Herbert Crowley

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An Exceptionally Peaceful Moment , ca.1910

Herbert E. Crowley (born 1873 in England ; died 1937 in Ascona , Switzerland ) was a British artist , comic strip artist , sculptor , singer , set designer and was considered an eccentric . His work is considered idiosyncratic, mystical, strange and also decidedly different. He is the author of The Wigglemuch (1910), a comic strip published in the New York Herald . He was a participant in the Armory Show , which took place in New York in 1913.

biography

A Fantastic Tiered Structure MET DP856545

Crowley was born in England in 1873. He studied singing in Paris and became a professional musician . Artistically he was essentially self-taught .

His drawings and cartoons took him to New York , where he lived for 15 years. His first work in the United States was the comic strip The Wigglemuch (published in the New York Herald ). It appeared thirteen times between March and June 1910. This only comic strip he had ever published would become his most famous work. Between 1910 and 1924 several of his pictures and sketches were presented in New York in group and solo exhibitions and in the displays on "57th Street". His works "The Temple of Silence" and "Slander" were exhibited in 1913 at the International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show) in New York. Shortly afterwards, however, he unexpectedly disappeared from the art world and was more and more forgotten.

Crowley returned to London in the late 1920s and, with his wife Alice Lewisohn, spent some time traveling in search of “transpersonal means of expression”. So he went to the Middle East in Egypt and visited India . Crowley eventually settled in Zurich to attend CG Jung's dream seminars and studies of the human psyche, to whose inner circle he belonged. Crowley spent the rest of his life in Switzerland . Two years before his death, Crowley was married for a second time and fell into the belief that his creative output was on the wrong side of good and evil , which dominated his thinking. He then destroyed as much of his work as he could and left instructions to destroy what was left after his death. Crowley died unexpectedly in Ascona on December 11, 1937 .

Some relatives (including his niece Susanne Wettstein) still live in Zurich and conserve his estate from sketches , pictures, writings and personal items. A crowdfunded book called The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Worlds of Herbert Crowley (2017) contains some unpublished works and gives an insight into his artistic work. In 1946 his widow Alice Lewisohn-Crowley donated his artistic estate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Exhibitions

  • 2019: Herbert Crowley, The Temple of Silence , Fumetto Comic Festival Luzern
  • 1966: Two Fantastic Draftsmen: Herbert Crowley and Winsor McCay , Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • 1913: International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show)

Work and rediscovery

"The Wiggle Much" Comic Strip, No. 1 (published in the New York Herald on March 20, 1910) MET DP856515
  • The Wigglemuch (1910)
  • Portfolio of Symbolic Drawings (1913)

"Herbert Crowley was one of the most idiosyncratic cartoonists in the early days of comics, a rising star in the New York art world and a dazzling figure of the avant-garde" writes Fumetto Lucerne about its exhibition (2019). For the first time in over 50 years the works of this forgotten artist were shown there. There were a few sculptural figures on display, the comic strip The Wigglemuch , several sketches, many satirical single-image cartoons, some commissioned work for tombs and a collection of detailed images of mystical temples, some of which were not yet finished.

His comic strip The Wigglemuch was previously exhibited with Winsor McCay ’s Little Nemo in 1966 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Web links

literature

  • Justin Duerr: The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Works & Worlds of Herbert Crowley . Ed .: Josh O'Neill. Beehive Books, 2019, ISBN 0-9973729-9-0 , pp. 108 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dan Nadel: Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 , June 2006
  2. ^ Catalog of the International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York . Association of American Painters and Sculptors, New York 1913 in the Archives of the Smithsonian Institution , p. 22
  3. ^ Exhibition directory (PDF) of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 79
personal data
SURNAME Crowley, Herbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crowley, Herbert E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British draftsman in the early days of comics
DATE OF BIRTH 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH England
DATE OF DEATH 1937
Place of death Ascona , Switzerland