Description:

ARTHUR OSVER (AMERICAN, 1912-2006)
Ink on paper, signed lower left. Non-objective, monochromatic concept, double-matted behind glass, silvered frame.

About the Artist: As a young artist in the 1940s, Arthur Osver won international acclaim for his evocative depictions of the American city. And though his work evolved dramatically over the next six decades — growing increasingly fluid and gestural — that ramshackle topography remained part of his painterly DNA.

Born in Chicago in 1912, Osver briefly studied journalism at Northwestern University before transferring to the School of the Art Institute in 1931. There he met fellow painter Ernestine Betsberg, who would become his wife of nearly 70 years.

MoMA purchased Osver’s “Melancholy of a Rooftop” (1942) and included it in the exhibition “Romantic Painting in America” (1943). A fuse was lit. Over the next decade-and-a-half, Osver’s work appeared in major surveys and one-person shows; graced the covers of ArtNews and Fortune magazines; and was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Saint Louis Art Museum and Washington University, among many others.

Osver agreed to a one-year contract at (Washington) University. He stayed for two decades, and in many ways became the public face of the WashU painting program. (Betsberg also taught for a semester, before deciding that she disapproved of grades.) The couple bought a century-old home in Webster Groves.

For Osver, this newfound stability coincided with ambitious formal experimentation. Equally inspired and disconcerted by his time in Italy — with its ancient, light-filled cities, so different from urban America — Osver’s compositions grew brighter and more abstract. His brushwork became looser, his hues more saturated, his textures more varied. He painted in oils but also acrylics and even latex house paints.

Through it all, Osver retained a sense of architectural scale and structure. His “Pillar and Diagonal” paintings suggest classical building elements. The towering “Grand Palais” series recasts the famed Parisian hall as a grid on which to explore form, color and shape.

“There is mystique in places and things,” Osver observed in a 1968 exhibition catalog. “I once labeled myself essentially a landscapist. In a way I still am. Only, the landscape is becoming more and more an inner personal one.”

From Washington University's "The Source", 2019. Sight: 17" height, 23" width; frame: 26.5" height, 32.5" width

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December 11, 2021 10:00 AM CST
St. Louis, MO, US

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