Artwork Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Herman Cherry (1909-1992) |
Title |
Arrangement No. 13 |
Date |
1956 |
Medium |
Oil on rag paper |
Dimensions |
15 3/4 x 20 1/2 in. |
Description |
Herman Cherry was born in Atlantic City and grew up in Philadelphia, where he studied art in a local settlement house. At the age of fifteen, he moved with his family to Los Angeles and dropped out of high school to work for 20th Century-Fox, designing blueprints for sets. Later, he studied with the noted painter Stanton MacDonald-Wright in Los Angeles. In 1930, after working his way to Europe and back, he hitchhiked to New York City and studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League, where he was a classmate of Jackson Pollock's. Back in Los Angeles by 1931, he set up a gallery at the Stanley Rose Bookstore, where he gave shows to Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish and Lorser Feitelson, among others. He had his own first solo show at the gallery in 1934. Cherry left the West Coast in 1945 and settled in Woodstock, NY. Two years later, he won acclaim with a show at the Weyhe Gallery in Manhattan of a series of wire, plastic and metal constructions he called pictographs. In the 1950s, his painting took a decisive step toward abstraction, and he showed at a number of New York galleries, including the Stable, the Poindexter, and the Tanager. In 1956, Cherry made a series of nature-inspired abstractions--of which this is an example-- while summering on Martha's Vineyard, where Thomas Hart Benton had a summer home. On August 12, Cherry received word of Pollock's death in an automobile accident and went to inform Benton, who had been Pollock's mentor. Cherry and Willem de Kooning, who was also on the island that summer, decided to charter a plane to attend the funeral and asked Benton to accompany them, but he declined, saying he couldn't take the emotional strain. Gift of Regina Cherry. |
Catalog Number |
2018.001 |
Object Name |
Painting |
Current Exhibition |
Crosscurrents: Selections from the Permanent Collection |