Walter Pach

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter Pach, around 1903

Walter Pach (born July 11, 1883 in New York ; † November 27, 1958 there ) was an American artist, exhibition organizer and art critic . He was one of the organizers of the legendary Armory Show , which opened in New York in 1913 , along with Arthur B. Davies , Walt Kuhn and others .

Life

Pach was born on July 11, 1883 in New York, the son of the photographer Gotthelf Pach, who ran the Pach Brothers photo studio with his brothers . In 1903 he completed his studies with a Bachelor of Arts from the City College of New York . He then studied at the New York School of Art with Leigh Harrison Hunt, Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase ; he painted on the occasion of trips abroad in the summer months 1903 and 1904 together with Chase's art class. In 1907 he moved to Paris , where he joined the avant-garde circle of artists around Gertrude and Leo Stein . A year later he published the first American article on Paul Cézanne in Scribner's Magazine . In 1909 Gertrude Stein wrote a "text portrait", the Portrait of Walter Pach . In February 1913, the Armory Show opened , an exhibition of modernism in New York, of which Pach was co-organizer.

In 1914, Pach married the German artist Magdalena Frohberg (1884–1950) from Dresden, whom he had met in Florence in 1907; their son Raymond († 2008) was born towards the end of the year. The Pach family lived mainly in New York, with the exception of stays abroad from 1928 to 1932. From 1914 to 1926, Pach represented Henri Matisse 's work in the United States. In collaboration with Marcel Duchamp , Walter Conrad Arensberg and others, Pach founded the Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1916 and arranged an exhibition of oil paintings , pastels and drawings by Gino Severini in Alfred Stieglitz 's gallery 291 the following year .

Pach taught at the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1918 , and in the 1920s he lectured on Native American art at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México . He was friends with the Mexican painters José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera . In 1931 his first solo exhibition took place at the Kraushaar Gallery in New York. Pach was exhibition director for the 1939 New York World's Fair , for which he wrote his book Masterpieces of Art . Art Museum in America followed in 1948, dealing with the relevance and future of American art museums. After the death of his wife Magdalena in 1950, Pach married Nikifora Loutsi, later Nikifora N. Iliopoulos.

In 1958 Pach was appointed professor at the City College of New York and died that same year in New York from the effects of an operation on a stomach ulcer .

Work and meaning

The Armory Show

Armory Show poster, New York 1913

In 1912 Pach, who spoke French, Spanish and German fluently, met Arthur B. Davies and Walt Kuhn in Paris to make preparations for the International Exhibition of Modern Art , the so-called Armory Show , to be held in New York the following year . Since he personally knew many artists who lived in Paris, he made it possible for Davies and Kuhn to visit the studios of Constantin Brâncuși , Odilon Redon , Henri Matisse , Robert Delaunay , Albert Gleizes , Fernand Léger and Francis Picabia, among others . In the Salon der Steins at 27 rue de Fleurus, the organizers saw the cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and in Puteaux works by the Duchamp brothers, who belonged to the Puteaux group . They selected four paintings by Marcel Duchamp for the Armory Show, including Nude, Descending a Staircase No. 2 , as well as nine works by Jacques Villon and five sculptures by Raymond Duchamp-Villon .

Pach traveled back to New York to serve as the main organizer and publicist of the Armory Show. He himself participated in the exhibition as an artist with five paintings and five etchings each, including the oil painting Portrait of Gigi Cavigli, completed in 1912 . On the occasion of the second presentation at the Art Institute of Chicago , a newspaper displayed two paintings the day after Pach's arrival; they came from Matisse and von Pach. Below that were two portraits of strange-looking people. The caption read: “Two of these Cubists are in Dunning [the local insane asylum], the other two are still at large. Can you tell which is which? ”(“ Two of these Cubists are in Dunning [local madhouse], the other two are still at large. Can you tell who is who? ”) During the third exhibition in Boston , Pach met the art collector Walter Conrad Arensberg, whose main advisor he became. He also advised the art collector John Quinn .

Painter and writer

Walter Pach's work as a painter is hardly known today. He saw himself as an artist and a writer at the same time, even though friends, such as the art historian Bernard Berenson , had suggested that he devote himself primarily to writing.

Pach's language skills enabled him to understand and interpret the avant-garde ideas that arose in Europe in the artistic field and to prepare them for the English-speaking world. He associated with many well-known artists from Europe and Mexico and mediated between art dealers and museum curators . His correspondence became an important source of information, not only about his artist friends, but also about modern art of the first half of the 20th century.

He wrote numerous works on artists, for example on Georges Seurat , Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Ingres and Vincent van Gogh . His heavily criticized book Ananias, or the False Artist , published in 1928, turned against representatives of academic painting , such as William Adolphe Bouguereau , John Singer Sargent , and against popular painters such as Léon Bakst . In 1938 a biographical description of his encounters appeared under the title Queer Thing, Painting . In 1959, The Classical Tradition was published posthumously in Modern Art . Pach also worked as a translator, so he translated the five-volume work Histoire de l'art (1919–1921) by Élie Faure into English.

estate

Pach's estate, including manuscripts, letters, and photographs, is kept in the Smithsonian Institution in the Archives of American Art. Further correspondence can be found in the Helen Farr Sloan Library, Delaware Art Museum , Wilmington , which goes back to a donation from the widow of John French Sloan . Sloan, a friend of Pach's, was a painter and also a member of the Armory Show's organizing committee.

Exhibitions

  • 1913: Participation in the Armory Show
  • 1931: Solo exhibition at the Kraushaar Gallery, New York
  • 1935: Knoedler Gallery, New York City
  • 1936: Kleemann Galleries, New York, watercolors
  • 1941: Solo exhibition at Schneider-Gabriel Gallery, New York
  • 1986: Walter Pach, A Retrospective , Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, North Carolina.
  • 1988: The Art of Walter and Magda Pach , Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
  • 1990: Discovering Modernism: Selections from the Walter Pach Papers , The Archives of American Art, New York
  • 1991: The Paintings of Walter Pach , Forum Gallery, New York

Publications (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Smithsonian Archives of American Art
  2. ↑ a b c Walter Pach Papers. Chronology of Walter Pach , accessed August 28, 2010
  3. ^ Smithsonian Archives of American Art
  4. ↑ Quoted from askart.com
  5. ↑ Bennard B. Perlman: American Artists, Authors, and Collectors: The Walter Pach Letters 1906-1958 , p.6
  6. ↑ Calvin Tomkins: Marcel Duchamp. A biography , pp. 138, 142, 174 ff
  7. ^ Smithsonian Archives of American Art
  8. ^ Dictionary of Art Historians
personal data
SURNAME Pach, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist, art historian, and art critic
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1958
Place of death new York