Robert Gwathmey : The Life and Art of a Passionate Observer - Hardcover

Kammen, Michael G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080782495X ISBN 13: 9780807824955

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr, 1999

Synopsis

American artist Robert Gwathmey (1903-1988) was a leading member of the Social Realist movement that flourished from the 1930s through the 1950s. Like his fellow Social Realists, Gwathmey sought to use his art to expose privilege and pretense, demand social justice, and call for major changes in the prevailing socioeconomic system.

Gwathmey was an eighth-generation Virginian of Welsh heritage, and throughout his life his main artistic themes were race relations and his native South. He is perhaps best remembered as the first white American painter to depict African Americans in an unromanticized, respectful manner. Using a unique style that combined a deliberate two-dimensional flatness with deep and vivid colors, Gwathmey illuminated the inherent dignity of the tenant farmers and sharecroppers who were his subjects.

As a lifelong activist against injustice, Gwathmey was kept under surveillance by the FBI for nearly thirty years. Using Gwathmey's FBI file, along with numerous interviews and archival records, Michael Kammen crafts a compelling portrait of an engaging American painter in the midst of dramatic social and political change.

About this title

Book Description:

"Kammen's book demonstrates that, in quietly documenting injustice and the daily efforts to withstand it, artist Robert Gwathmey. . . . left us a clear-eyed visual record of a turning point in racial, regional, and cultural history."-- New York History

From the Inside Flap:

Examines the life and work of American artist Robert Gwathmey (1903-1988), a prominent Social Realist and a lifelong activist against social injustice. Gwathmey is best remembered for his paintings of African-Americans.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 080782495X
• ISBN 13: 9780807824955
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 240