William S.
Schwartz
William A. Karges Fine Art
William A. Karges Fine Art
William
S. Schwartz (February 23, 1896 – February 10, 1977) was born to a
poor family in Smorgon, Russia, where he attended art school on
scholarship in adolescence before immigrating to the United States at
the age of 17. There Schwartz, who had “chosen his life’s work
early on,” managed to support himself as an opera, vaudeville,
radio and concert singer and painting houses in order to pursue his
ultimate dream as a painter.
After
moving to New York to live with his sister and then Omaha to study
with J. Laurie Wallace at the Kellom School, Schwartz ultimately
ended up in Chicago, where he studied under Ivan Trutnev and Karl A.
Buehr at the Art Institute of Chicago. He graduated with honors in
life drawing, portraiture, and painting before his career took off in
1926 when he had his first solo exhibition of three at the Institute
in 1926.
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| William Schwartz "Daydreams" Oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches SOLD |
He
was well known as a distinctive character who sported a handlebar
mustache with long hair and a thick accent and was known to frequent
Riccardo’s Restaurant and Gallery with other well-known artists
such as Ivan Albright, Malvin Albright, andAaron Bohrod. In 1921,
Schwartz met and eventually married Mona Turner—then a married
woman and mother of two—who he adored and benefited from greatly as
she became both his muse and “least lenient critic.” Together
they toured the US by car to visit friends as Schwartz painted the
country en plein air.
Throughout
the Great Depression he supported himself by painting murals in a
regionalist style at numerous post offices for the Federal Art
Project. He incited minor controversy with his nude lithographs, and
his subject matter moved freely between genres to suit his vision. “I
have painted in faith and in freedom,” wrote the artist, “faith
that somehow what I have done will reflect the best that is in
me—freedom to choose my own themes in my own way.” Ultimately
Schwartz was most known for and worked most prolifically in symbolist
and abstract styles, but he characterized the American scene as,
“more colorful and challenging than I or any artist might hope to
record in a hundred lifetimes.”
Identifying
himself as a “romantic modernist,” he was heavily influenced by
surrealism and incorporated influences from cubism and constructivism
into his abstract works.
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| William Schwartz "Figures in a Rocky Landscape" Oil on board, 10 x 12 inches SOLD |
In the 1920’s he began his series
Symphonic Forms,
regarded by many as the height of his oeuvre. Marrying his two
passions, art and music, the paintings from the series feature
surreal biomorphic forms and bright colors recalling the fauvists.
Punctuated by jagged cubistic shapes and tonalistic hues, his
symphonic scenes evoke the timbre, notes, and compositional scale of
the vibrating and evolving musical works they were inspired by, such
as Beethoven’s Symphony
No. 23. Recalling
Kandinsky’s lyrical mysticism, Schwartz’s work seems to capture
the spirit of music in its variegated form.
Writing
for the Chicago Tribune in 1970, Schwartz put his work into his own
words:
My
subjects are the beauty and wonder, the laughter and poetry, the pity
and terror of the present world, which is the only universe I know.
My drawing, composition, color, and techniques are based on the best
education I could come by and extended to the limits of my own
creative invention and capacities. I do not imitate. Therefore I, and
I alone, am responsible for the vision of the world I set before the
viewer.”
Swimming
between different styles and influences and inspired by the American
landscape and subject matter, Schwartz’s surreal visual opuses
stand out as stunning reminders of his work as a uniquely abstract
modernist.
Schwartz,
William S. “An Artist’s Love Affair with America.” The
Chicago Tribune. April
5, 1970, Pages 64-65.
