Description

Description: Not much is written about the Pittsburgh and, later, New York-based artist Louise Pershing (1904-1986).This scrapbook of reviews and accompanying photographs, along with several gallery letters and brochures, traces her long and multiple award-winning career (1936-64), demonstrating that she exhibited her art all around the country. She is revealed to have been a whimsical, but thoughtful artist with a good sense of humor who ably portrayed social reality “without lapsing into sentiment.” We learn why she painted mills (for e.g., Zero Weather [1937]) where she stages “man’s insignificance in the face of progress. The reviews characterize her as an “acid realist,” “never static and never dull,” unafraid “ to experiment”; her brushstrokes are seen as “vigorous and powerful,” and her drawing outline and color “original compositions.” The titles of her work reflect her tone and hint at a social critique. Some examples of her whimsical and engaging sketches are: Supper at Kennywood Park (1943), Before the Show (1942), Dear Mrs. Smyth Has Been Very Ill (1944), Who’ll Buy My Eggs Now the Summer People Have Gone? (1945), She was My Only Child (1946) and so on. She seems to have gravitated toward sculptural work in the 1960s. The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited her piece A Widow Sits Alone in 1950. Her representation at the Carnegie International is well-noted. Includes two exhibit slides and personal notes.

Black cloth-bound 16” x 12” scrapbook, roughly 3” thick, with gray pages. Hundreds of clippings, photographs of her and her artworks (in many cases on the walls of exhibits), exhibition catalogues, etc. are glued or tipped onto the pages. Item #DA00468

Condition: Many of the pages are chipped and detaching, some of the clippings and photos have become unglued, binding worn at extremities. Generally in good only condition, but still a fabulous record of a mostly forgotten significant 20th c. woman artist.