Josef Presser, Polish Born Boston Expressionist Oil Painting WPA Artist Colorful Modern Woman, c.1940s

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Portrait of a modernist lady or a harlequin.
Emigrating to Boston in 1913 from Lublin, Poland with his Russian-Jewish parents, … Read more Portrait of a modernist lady or a harlequin.
Emigrating to Boston in 1913 from Lublin, Poland with his Russian-Jewish parents, Presser was admitted in 1921 at age 12 to the Boston Museum School of Art with a full four-year scholarship, the youngest student ever accepted at the school. The lack of challenge for the boy who could draw everything with ease set the stage for Presser’s search as an adult for new forms and styles of expression. After completing 4 years at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School with Bryant Baker, Henry Hunt Clark, Philip Hale, and William James. Presser’s boundless curiosity led him to Europe in the late 20’s, signing on as a crew member of a freighter, jumping ship in Hamburg, and working on horse-drawn canal barges in Belgium and France and with small traveling circuses. There he studied the works of the Renaissance masters as well as gain inspiration for future work by becoming employed by circuses and other traveling shows. Much of his work from this time shows his interest in horses. He returned to the United States in 1931 to pursue his painting career in Philadelphia, PA. Here, he would begin his career painting murals for the WPA, as well as accepting private commissions for horse portraits and murals. He also began to sell his paintings that had a greater level of intensity that reflected the seriousness of the Great Depression.
He was a member of the Philadelphia Watercolor Club and the New Haven Paint and Clay Club and exhibited at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
It was at this time that Presser began reaching for new ideas of expression while still embracing the “old world masters.” In Paris, his studies of Renaissance painters in the museums of Europe are reflected in “Cybele.” His first major painting sale was brokered by the director of the Louvre.
The artist settled into a studio in Philadelphia upon his return to America in 1931, where his concern for the poor and socially deprived grew with the urgency of the Great Depression, eventually earning him a decent living painting WPA and private murals, as well as a fast-selling body of more intense personal paintings.
In the mid 30’s Presser moved to New York City, where he met and married fellow NYC artist Agnes Hart, with whom he would have a tempestuous relationship until his death. They lived and worked in a loft over bustling 14th Street at Union Square. He painted prodigiously, often paying off bar tabs and butchers with a painting, a quickly drawn portrait. Instructor: New York University; Cooper Union School of Art. First artist invited to lecture in The Cooper Union’s Great Hall since Abraham Lincoln. He was from the same Jewish Immigrant artist group in Boston that incuded David Aronson, Jack Levine and Hyman Bloom.

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