Walter Quirt's Art 1940‑1941
Four stylistic approaches can be distinguished in Quirt's painting from 1940 to 1941. Variations of these four styles recurred throughout the rest of his career. Each variant combined figures and environments into compositional patterns with serpentine lines and colors. This compositional device was Quirt's adaptation of the surrealist technique of automatism, a type of automatic, painterly writing on canvas that produced compositions with multiple focal points. Quirt explained why he explored several styles simultaneously in an unpublished essay, What Are Artists Afraid Of?, which dates from about 1940. With World War II already progressing in Europe, Quirt wrote that the stability of society was threatened, and this, in turn, affected the artist who was no longer able to limit himself to a single style.
One approach in Quirt's painting from 1940 to 1941 depicted figures melding into environments that resembled loops of material and jagged rocks arid foliage. Mutation 1940) and The Experience of Tragedy Yet To Come (1940); Neuberger Museum purchase, New York)(Needs Photo) related back to the early paintings shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1936 which used dramatically posed figures and backdrops that looked like stage settings.
A second direction was the introduction of more curvilinear and painterly brushstrokes into compositions with many figures and sparsely painted backgrounds, elements evident in Those Who Travel Too Fast, 1940. (Need to search for photo)
A third direction is seen in a group of paintings that derived their themes and compositions from cartoons made for an animated movie that was never produced. These paintings are: Some Fun on an EqualPlane (1940; cat. no. 22)(Need to search for photo), Early Indians in a Braxton Frame (circa 1949; cat. no. 54), / Can't Explain It All (circa 1940; cat. no. 55); two untitled paintings dated circa 1940, now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Eduard Franz (cat. nos. 59, 60): Tranquility of Previous Existence (1941; cat. no. 66); and a mosaic mural (fig. 5), now lost, which was completed for a New York hospital in 1940 under the WPA mural project.(Need to search for photos)
A fourth variant was one in which masklike forms and ribbons of color were woven into a continually moving composition. Bright colors, flatly applied, filled hard‑edged forms. This direction began with Happiness in Fast Tempo (1940; cat. no. 20)(Need photo) and continued with some variations in a group of paintings from 1942 to 1944, of which EternalPageant (1942; cat. no. 68) and The Crucified (1944, cat. no. 73) are examples. (Need to include photos)
Four stylistic approaches can be distinguished in Quirt's painting from 1940 to 1941. Variations of these four styles recurred throughout the rest of his career. Each variant combined figures and environments into compositional patterns with serpentine lines and colors. This compositional device was Quirt's adaptation of the surrealist technique of automatism, a type of automatic, painterly writing on canvas that produced compositions with multiple focal points. Quirt explained why he explored several styles simultaneously in an unpublished essay, What Are Artists Afraid Of?, which dates from about 1940. With World War II already progressing in Europe, Quirt wrote that the stability of society was threatened, and this, in turn, affected the artist who was no longer able to limit himself to a single style.
One approach in Quirt's painting from 1940 to 1941 depicted figures melding into environments that resembled loops of material and jagged rocks arid foliage. Mutation 1940) and The Experience of Tragedy Yet To Come (1940); Neuberger Museum purchase, New York)(Needs Photo) related back to the early paintings shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1936 which used dramatically posed figures and backdrops that looked like stage settings.
A second direction was the introduction of more curvilinear and painterly brushstrokes into compositions with many figures and sparsely painted backgrounds, elements evident in Those Who Travel Too Fast, 1940. (Need to search for photo)
A third direction is seen in a group of paintings that derived their themes and compositions from cartoons made for an animated movie that was never produced. These paintings are: Some Fun on an EqualPlane (1940; cat. no. 22)(Need to search for photo), Early Indians in a Braxton Frame (circa 1949; cat. no. 54), / Can't Explain It All (circa 1940; cat. no. 55); two untitled paintings dated circa 1940, now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Eduard Franz (cat. nos. 59, 60): Tranquility of Previous Existence (1941; cat. no. 66); and a mosaic mural (fig. 5), now lost, which was completed for a New York hospital in 1940 under the WPA mural project.(Need to search for photos)
A fourth variant was one in which masklike forms and ribbons of color were woven into a continually moving composition. Bright colors, flatly applied, filled hard‑edged forms. This direction began with Happiness in Fast Tempo (1940; cat. no. 20)(Need photo) and continued with some variations in a group of paintings from 1942 to 1944, of which EternalPageant (1942; cat. no. 68) and The Crucified (1944, cat. no. 73) are examples. (Need to include photos)
The Quirt Family Collection does not have any paintings from this period available
Examples of Paintings from this period.
