JOHN GRABACH (American 1886-1981)

Description

JOHN GRABACH (American 1886-1981)
Provincial Landscape I
Oil on canvas
17.5in. x 20.5in.
Signed lower right in pencil: J.R. Grabach
Framed

John Grabach was born in Newark, New Jersey on March 2, 1886. During his teen years, he joined the Newark Sketch Club and took painting lessons from a local artist. After finishing high school he went to work in the machine room of a silverware-manufacturing firm, where he was soon promoted to designer and eventually to supervisor. However, painting remained his true calling and in 1904 Grabach enrolled at the Art Students League in New York City under the guidance of Kenyon Cox, Frank V. DuMond, and George Bridgman. In 1912, Grabach moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts, where he produced some large Impressionist landscapes, not unlike those of John Twachtman.

Grabach entered a landscape in the 1914 National Academy of Design Winter Exhibition, and on its merits, was chosen to exhibit a work at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. This was a special honor for a yet-unknown artist. In 1915, Grabach returned to New Jersey and was swept up in the New York art world where he developed a keen interest in the city street scenes of the Ashcan artists John Sloan and George Bellows. Grabach began to paint scenes of everyday life on the streets, a theme that was contemporary, distinctly American, socially meaningful, and visually stimulating. His urban scenes won honors and awards from major museum exhibitions, including the Peabody Prize in 1924, the Jennie Sesnan Gold Medal at the 122nd Annual held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1927, and the William A. Clark Silver Medal at the Thirteenth Corcoran Biennial in 1932.

Grabach's memberships included the North Shore Artists Association, Gloucester, Mass., American Federation of Arts, Philadelphia Watercolor Club, Philadelphia, PA, and the Salmagundi Club, New York, NY. His work can be seen in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; IBM Corporation, Vanderpoel Art Association, and the Biro Bidjan State Museum, Russia.

Condition: Original canvas on new stretcher bars, otherwise appears to be in mint condition

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