Carl Frederick Gaertner (American, 1898-1952). Industrial Cleveland (Red), 1930. Oil on canvas. 35 x 41 inches (88.9 x 1...

Description

Carl Frederick Gaertner (American, 1898-1952)
Industrial Cleveland (Red), 1930
Oil on canvas
35 x 41 inches (88.9 x 104.1 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: Carl Gaertner / 1930

PROPERTY OF A CALIFORNIA FAMILY

Carl Frederick Gaertner was the most celebrated artist of the Cleveland School to paint heroic industrial landscapes during the 1920s. His scenes of titanic steel mills and blast furnaces along the snaking Cuyahoga River in his native Cleveland, Ohio, and similar subjects he recorded in nearby Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, earned him virtually every artistic award Cleveland could heap upon him. Before long, his reputation stretched far beyond Cleveland as he won widespread national recognition for his portrayals of the poetry and power of the rust belt's mammoth steel industry and the teeming chaos needed to service it: bridges, barges, and a vast network of railroads. His work caught the attention of Macbeth Gallery, the first New York gallery to represent American art exclusively, and which became his exclusive dealer. Macbeth mounted solo show after solo show for the artist until his untimely death at age 54.
The two industrial landscapes by Carl Gaertner in the present auction represent a significant rediscovery. Their whereabouts have been unknown since 1930, when one (Industrial Cleveland (Red)) appeared in the list of works the artist submitted to the Cleveland Museum of Art's 1930 "Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Work by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen." The father of the present owner acquired both works in Cleveland around 1930, while he was living there, and perhaps purchased them directly from the artist prior to his representation by Macbeth Gallery.




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