Romare Bearden on Walter Quirt
I met Walter Quirt during the mid‑1930s. As I recall, I was out of school and had studied a bit at the Art Students League with George Grosz. Ad Bates, one of the pioneer modern dancers, who also posed at various art schools and had met a number of teachers, introduced me to Walter At that time he was living around Union Square and had a studio, apart from his apartment, on Fourteenth Street in the same building as Raphael Soyer's. He later moved to Perry Street and then to Broad Street before he left New York. We became very friendly, and I visited Walter regularly right up to the outbreak of World War 11, when I was out of the city in the armed forces. I believe that Walter and Eleanor Quirt left New York in 1944, when he accepted a teaching position in the Midwest. I corresponded with him and saw him on several occasions when he visited New York.
When I was a young artist in the thirties, Walter saw to it that I met quite a few of the more established painters and sculptors. I recall that a group of artists used to get together to talk‑as artists did‑in various places in the Village. The Lafayette, a hotel on the corner of Ninth Street and Sixth Avenue, and Romany Marie's were two such spots. There I met Abe Rattner, Stuart Davis, Paul Burlin, and Julien Levy. Walter was very much a part of the New York avant‑garde in this period. I feel, in a way, that it was unfortunate he had to leave the city. He had a magnificent place in lower Manhattan that had been designed and occupied by an architect, and there was considerable interest in Walter's work by other artists, museums, and galleries. There were also the weekly exchanges with other artists, because in no way was Walter a loner. He was stimulated by these contacts, and he gave of himself.
Walter became less interested in some of the political painters about 1937 and was beginning to look at painting in a different way, seeing painting as a dynamic expression of a doctrine. He did a great deal of reading in psychology. Quirt felt that the environment affected the work of artists in different areas of the country: Eastern artists were more nonrepresentational and artists in the West were more inspired by nature. Walter discussed scale and tempo, the energy of the painting, and the speed of the lines. He wrote well about the psychological aspects of art. I've never met an artist who saw art in the same manner as did Quirt. He had a fine, analytical mind. His own paintings and drawings were surrealistic and fanciful, very skillfully and carefully done.
Romare Bearden
New York, New York
March 1977
When I was a young artist in the thirties, Walter saw to it that I met quite a few of the more established painters and sculptors. I recall that a group of artists used to get together to talk‑as artists did‑in various places in the Village. The Lafayette, a hotel on the corner of Ninth Street and Sixth Avenue, and Romany Marie's were two such spots. There I met Abe Rattner, Stuart Davis, Paul Burlin, and Julien Levy. Walter was very much a part of the New York avant‑garde in this period. I feel, in a way, that it was unfortunate he had to leave the city. He had a magnificent place in lower Manhattan that had been designed and occupied by an architect, and there was considerable interest in Walter's work by other artists, museums, and galleries. There were also the weekly exchanges with other artists, because in no way was Walter a loner. He was stimulated by these contacts, and he gave of himself.
Walter became less interested in some of the political painters about 1937 and was beginning to look at painting in a different way, seeing painting as a dynamic expression of a doctrine. He did a great deal of reading in psychology. Quirt felt that the environment affected the work of artists in different areas of the country: Eastern artists were more nonrepresentational and artists in the West were more inspired by nature. Walter discussed scale and tempo, the energy of the painting, and the speed of the lines. He wrote well about the psychological aspects of art. I've never met an artist who saw art in the same manner as did Quirt. He had a fine, analytical mind. His own paintings and drawings were surrealistic and fanciful, very skillfully and carefully done.
Romare Bearden
New York, New York
March 1977