Flora Crockett 1892–1979
Flora Crockett 1892 –1979
Meredith Ward Fine Art 44 east 74th street suite g new york ny 10021 tel 212 744 7306 info@meredithwardfineart.com
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Introduction In 1966, at the age of 74, Flora Crockett embarked on what would become the most productive years of her artistic career. The paintings she produced between and display a vitality, joy, and confidence that resulted from a lifetime of exploration, experience, and struggle. Crockett’s colorful abstractions, exhibited here for the first time, introduce a new name to the story of art in the th century. By the time Crockett started work on this series, she had been active as an artist, teacher, and art administrator for more than forty years. Her paintings were shown in exhibitions in Paris and New York throughout the s and s, and her position as Director of Fernand Léger’s Académie Moderne in Paris placed her at the center of one of the most influential art communities of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, her life and career over those decades had not been easy. Her personal papers tell a story of courage, tenacity, and repeated frustrations as she sought to do her work and earn a living. It is an all too familiar tale of an independent woman fighting for her place in the world. Flora Crockett was born in in Grelton, Ohio and attended Oberlin College, where she majored in art and mathematics. After graduating from Oberlin in , she attended Thomas Training School in Detroit, Michigan, where she studied to become an instructor in art. In , she took a position as Supervisor of Art in the public school district in Roslyn, New York. In Roslyn, she met Edmondo Quattrocchi, an Italian-born sculptor who was then living on Long Island and undertaking sculptural commissions in marble and bronze. The two were married in and lived for the next few years in Roslyn. In , Flora and Edmondo moved to France when Edmondo was hired to work with Frederick MacMonnies in executing his La Liberté éplorée (Liberty Weeping), a monumental memorial sculpture honoring Americans who died at the First Battle of the Marne. For the first few years in France, Flora took a position as director of L’Ecole de Champfleury, a school for war orphans at Poissy. Then, probably around , she joined the Académie Moderne, an art school established by Fernand Léger at rue Notre-Dame des Champs in Paris, and was eventually named Director of the school. Léger began teaching at the Académie Moderne in , and the following year Amédée Ozenfant joined the faculty. According to Gladys Fabre, who has written the most comprehensive history of the school to date, “a sense of freedom pervaded Léger’s classes while Ozenfant’s teaching was characterized by close attention to pictorial technique, to precision of detail, to the finish and to the durability of the materials used.” The years spent working with Léger and Ozenfant were critical to Crockett’s artistic formation.
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A full history of the Académie Moderne has yet to be written, but there is no doubt that it had a lasting and far-reaching effect on artists worldwide and for decades to come. The student body was international, including artists from Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Russia, South America, and Japan, as well as a few students from the United States (including Blanche Lazzell and George L.K. Morris). Crockett’s five-year tenure there put her in regular contact with Léger, Ozenfant, and others, who were among the most important and influential artists of the era. Photographs of Crockett’s work during these years—compositions of disparate objects pared down to their essentials—suggest that Léger’s teachings were key to her pictorial conception. She was given a one-person show at Galerie La Fenêtre Ouverte on the rue Lincoln in . She also participated in the Salon Surindépendant three years running and in the International Exposition in Paris, where her painting was awarded a bronze medal by the French government. Meanwhile, Flora’s relationship with Edmondo was becoming increasingly strained. She complained of his drinking and womanizing and by , the situation had deteriorated enough for her to initiate divorce proceedings in the French court. Their dispute dragged on for several years before her divorce was finally granted in . By this time, too, the political situation in Europe was becoming increasingly perilous, and so after thirteen years abroad, Flora left Paris and returned to the United States in December . Arriving in New York City, she took an apartment at West th Street, where she would reside for the rest of her life. Within months, she established a relationship with the dealer Blanche Bonestell, who ran the Bonestell Gallery on th Street, and consigned a group of paintings to her for sale. She also got work through the WPA to teach and direct an art program in Potsdam, New York and showed her work in the public library there in . A photograph of her taken with a group of mural artists in Brooklyn in , along with a group of mural studies retained by her family, suggest that she also participated in the WPA mural program. With the outbreak of World War II, Crockett took a job as an as an inspector of artillery parts. Government work continued after the war at the New York Naval shipyard. These and a variety of engineering and design jobs supplemented her income throughout the s and s, while she continued to exhibit her work at the Provincetown Art Association and in an exhibition of the Bombshell Artists Group at the Riverside Museum in New York City. A one-person exhibition at the Bonestell Gallery followed in , but subsequent efforts to show her work met with little success.
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The next decade or so appears to have been a fallow period for Crockett artistically, and she continued to take odd jobs to make ends meet. Still, her interest and engagement in art continued with the brief establishment of her own gallery in . She also attempted to enlist James Johnson Sweeney, Director of the Guggenheim Museum, in planning an exhibition of lesserknown contemporary artists, which would have presumably included her own work. It is hard to know what prompted her return to painting in the mids. During her years in Paris, Crockett would have had to confront the problem of whether to embrace a cubist-inspired abstraction that retained recognizable subject matter, or to abandon referential pictorial content to create a purely non-objective composition. She had worked through these ideas in her early compositions, eventually eliminating any figural remnants and paring down her imagery to a limited visual vocabulary of geometric and biomorphic forms. Perhaps because she had confronted these questions years earlier, she was able to quickly and clearly define the parameters of her work when she decided to undertake these paintings in the s. A series of sketches found in her studio show a system of working that drove her production for the next seven years. The drawings, done in sketchbooks or on any available scrap of paper, are each numbered and dated, and serve as frameworks for the paintings (fig. ). It is a method that provided infinite variation. Although the drawings at first appear random and improvisational, closer inspection reveals an innate sense of balance and structure. Calligraphic lines meander along the page, occasionally looping back on themselves. There are virtually no changes, erasures, or second thoughts. (In only one instance does she scratch out several lines to fig. 1 Study for -, 1969 eliminate them from the final composition.) The resulting shapes, sometimes shaded with cross-hatched lines to suggest color and hue, are then transposed in paint to a canvas board with a brightly colored palette of red, blue, pink, orange, green, and yellow, and only a trace of gesture. It is possible to see echoes of Léger and Ozenfant here, but Crockett eschews their static orderliness and restrained palette in favor of dynamic fluidity and exuberant color. The floating, overlapping forms simultaneously suggest flatness and depth, movement and stability. The juxtaposition of colors activates the eye. Hard edges are occasionally softened or
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modulated, and create visual vibrations as one area of color bumps up against another. The paintings are crisp and controlled, but also light and playful. There is a sense of freedom in this body of work that comes from a lifetime of experience, a sense of painting for the pure joy of it, and of allowing the forms to find themselves.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the dedication of Flora Crockett’s family members, who have been the custodians of her art and papers since her death in . Access to Crockett’s papers has been essential in reconstructing the details of her biography. Crockett’s nephew, the late Austin Hart Emery, was her great champion, and I have no doubt he would be proud of the work done by his daughter, Mary Emery Lacoursiere, to bring his aunt’s paintings before the public. It has been a privilege to work with Mary and her family to bring this exhibition to fruition. We are also extremely grateful to Isabella Rosner, who organized the Crockett papers and undertook the initial research into Crockett’s biography; and to Elizabeth Marzolla, who was responsible for all aspects of the exhibition planning and production. Rachael Modrovsky restored the paintings to their original, pristine beauty, and Chris Mason provided superb photography throughout the entire project. Finally, special thanks go to Lynn Nicholas and Sasha Nicholas for recognizing the quality of Crockett’s paintings and introducing these works to the gallery. M.E.W. 1 Gladys C. Fabre, “”Shorter Illustrated History of the Atelier Fernand Léger at the Académie Moderne -,” in Léger and the Modern Spirit (), p. . The Bombshell Group was organized by Samuel Kootz in response to a months-long debate in the summer of in The New York Times between Kootz and the Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell. According to Jewell, Kootz had lobbed “a shattering bomb” in the form of a letter to the editor which asked, “Isn’t there a new way to reveal your ideas, American painters? Isn’t it time right now to check whether what you’re saying is regurgitation, or tired acceptance, or the same smooth railroad track?” The following Spring, Kootz founded the Bombshell Group to provide “an outlet for those artists and their work, [who] by reason of current tastes, gallery conditions and insufficient sponsorship, have been unfairly neglected.” Letter to James Johnson Sweeney, December , Flora Crockett Archives.
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Chronology Born April in Grelton, Ohio. Graduates from Gelton High School. - Attends Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, majoring in art and mathematics. - Attends Thomas Training School, Detroit, Michigan to become an instructor in art. - In September, moves to Roslyn, New York, where she becomes Supervisor of Art in the Roslyn Public Schools. Remains in that position until July . - Works as draftsman for Western Electric & Robinson Construction Co. Meets sculptor Edmondo Quattrocchi ( -) in Roslyn, New York. In November they are married. - Organizes Community House for Foreign Born Americans, Greenvale, New York. Moves to France with Edmondo when he is hired to work with Frederick MacMonnies on American War Memorial. Continues studies at L'Ecole du Louvre and the Sorbonne. Takes position as director of Ecole de Champfleury, a school for war orphans at Poissy. Enrolls at Fernand Léger’s Académie Moderne at 86 rue Notre-Dame des Champs, Paris, and is eventually named Director of the school. She remains there until the school’s closing five years later.
One-person show at Galerie La Fenêtre Ouverte, rue Lincoln, Paris. Exhibits in the International Exposition in Paris, where her painting is awarded bronze medal by the French government. In March, divorce from Edmondo is finalized. Returns to United States in December. In March, sends six paintings to Bonestell Gallery, New York. As part of the WPA program, takes position as teacher / director of art school in Potsdam, New York. Exhibits paintings, drawings, and etchings at Potsdam Public Library. Takes an apartment at West th Street in New York, where she would live for the rest of her life. Works as a mural artist through WPA. - During the war years, works as an inspector of artillery parts, eventually promoted to Resident Inspector. Government work continued after the war at the New York Naval shipyard. Exhibits with Bombshell Artists Group, Riverside Museum, New York, organized by Samuel Kootz. One-person exhibition of paintings at Bonestell Gallery, New York. - Works at various sales, design, and engineering jobs.
Listed as a student at the Académie Moderne and in June exhibits her work at Galerie Aubier.
Teaches art at PPSEAWA (Pan-Pacific & SouthEast Asia Women’s Association.
The Académie Moderne closes. Her relationship with Edmondo becomes increasingly strained.
Group exhibition at Overseas Press Club of America, New York City. Begins her most active period of painting over the next eight years.
Separates from Edmondo and begins divorce proceedings. Receives letter of recommendation from Fernand Léger, stating that she was director of the Académie Moderne for five years. Exhibits in numerous Paris salons, including the Surindépendant for three years.
Dies July at St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York City.
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published in conjunction with the exhibition
Flora Crockett 1892 –1979 September – November 7,
Meredith Ward Fine Art 44 east 74th street suite g new york new york 10021 tel 212 744 7306 fax 212 744 7308 info @ meredithwardfineart.com www. meredithwardfineart.com
design The Grenfell Press, New York photography Chris Mason, Novation Media printing Permanent Printing, Ltd., Hong Kong edition of 1100 cover L-, , oil on canvas board, x inches frontispiece Flora Crockett in New York City, c. publication copyright © meredith ward fine art
Meredith Ward Fine Art 44 east 74th street suite g new york ny 10021 tel 212 744 7306 info@meredithwardfineart.com