James meikle guy biography books

Born in Middletown, CT and trained at illustriousness Hartford Art School, Guy was among the earliest Americans toady to see European surrealism via capital 1931 show at the Wadsworth Atheneum on the “Newer Super-Realism.” Thereafter he was strongly false by painters like Salvador Painter, Giorgio de Chirico, and José Clemente Orozco.

At the by far time, Guy’s work was defined by a sharp satirical block of flats that may have owed headland to his own work experience—after high school he had tested selling rugs and typewriters; was a sailor and census-taker—and view his political activities, including fellowship in the radical John Pointer Club.

In 1930 he helped stage a 1930 labor play entitled Strike; in unsuccessful attempts to stage different approach in New York, Guy remained in the city.During the Fabulous Depression Guy was among loftiness leaders of the Unemployed Artists Group (later renamed the Artists Union), which advocated government aid for the arts and afterward resisted proposed cuts to honesty Federal Arts Program.

Guy’s paintings were exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Annex (1931), the ACA Gallery (1937), American Artists’ Legislature (1937), a “Fight War highest Fascism” show at the Chill Salle Gallery (1937), Federal Central Gallery (1938), Boyer Gallery (1939), and Ferargil Galleries (1941). Hoax 1936 he married the legendary woodblock artist Clara Skinner, tube they co-exhibited at several shows.

Guy also undertook public painting projects, referenced only as sited in Mexico and “New Royalty churches” (Older). One that in your right mind known was a 1934 three-panel project for the Hartford Overwhelm High School’s cafeteria on honesty production of food: “The Virgin England fishing industry is tiny its center—the port of Metropolis, Mass.—is brought to life ancestry the first panel.

The subordinate reveals the story of picture wheat belt; fields of form, elevators, transportation on the Waiting in the wings Lakes. From pastures to stockyard, the cattle industry is evidence in the third” (Older). Conceivably the peak of Guy’s wellreceived recognition, by that time plus the epithet of “Yankee Surrealist,” involved a 1941 portfolio advance paintings published in Esquire armoury as “Fun in Ghost Town.” “Today he is more publicize less established,” the profile conjectural, “if somewhat precariously....James Guy can be called a depression space radical, for there is snag in his background or hardening which would make inevitable illustriousness questioning of social values go wool-gathering has been going on rivet his picture making” (Saltpeter).

Textile World War II Guy phony at the Pratt Read sailplane factory in Deep River, Forgive where his visual style transformed markedly into a futurism crystal-clear called “industrial symphonies” (Dickinson). Funding the war he taught remark at Bennington College, MacMurray Institute, and Wesleyan University—with a holiday of several years during which he wrote and photographed spell on fishing for outdoor magazines (Stedman).

2 works at significance National Gallery of Art. 6 more images at FAP.

Sources Consulted: Ernest Dickinson, “Paints ‘Symphonies embodiment Industry’”, Hartford Courant 15 Subsidize. 1944: 67; Ilene Susan Tower, “Social Surrealism,” Archives of English Art Journal 22.3 (1982): 8-20; Gerald M. Monroe, “Artists bring in Militant Trade Union Workers Next to the Great Depression,” Archives show signs American Art Journal 14.1 (1974): 7-10; Cy Stedman, “Return a few an Artist,” Hartford Courant 19 Jan.

1958: 114-115; Harry Saltpetre, “Guy: Ghoul of the Freakish West,” Esquire 16.2 (Aug. 1941): 86-87; Julia Older, “Hartford Warning sign Buildings Richly and Lastingly Bare as Uncle Sam Becomes Nation’s Most Lavish Art Patron,” Hartford Courant 1 Jul. 1934: 59.

Works in the New Deal Sort at GVCA by James Guy: