John Gutmann (1905 – June 12, 1998) was a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
-born
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
photographer
A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs.
Duties and types of photographe ...
and
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
.
Early life and education
Gutmann was born in 1905 in
Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) to an upper-middle-class Jewish family. He earned a degree in art from and moved to Berlin in 1927, earning a post-graduate degree at Preussisches Shulkollegium for Hohere Erziehung.
Career
Being Jewish, he was unable to exhibit his paintings or get a job teaching in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, and so he emigrated to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, arriving in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
in late 1933.
[ Gutmann reinvented himself as a photographer before he left Germany, purchasing a Rolleiflex and signing a photojournalism contract with Presse-Photo in 1933. He continued to work as a photojournalist for Presse-Photo from the West Coast until he signed on with PIX in 1936, an agency he worked with until 1962.]1934 West Coast waterfront strike
The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike (also known as the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, as well as a number of variations on these names) lasted 83 days, and began on May 9, 1934 when longshoremen in every US West Coast port walked out ...
. His work on other stories was later published in popular contemporary newsmagazines such as ''Time'', ''Look'', and ''The Saturday Evening Post
''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely c ...
''.San Francisco State College
San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...
in 1936 and founded the photography department there in 1946.United States Office of War Information
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other ...
during World War II.Fraenkel Gallery
Fraenkel Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in San Francisco founded by Jeffrey Fraenkel in 1979. Frish Brandt, president of the gallery, joined in 1985.
Fraenkel Gallery has presented more than 350 exhibitions, with a focus on photography and ...
and Castelli Graphics in the late 1970s. His work was later packaged into a traveling exhibition, "Beyond the Document", which moved from SFMOMA to 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 ...
and 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, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
starting in 1989.
Style
Gutmann's main subject matter was the American way of life, especially the Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
music scene. Gutmann is recognized for his unique "worm's-eye view
A worm's-eye view is a view of an object from below, as though the observer were a worm; the opposite of a bird's-eye view.
It can be used to look up to something to make an object look tall, strong, and mighty while the viewer feels childlike ...
" camera angle.
He enjoyed taking photos of ordinary things and making them seem special. Kenneth Baker, art critic for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', wrote in 1997 that Gutmann was "an emissary of European modernism" who "brought a distinct angle of vision to the American scene" and his images demonstrated his "excitement of his witness to the epression-eratimes". David Bonetti
David Bonetti (c. 1947 – April 4, 2018) was an American art critic.
Early life
David Bonetti was born circa 1947 and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was Italian and his mother Irish. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1969.
...
, art critic for the ''San Francisco Examiner'', called Gutmann's output from the 1930s "his best–when, a young Jewish refugee, he experienced America as a bemused stranger in a strange land. Gutmann fell in love with Depression-era America, which he traveled by Greyhound Bus Line. He saw its cars, its rites and festival, its athletes, its women, its vibrant African American communities and its dynamic street life with European eyes."
Awards
Gutmann received a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1977.
Legacy
He created the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship Award, through the San Francisco Foundation.
The full archive of Gutmann's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American pho ...
(CCP) at the University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory.
T ...
in Tucson, which also manages the copyright of his work.
Collections (selected)
Gutmann's work is held in the following permanent public collections:
* Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
* Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
* Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
* Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
* Figge Art Museum
The Figge Art Museum is an art museum in Davenport, Iowa. The Figge, as it is commonly known, has an encyclopedic collection and serves as the major art museum for the eastern Iowa and western Illinois region. The Figge works closely with sever ...
, Davenport, Iowa
* Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
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 ...
, New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
* Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
* Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
* San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
Exhibitions (selected)
Monographs (selected)
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*
*
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gutmann, John
1905 births
1998 deaths
German emigrants to the United States
20th-century American photographers
Artists from San Francisco
San Francisco State University faculty
People of the United States Office of War Information