John Grabach (1886-1981) American
Medium: Oil on canvas
Image Size: 27” x 33”
Frame Size: 39” x 45”
Signature: Signed lower left with an "A.N.A." signature
Price: $8500
Biography/Statement
John Robert Grabach was born March 2, 1886, in Newark, New Jersey (see note below).[3] His father, also named John Grabach, was a jeweler; his mother, Genoveva (Eva), was a homemaker and, later, a dressmaker. He was their only child. At the age of 10, he showed an affinity towards drawing, carefully copying illustrations from books.
Grabach’s first formal art training began at an early age with Albert Dick in Newark. By age 14, he was studying in Orange, New Jersey with August Schwabe, who introduced Grabach to the Newark Sketch Club. In 1904, at age 18, Grabach took employment with a silverware manufacturer, where he first worked as a machinist and later as a designer. Grabach continued to paint and draw in his spare time, and he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York where, commuting from New Jersey, he took night classes, studying with Kenyon Cox, Frank V. DuMond, and George Bridgman.
In 1912, Grabach, now in his mid-20s, moved from Newark to rural Greenfield, Massachusetts, where he resided for three years. Although he continued to work as a silverware designer — for the firm Rogers, Lunt and Bowlen — his primary interest became his art. During this time, he painted — in a style not unlike that of John Twachtman’s — several impressionistic winter landscapes of the Connecticut River and New England countryside. His Banks of the Connecticut River, shown at the National Academy’s 1914 Winter Exhibition, was selected for inclusion in the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco, a singular honor for a generally unknown artist.
Returning to New Jersey in 1915, Grabach aggressively strove to increase his visibility in art circles by exhibiting widely. In close touch with artists active in New York City, he developed an affinity for the Ashcan artists’ street scenes and was particularly intrigued by the work of John Sloan and George Bellows.[4] During his daily trips into the city, he became fascinated with the “washdays” of Tuesdays when tenement apartment dwellers strung their laundry on lines from buildings and trees. It was in these wash-day scenes where Grabach found a theme that satisfied his artistic expectations. Notable works of this period, which encompass aspects of Americanism, social relevance, contemporariness, and visual stimulation, include the paintings Wash Day in Spring (1921) and East Side, New York (1924).
In the 1920s, the painting of urban landscapes engrossed Grabach, and he took a studio in Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Bridge. It was around this time his work began to garner increasing attention. In 1924, he was the recipient of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Peabody Prize. As the 1920s waned and the Great Depression unfolded, Grabach’s breezy, decorative urban scenes began to evolve.[5] Increasingly concerned by social conditions, his paintings became more melancholy and political, often featuring a somber palette of grays, dark greens, browns, black, and muted reds. The paintings The Lone House (1929), The Fifth Year (1934) and The Horizon (Arising) (1935) exemplify this directional shift toward the more serious and personal. The brightness and festivity of his early work was no longer, replaced by themes of cynicism and human anonymity. In 1928, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted a solo exhibition of his work.
Artist Profile Page: Grabach, John / Categories:
Other Available Works by this Artist:
Similar Works