Maude Kerns

Maude Irvine Kerns
Born (1876-08-01)August 1, 1876
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Died August 19, 1965(1965-08-19) (aged 89)
Eugene, Oregon, U.S.
Nationality American
Alma mater Columbia University
University of Oregon
Movement Avant-garde

Maude Irvine Kerns (August 1, 1876– August 19, 1965) was an American avant-garde artist. Born in Oregon to pioneer parents, Kerns was raised in Portland, and went on to study fine arts at the University of Oregon and arts & education at Columbia University in New York City.

Her works were exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, National Gallery of Art, and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles,[1] and earned Kerns considerable notoriety among the abstract movement in New York. She later taught art at the University of Oregon as well as at high schools in Corvallis and Seattle, Washington before her death in 1965.[2]

Biography

Kerns was born in 1876 in Portland, Oregon, where she was raised by her pioneer parents. After high school, she graduated from the University of Oregon and the California School of Fine Arts. She moved to New York City in 1904 to attend Columbia University, where she received a second degree in fine arts and education under the guidance of Arthur Wesley Dow.[2] After spending time traveling through Asia and Europe seeing the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee and others from the avant-garde art movement, as well as a stint with renowned art teacher Hans Hofmann, Kerns returned to teach art at the University of Oregon in Eugene where she was named head of the Arts Department..[1] She remained until her retirement in the 1940s. Many of her early works were destroyed during a fire at the art school.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, Kerns made a name for herself in the world of abstract art, painting in what was called at the time the "non-objective" art movement. A spiritual woman, she embraced the art-as-spiritual expression philosophy of Wassily Kandinsky. Her paintings were recognized and championed by Hilla von Rebay, chief advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim, who purchased a number of her paintings, along with art from other standouts in the early American abstract art scene, for his Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later renamed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) in New York. Kerns died in 1965. The Eugene Art Center, to which she was a major donor, was renamed The Maude Kerns Art Center in her honor.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Denison, Paul (1988-08-12). "Kerns Art Center to Honor its Namesake". The Eugene Register-Guard. Showcase. p. 3D.
  2. 1 2 Trenton, Patricia; D'Emilio, Sandra. Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945. University of California Press. pp. 126–130. ISBN 978-0520202030.
  3. ↑ http://www.mkartcenter.org/maude.htm Referenced 2009-07-03

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, August 06, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.