Albert Swinden

Albert Swinden (1901–1961) was an English-born American abstract painter. He was one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists, and he created significant murals as part of the Federal Art Project.

Albert Swinden
Born1901
Birmingham, England
Died1961 (aged 59–60)
New York City, New York, United States
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainting
Movement

Life

Albert Swinden was born in Birmingham, England in 1901.[1][2] When he was seven, he moved with his family to Canada, and in 1919 he immigrated to the United States. He lived in Chicago, where he studied for about a year and a half at the Art Institute. He then relocated to New York City, where his art education continued briefly at the National Academy of Design. He soon changed schools again, to the Art Students League, which he attended from 1930 to 1934.[1] He studied with Hans Hofmann[3] and gained an appreciation for Synthetic Cubism and Neoplasticism.[2] According to painter and printmaker George McNeil, Swinden "could have influenced Hofmann ... He was working with very, very simple planes, not in this sort of Cubistic manner. Swinden was working synthetically at this time."[4] While still a student, Swinden began teaching at the Art Students League, in 1932.[1]

Swinden married Rebecca Palter (1912–1998), from New York.[5] Their daughter, Alice Swinden Carter, also became an artist. Carter, who attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, received an award from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston for her large sculptures.[6]

Work

Swinden was hired for the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and he is best known for the murals which he painted as part of that project.[2]

In 1935, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the opening of the inaugural exhibit at the Federal Art Project Gallery, accompanied by Audrey McMahon, New York regional director for the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project. Among the works on display was Abstraction, a sketch by Swinden; it was the design for a mural planned for the College of the City of New York. A newspaper account described it as consisting of "brightly colored T-squares, triangles and rulers in horizontal, vertical and diagonal positions". La Guardia asked what it was, and upon being told it was a mural design, he said he didn't know what it depicted. Someone joked that it could be a map of Manhattan. The displeased mayor stated that "if that's art, I belong to Tammany Hall." (Tammany Hall, which the Republican mayor referenced, was the New York Democratic Party political society.) Fearing that the mayor's negative attitude could jeopardize the future of abstract art within the Federal Art Project, McMahon dispatched an assistant to summon an artist who could speak to the mayor in defense of abstraction. The assistant returned with Arshile Gorky.[7][8]

Swinden played an important role in the founding of the American Abstract Artists. In 1935, he met with three friends, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, her future husband Byron Browne, and Ibram Lassaw, with the goal of exhibiting together. The group grew and started meeting in Swinden's studio, which adjoined those of Balcomb and Gertrude Greene. The A.A.A. evolved in 1937 out of these meetings among twenty-two artists.[9][10]

One of the artists attending those meetings was painter John Opper, who said in an interview that Swinden was very quiet, shy, and inhibited. He also said that Swinden was one of the best painters in the group. "His paintings were very powerful, very strong. You would think he would be one of those robust persons like Gorky, for instance. But he was the opposite of Gorky. He was very withdrawn." Around this time, Swinden may have painted abstracts exclusively. But later, according to Irving Sandler, "it was sort of a mixture between figurative and geometric abstraction. It was a kind of hard-edge figure towards the end."[11]

Untitled, from the Williamsburg Housing Project Murals

Burgoyne Diller selected Swinden to create a mural for Brooklyn's Williamsburg Housing Project.[1] The other artists chosen for this project were Paul Kelpe, who painted two murals, and Ilya Bolotowsky and Balcomb Greene, each of whom created one. The murals were commissioned in 1936 by the Mural Division of the WPA/FAP in New York. Diller headed the Mural Division.[12]

Swinden's large – 9.31 by 14.36 feet (2.84 m × 4.38 m) – untitled abstract mural has been described as a "carefully balanced, disciplined composition of rectangular shapes punctuated by occasional biomorphic forms".[1] He was not able to execute the mural exactly as he had originally conceptualized, due to constraints of the installation space; for example, the unpainted upper corners which were inserted during restoration are where structural beams were present at the Williamsburg site. The black strip at the top and the broken blue one on the right were probably also changes made due to requirements of using the particular space.[1]

The murals, owned by the New York City Housing Authority,[13] are on loan to the Brooklyn Museum.[14] These five paintings were the first abstract murals anywhere in the United States, and they're considered to be some of the most significant.[12][13] Art historians have praised the murals as "extremely important artworks, quite courageous and extraordinary ... painted in the most radical style you could get at the time", "key to American art between the wars", and "national treasures".[13]

Among the other murals he created was one for the 1939 New York World's Fair.[1]

Although he did not often write about his art, a short essay of his was published in the American Abstract Artists Yearbook of 1938. This yearbook featured, among other things, essays such as Swinden's which expounded on theories and practices of abstract art. In his essay, "On Simplification", Swinden wrote: "We are moved not only by particular, or individual forms, but by the relationships between the particular forms and their significance as a unity."[1][9]

A 1940 fire at Swinden's studio destroyed the majority of his early work. His mural for the Williamsburg Project, which had been painted over and considered lost before being rediscovered and restored, is a rare and very significant painting from the period before the fire.[1][3][13]

In a 1942 review of the American Abstract Artists' sixth annual exhibition, influential art critic Clement Greenberg wrote that among the "geometricians", Swinden "shows as much promise perhaps in his single unsuccessful painting as the others in their successful ones."[15]

Although he was respected by the prominent artists he associated with, had his paintings exhibited in many group shows (including such prestigious venues as the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art[16]), and created significant murals, he was not able to promote his art in a commercially successful way. Instead, he often had to work in other capacities, supporting himself as an engineering draftsman or a textile designer.[1]

He died in 1961 in New York City. In 1962, a retrospective exhibit of his work was mounted at New York's Graham Gallery.[16] Swinden left behind a relatively small oeuvre of "calmly classical visions".[1]

Collections

Museums with Swinden's work in their permanent collections include:

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References
  1. "Untitled, From the Williamsburg Housing Project Murals". Brooklyn Museum. Archived from the original on July 20, 2016. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  2. "Albert Swinden". AskART. Archived from the original on August 27, 2006. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  3. "Joseph W. Groell papers". Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
  4. "Oral history interview with George McNeil, 1968 Jan. 9 – May 21". Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on August 1, 2013. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  5. "Flowers and Vase Still Life". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
  6. Edgers, Geoff (April 20, 2002). "Sculpting a Path from Mother to Artist". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on March 15, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
  7. Herrera, Hayden (2005-01-03). Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 265. ISBN 9781466817081. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  8. Spender, Matthew (1999). From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky. University of California Press. p. 147. ISBN 9780520225480. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  9. Larsen, Susan C. (1974). "The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941". Archives of American Art Journal. Smithsonian Institution. 14 (1): 2–4. JSTOR 1556919.
  10. Hagemann, E. R (1985). German and Austrian Expressionism in the United States, 1900-1939: Chronology and Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 98. ISBN 9780313247040. Archived from the original on 2016-03-09. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  11. "Oral history interview with John Opper, 1968 Sept. 9 – 1969 Jan. 3". Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on 28 June 2013. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
  12. "Williamsburg Murals: A Rediscovery – press releases". Brooklyn Museum. February 1990. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved September 22, 2012.
  13. Honan, William H. (July 20, 1988). "Long-Lost Brooklyn Housing Murals are Being Restored". The New York Times. p. 15. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2012.
  14. "Williamsburg Murals: A Rediscovery". Brooklyn Museum. Archived from the original on October 17, 2012. Retrieved September 17, 2012.
  15. Greenberg, Clement (1988). The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 1: Perceptions and Judgments, 1939-1944. University of Chicago Press. p. 104. ISBN 9780226306216. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
  16. Brenda Richardson, ed. (1967). Selection 1967: Recent Acquisitions in Modern Art. University of California Press. p. 105. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
  17. "Albert Swinden". Brooklyn Museum. Archived from the original on July 24, 2015. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  18. "Albert Swinden: Untitled". Carnegie Museum of Art. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  19. "Abstract Flower Arrangement". Harvard Art Museums. Archived from the original on April 22, 2016. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  20. "Collections Search: Albert Swinden". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  21. "Fine Art Museums for Albert Swinden". AskART. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  22. "Swinden, Albert". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
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