User:Pmaclaughlin/Sennhauser

John Sennhauser (1907 Switzerland-1978 California, USA) was an American abstract artist...

To do: get exact birthplace, dates

Sennhauser grew up in Italy

studied music: (find 2nd party source)

studied: Royal Academy, Venice 2 years (get exact years)

immigrated: United States, 1928.

(Reasons for immigration: Fascist threats against his life. Find source.)

lived in New York City

worked: architectural draughtsman

studied: Cooper Union 1930-33

taught: Leonardo da Vinci Art School. Later: Contemporary School of Art (NY). Betw. 1936 & 42.

Painted: urban realism, privately commissioned murals, 1930s. Early 1940s exhibited nonobjective paintings.

worked: assistant to the curator (Fort, 1980, p. 54), Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), 1943-45 under Hilla Rebay. Influenced by this museum's collection of Kandinskys (Taylor, p. 154).

Paintings of late 40s most original. (Ibid.) (Get example.)

paintings explored "dualities of line, color, form, and space." ("Notes requested by the Whitney Museum of American Art After Their Purchase of Emotive 15 in 1951" Sennhauser Papers, Archives of American Art, roll N70-33:58. Cited in Mecklenberg, 1989, p. 160.)

Of his technique during this period, Sennhauser wrote, "My brush moves intuitively...attuning itself to the rhythm of the feeling that permeates my whole being." The feeling may have been prompted by "a charming remark from my little girl...a description of the constellations as related by my young son after a visit to the Planetarium. What is important is ... its crystallization in color-form vibration." (Ibid.)

Worked: restorer 1950s-60s

Painted: freer Abstract Expressionist style in watercolor or casein. Less structural than earlier works. Early 1950s. (Get example.)

Joined, active in: American Abstract Artists, Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors

(Wife, Helen, died. Change in style? Get year.)

Exhibited: figurative work again, 1961. '''(2nd marriage, Verna. Get year.) (Get example of this period.) '''

References

Falk, Peter H. (ed.) "John Sennhauser." Who Was Who in American Art. Madison, CT: SoundView Press, 1999, p. 2974.

Fort, I. S. "John Sennhauser: Martin Diamond Fine Arts." Arts Magazine, vol. 55, no. 4, December 1980, pp. 53-54.

Larson, Susan. American Abstract Artists: The Language of Abstraction. 1979. (Get publisher, place.)

Mecklenberg, Virginia. The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930-1945. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1989, pp. 159-161.

Taylor, Sue. "Reviews: Chicago, John Sennhauser, Struve," ARTnews, vol. 88, no. 1, January 1989, p. 154.