Peter Howard Selz (March 27, 1919 – June 21, 2019) was a German-born American art historian and museum director and curator who specialized in
German Expressionism
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
.
Biography
Peter Selz was born in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
parents. In 1936, aged 17, he fled
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 ...
because his parents wanted to send him to study in 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 Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
. His family managed to escape Germany just before the
Night of Broken Glass, with the help of some nuns, whom his optometrist father had treated for free. He spent one year at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
and discovered that he was distantly related to
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...
, who became his mentor. After serving in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
he received an A.M. from the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
on the GI Bill in 1949. He received several
Fulbright scholarships
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
in the following years to study at the
University of Paris
, image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of Arms
, latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis
, motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin)
, mottoeng = Here and a ...
and
École du Louvre
The École du Louvre is an institution of higher education and grande école located in the Aile de Flore of the Louvre Palace in Paris, France. It is dedicated to the study of archaeology, art history, anthropology and epigraphy.
Admission is ...
as well as the
Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire
The Royal Museums of Art and History (french: Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, nl, Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis) or RMAH is a group of museums in Brussels, Belgium. It is part of the Belgian federal institute of the Belgia ...
; at the same time, Selz was teaching at the University of Chicago and also chaired the education department at the Institute of Design at the
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...
in Chicago. In 1955 he moved to
Pomona College
Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...
to chair the art department and serve as director of the school's art gallery.
In 1958, Selz became the curator of department of painting and sculpture exhibitions at 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 t ...
in New York. His first exhibition at the Modern was the influential "New Images of Man" in 1959, which included paintings by
Karel Appel
Christiaan Karel Appel (; 25 April 1921 – 3 May 2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde ...
,
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
,
Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...
,
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a ...
,
Leon Golub
Leon Golub (January 23, 1922 – August 8, 2004) was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he also studied, receiving his BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, and his BFA and MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in ...
,
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 Ame ...
,
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...
,
Rico Lebrun,
James McGarrell,
Jan Muller,
Nathan Oliveira
Nathan Oliveira (December 19, 1928 – November 13, 2010) was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred ...
, and
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splas ...
and sculpture by Dubuffet,
Kenneth Armitage
William Kenneth Armitage (18 July 1916 – 22 January 2002) was a British sculptor known for his semi-abstract bronzes.
Life
Armitage was born in Leeds on July 18, 1916, the youngest of three children studied at the Leeds College of Art and t ...
,
Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, draughtsman and graphic artist, as well as founder of the Gehenna Press (1942–2000). One of America's first fine arts presses, it went on to become "one of the most imp ...
,
Reg Butler
Reginald Cotterell Butler (28 April 1913 – 23 October 1981) was an English sculptor. He was born at Bridgefoot House, Buntingford, Hertfordshire to Frederick William Butler (1880–1937) and Edith (1880–1969), daughter of blacksm ...
,
Cosmo Campoli,
César,
Eduardo Paolozzi
Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi (, ; 7 March 1924 – 22 April 2005) was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of pop art.
Early years
Eduardo Paolozzi was born on 7 March ...
,
Germaine Richier
Germaine Richier (16 September 1902 – 21 July 1959) was a French sculptor.
Born in Grans, Richier began her studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Montpellier, in the atelier of Louis-Jacques Guigues; in 1926 she went to work with Antoine Bo ...
,
Theodore Roszak,
H.C. Westermann, and
Fritz Wotruba
Fritz Wotruba (23 April 1907, Vienna, Austria – 28 August 1975, Vienna) was an Austrian sculptor of Czecho- Hungarian descent. He was considered one of the most notable sculptors of the 20th century in Austria. In his work, he increasingly di ...
. In 1961, he invited Mark Rothko to show panels created commissioned by Phillip Johnson for
the Four Seasons Restaurant in the
Seagram Building. Rothko withdrew from the commission and the panels became the basis for the MoMA exhibit. Subsequent major exhibitions curated by Selz included
Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century. Tinguely's art ...
's kinetic, self-destroying sculpture "Homage to New York"; the first
Rodin
François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
retrospective in the United States; and a comprehensive 1965 exhibition of work by
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...
.
Selz served as Professor of Art History at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
from 1965 to 1988; at the same time, he served as the founding director of the
Berkeley Art Museum
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from ...
from 1965 to 1973. Selz brought an unorthodox and irreverent approach to his selection of artists. His daughter Gabrielle says in a 2014 interview that while he "came out to Berkeley just as Pop and Conceptual Art were ascending on the East Coast," Selz turned away from these popular movements and instead "identified with the irreverence of styles like
Funk art
Funk art is an American art movement that was a reaction against the nonobjectivity of abstract expressionism. An anti-establishment movement, Funk art brought figuration back as subject matter in painting again rather than limiting itself to th ...
," seeking to highlight the work of "ceramic artists like
Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic cr ...
howere barely considered fine artists then" or
Nathan Oliveira
Nathan Oliveira (December 19, 1928 – November 13, 2010) was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred ...
, "a figurative artist who did not follow the prevailing east coast trends."
In 1976, Selz served as project director for
Christo
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks and ...
’s ''Running Fence'', a 24.5-mile long fabric fence installed in the Marin County hills.
Selz died in Albany, California, on June 21, 2019, at the age of 100.
Selected bibliography
* ''German Expressionist Painting''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1957
* ''Emil Nolde''. New York: Museum of Modern Art/Doubleday, 1963
* ''Alberto Giacometti''. New York: Museum of Modern Art, New York/Art Institute of Chicago/Doubleday, 1965
* ''Directions in Kinetic Sculpture''. Berkeley: University Art Museum
ndthe Committee for Arts and Lectures, University of California, 1966 (with George Rickey)
* ''Theories of Modern Art: a Source Book by Artists and Critics''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968 ( with Hershel B. Chipp and Joshua Taylor)
* ''Ferdinand Hodler''. Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1972 (with Jura Brüschweiler, Phyllis Hattis, and Eva Wyler)
* ''Art in a Turbulent Era''. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Press, 1985
* ''Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History''. New York: Abrams, 1981
* ''Beyond the Mainstream: Essays on Modern and Contemporary Art''. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
References
External links
Oral history interview with Peter Howard Selz Interview with Selz conducted November 3, 1999 by Paul J. Karlstrom for the Archives of American Art.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Selz, Peter
1919 births
2019 deaths
American centenarians
German art historians
German centenarians
Men centenarians
Illinois Institute of Technology faculty
Pomona College faculty
University of California, Berkeley faculty
University of Chicago alumni
University of Chicago faculty
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
Jewish American historians
American military personnel of World War II
Historians from California
21st-century American Jews