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.
Life
Albert Swinden was born in
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
, England in 1901.
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
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
. He soon changed schools again, to the
Art Students League
The Art Students League of New York is an art school at American Fine Arts Society, 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists ...
, which he attended from 1930 to 1934.
He studied with
Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...
and gained an appreciation for
Synthetic Cubism and
Neoplasticism
Neoplasticism, known in Dutch as ''Nieuwe Beelding'' or the new image, is an avant-garde art theory that arose in 1917 and was employed mainly by Dutch De Stijl artists. The most notable advocates of the theory were the painters Theo van Does ...
.
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."
While still a student, Swinden began teaching at the Art Students League, in 1932.
Swinden married Rebecca Palter (1912–1998), from New York.
Their daughter, Alice Swinden Carter, also became an artist. Carter, who attended the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusett ...
, received an award from the
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple na ...
for her large sculptures.
Work
Swinden was hired for the
Federal Art Project
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...
(FAP) of the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
(WPA), and he is best known for the murals which he painted as part of that project.
In 1935, New York City Mayor
Fiorello La Guardia
Fiorello Henry LaGuardia (; born Fiorello Enrico LaGuardia, ; December 11, 1882September 20, 1947) was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the House of Representatives and served as the 99th Mayor of New York City fro ...
attended the opening of the inaugural exhibit at the Federal Art Project Gallery, accompanied by
Audrey McMahon
Audrey McMahon (1898 – August 20, 1981) was the Director of the New York region of the Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943;O'Connor, Francis V. "Audrey McMahon." in O'Connor, Francis V., ed. ''The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Mem ...
, 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
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main loc ...
, which the
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
mayor referenced, was the New York
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
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
Arshile Gorky (; born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, hy, Ոստանիկ Մանուկ Ատոյեան; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent the last years of his ...
.
Swinden played an important role in the founding of the
American Abstract Artists
American Abstract Artists (AAA) was formed in 1936 in New York City, to promote and foster public understanding of abstract art. American Abstract Artists exhibitions, publications, and lectures helped to establish the organization as a major fo ...
. In 1935, he met with three friends,
Rosalind Bengelsdorf, her future husband Byron Browne, and
Ibram Lassaw
Ibram Lassaw (May 4, 1913 – December 30, 2003) was a Russian-American sculptor, known for non-objective construction in brazed metals.
Biography
Lassaw was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Russian émigré parents, he went to the U.S. in 1921. ...
, with the goal of exhibiting together. The group grew and started meeting in Swinden's studio, which adjoined those of
Balcomb and
Gertrude Greene
Gertrude Glass Greene (1904 – November 25, 1956) was an abstract sculptor and painter from New York City. Gertrude and her husband, artist Balcomb Greene, were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstrac ...
. The A.A.A. evolved in 1937 out of these meetings among twenty-two artists.
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
Irving Sandler (July 22, 1925 – June 2, 2018) was an American art critic, art historian, and educator. He provided numerous first hand accounts of American art, beginning with abstract expressionism in the 1950s. He also managed the Tanager Ga ...
, "it was sort of a mixture between figurative and geometric abstraction. It was a kind of hard-edge figure towards the end."
Burgoyne Diller selected Swinden to create a mural for Brooklyn's
Williamsburg Housing Project
The Williamsburg Houses, originally called the Ten Eyck Houses, (pronounced ) is a public housing complex built and operated by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. It consists of 20 buil ...
.
The other artists chosen for this project were
Paul Kelpe
Paul Kelpe (; January 15, 1902 – December 8, 1985) was a German-born American abstract painter. His constructions integrating found objects into paintings were the first such works created in the United States and he painted two of the fi ...
, who painted two murals, and
Ilya Bolotowsky
Ilya Bolotowsky (July 1, 1907 – November 22, 1981) was a leading early 20th-century Russian-American painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and ge ...
and
Balcomb Greene
Balcomb Greene (1904–1990) was an American artist and teacher. He and his wife, artist Gertrude Glass Greene, were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstract art and were founding members of the Am ...
, 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.
Swinden's large – – untitled abstract mural has been described as a "carefully balanced, disciplined composition of rectangular shapes punctuated by occasional biomorphic forms".
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.
The murals, owned by the
New York City Housing Authority
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is a public development corporation which provides public housing in New York City, and is the largest public housing authority in North America. Created in 1934 as the first agency of its kind in the U ...
,
are on loan to the
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
.
These five paintings were the first abstract murals anywhere in the United States, and they're considered to be some of the most significant.
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".
Among the other murals he created was one for the
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchas ...
.
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."
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.
In a 1942 review of the American Abstract Artists' sixth annual exhibition, influential art critic
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formal ...
wrote that among the "geometricians", Swinden "shows as much promise perhaps in his single unsuccessful painting as the others in their successful ones."
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 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
and the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
), 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
A drafter (also draughtsman / draughtswoman in British and Commonwealth English, draftsman / draftswoman or drafting technician in American and Canadian English) is an engineering technician who makes detailed technical drawings or plans for m ...
or a
textile designer.
He died in 1961 in New York City. In 1962, a
retrospective
A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...
exhibit of his work was mounted at New York's Graham Gallery.
Swinden left behind a relatively small
oeuvre of "calmly classical visions".
Collections
Museums with Swinden's work in their permanent collections include:
*
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
*
Carnegie Museum of Art
The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...
, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
*
Fogg Museum
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
, Cambridge, Massachusetts
*
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...
*
New Jersey State Museum
The New Jersey State Museum is located at 195-205 West State Street in Trenton, New Jersey. It serves a broad region between New York City and Philadelphia. The museum's collections include natural history specimens, archaeological and ethnograph ...
, Trenton, New Jersey
*
Sheldon Museum of Art
The Sheldon Museum of Art is an art museum in the city of Lincoln, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Its collection focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art.
History
Sheldon Art Association
In 1888, The Sheldon Art Assoc ...
, Lincoln, Nebraska
*
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...
, Washington, D.C.
*
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, New York City
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swinden, Albert
Abstract painters
20th-century American painters
American male painters
Art Students League of New York faculty
Art Students League of New York alumni
National Academy of Design alumni
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
Painters from New York City
People from Birmingham, West Midlands
British emigrants to the United States
1901 births
1961 deaths
Federal Art Project artists
20th-century American male artists