the Federal Art Project, contributing a post office mural (Recreation Hours) in East Rochester, NY. He was especially known for his pastels and paintings of New York City’s Jewish Lower East Side life. He had two works included in the legendary New York Armory Show of 1913. His work was also included in exhibitions at The Society of Independent Artists, the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the 1930s he also completed a mural for the East Rochester post office as part of the Federal Art Project. A contemporary of Ben Shahn, William Gropper, Abraham Rattner and the Soyer brothers. He was a noted art teacher, teaching at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art from 1912 until his death. Some of his students included Adolf Konrad, Beatrice Mandelman, and Werner Groshans. His works are held in the collections of the Barnes Foundation, LACMA, the Newark Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. See less