Bertha Schaefer (1895–1971) was an American designer and gallery director, she was known for her furniture designs, and as an interior designer.
Biography
Schaefer was born in
Yazoo City, Mississippi
Yazoo City is a U.S. city in Yazoo County, Mississippi. It was named after the Yazoo River, which, in turn was named by the French explorer Robert La Salle in 1682 as "Rivière des Yazous" in reference to the Yazoo tribe living near the river' ...
in 1895. Her father Emil Schaefer was a refugee from Germany and worked as a board of trustees for a public school.
She attended
Mississippi State College for Women and
Parsons School of Design.
She briefly traveled to Paris after graduation from school and after she returned to New York City to work with interior designer Helen Criss for a few months.
Schaefer died in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
on May 24, 1971.
Her paper are in the
Archives of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...
at the
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
.
The
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 ...
was the recipient of paintings, prints, sculpture, and ceramics from her estate.
Design
In 1924 Schaefer founded ''Bertha Schaefer Interiors''. Her company designed
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
-inspired furniture and interiors for both residences and businesses.
In 1952 Schaefer's work was included in
MoMA's exhibition ''Good Design''.
The same year she won a design award from MoMA.
From 1950 through 1961 Schaefer designed furniture for M. Singer and Sons Furniture Company.
Schaefer was a member of the Decorators Club of New York, serving two terms as president and, in 1959, receiving their design award.
Gallery
In 1944 Schaefer founded the Bertha Schaefer Gallery of Contemporary Art in New York City, which exhibited contemporary American and European painting and sculpture.
The gallery represented
Will Barnet
Will Barnet (May 25, 1911November 13, 2012) was an American artist known for his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints depicting the human figure and animals, both in casual scenes of daily life and in transcendent dreamlike worlds.
Bi ...
,
William Clutz,
Robert Cronbach,
Elisabeth Frink
Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink (14 November 1930 – 18 April 1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her ''Times'' obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as "the nature of Man; the 'horseness' of horses; and the divine in ...
,
Terry Frost
Sir Terence Ernest Manitou Frost RA (13 October 1915 – 1 September 2003) was a British abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and shape to start a new art movement in ...
,
Patrick Heron
Patrick Heron (30 January 1920 – 20 March 1999) was a British abstract and figurative artist, critic, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall.
Heron was recognised as one of the leading painters of his generation. Influenced b ...
,
Morris Kantor, Joseph Konzal,
Charles Green Shaw
Charles Green Shaw (May 1, 1892 – April 2, 1974) was an American painter, poet, writer, and illustrator. He was a key figure in early American abstract art. Shaw's paintings are part of most major collections of American Art, including the ...
, Raymond Rocklin,
Joop Sanders
Joop Sanders (born October 6, 1921) is a Dutch-American painter, educator, and founding member of the American Abstract Expressionist group. He is the youngest member of the first generation of the New York School.
Sanders' work is held in t ...
, John von Wicht, and
Irwin Rubin
Irwin Rubin (1930–April 8, 2006) was an American artist and educator known for his colorfully painted wood constructions.
Biography
Irwin Rubin was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1930. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the Cooper Union ...
. They also exhibited works by Eric Beynon,
Manuel Felguerez, Zvi Gali,
Mimmo Rotella
Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella (Catanzaro, 7 October 1918 – Milan, 8 January 2006) was an Italian artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. Best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advert ...
,
Eusebio Sempere
Eusebio Sempere Juan (3 April 192310 April 1985) was a Spanish sculptor, painter and graphic artist whose abstract geometric works make him the most representative artist of the Kinetic art movement in Spain and one of Spain's foremost artists. ...
,
Glen Michaels
Glen Michaels is a sculptor and painter. He was born on July 21, 1927, in Spokane, Washington and died on October 17, 2020, in Birmingham, Michigan where he lived and work most of his life.
Education and teaching
He attended Yale School ...
,
Sheldon Machlin, and Karin Van Leyden. In the early 1960s, the gallery presented group exhibitions that focused on young, international
artists working with hybrid forms between painting and sculpture,
such as "Six Techniques: Six Nationalities" (September 12 - October 1, 1960),
and "The Wall" (Jan 2-20, 1962). Examples include “Relieve Luminoso Movil,” electrically illuminated, plastic reliefs by Spanish artist,
Eusebio Sempere
Eusebio Sempere Juan (3 April 192310 April 1985) was a Spanish sculptor, painter and graphic artist whose abstract geometric works make him the most representative artist of the Kinetic art movement in Spain and one of Spain's foremost artists. ...
, as well as carved, colorfully painted wood constructions by New York based
Irwin Rubin
Irwin Rubin (1930–April 8, 2006) was an American artist and educator known for his colorfully painted wood constructions.
Biography
Irwin Rubin was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1930. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the Cooper Union ...
.
In 1972, following Schaefer's death, the gallery was renamed the New Bertha Schaefer Gallery.
References
External links
images of Schaefer's workon Artnet.com
images of Schaefer's workon MutualArt
Oral history interview with Bertha Schaefer, 1970 April 20-22 in the
Archives of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...
, Smithsonian Institution
A Finding Aid to the Bertha Schaefer Papers and Gallery Records, 1909-1975, bulk 1940-1965 in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Bertha Schaefer entryfrom the Encyclopedia of Jewish Women
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schaefer, Bertha
1895 births
1986 deaths
20th-century American women artists
People from Yazoo City, Mississippi
Artists from Mississippi
Parsons School of Design alumni