Arnold Mesches (August 11, 1923 – November 5, 2016) was an American visual artist.

Bio

Arnold Mesches was born in 1923 in the Bronx, New York and was raised in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

. Mesches moved to Los Angeles in 1943 on a scholarship at the Art Center School. In 1945, the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

opened a file on him targeting him as a subversive communist. He was inspired to create works during the Republican

Senator Joseph McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visi ...

era of the 1950s. He created many series of "provocative, layered collages composed from his personal FBI file plus news clippings, 1950s magazine cutouts, personal photographs, and hand written scripts." Mesches has explored contemporary social and historical issues, informed by world history and his life during the Depression, which also reflect his art. In 1970 he married, Jill Ciment, his seventeen-year-old student, who was thirty years his junior. Ciment went to become an accomplished novelist and memoirist. They remained happily married until his death. In 1984, he moved to New York City and taught at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

. He also taught at

Parsons College Parsons College was a private liberal arts college located in Fairfield, Iowa. The school was named for its wealthy benefactor, Lewis B. Parsons Sr., and was founded in 1875 with one building and 34 students. Over the years new buildings were cons ...

and

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

. He eventually ended up teaching at

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

in Gainesville. He has had over 125 solo exhibitions and is represented in places such as the

Metropolitan Museum of Arts The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 F ...

, the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in Sydney, Australia, among others. He died on November 5, 2016 in Gainesville, Florida at the age of 93.

Awards

*National Endowment of the Arts, 1982 *Pollock-Krasner award, 2002 and 2008 *Art Critics of America, 2004 *Florida State Individual Grant 2007

References

External links

Official Website
*Arnold Mesches and Jill Ciment in conversation with th
''Brooklyn Rail''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mesches, Arnold 1923 births 2016 deaths 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Artists from New York (state) New York University faculty Rutgers University faculty University of Florida faculty 20th-century American male artists