MANFRED SCHWARTZ   (1909 - 1970)

Born: Lodz, Poland, November 11, 1909
Died: New York City, New York, November 7, 1970

Education:
The Sorbonne, Paris, France
The Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Paris, France
The Art Students League, New York City, NY
The National Academy of Design, New York City, NY
Cape Cod School of Art, Provincetown, MA
Studied with Charles Hawthorne, John Sloan, and George Bridgemen

Teaching:
The Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York City, NY
Lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY
New York University, New York City, NY
Skowhegan School of Art, Skowhegan, ME

Exhibited with Edward Hopper, Maurice de Vlaminck, Andrew Wyeth
Owned and directed an art gallery at 144 West 13th Street, New York City from 1931 to 1934

Memberships:
Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors
American Abstract Artists.

Manfred Schwartz is widely regarded as one of the great academic painters of this era.
He is listed in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

“It takes so long to become one’s self," this was one of the last things Manfred Schwartz said to his son Paul Waldo Schwartz. In his lifetime, Manfred Schwartz created a sensational body of work in oil, pastel, and in hand pulled stone lithographs. His career as a professional artist spanned fifty years and encompassed three major artistic periods.

His earliest paintings, portraits and still lifes, were created and exhibited in the 1930’s. His use of color was subdued, preferring umbers and grays to the vivid colors he used in later years. In 1940, he began to paint more abstract figures, and by the mid 1950’s through the mid 1960’s Manfred Schwartz created a series of limited edition hand pulled stone lithographs at the famed Mourlot Studios in Paris, France.

Born in Poland in 1909, Manfred Schwartz came to America in 1920, when his father, a master engraver to European royalty, was brought to New York by the Colgate Palmolive Company. As a young man, eager to experience the world, Manfred Schwartz returned to Paris to study. It was in Paris where Schwartz met and associated with some of the great masters of the 20th century, Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Roualt.

Although he considered himself an artist first and foremost, Manfred Schwartz had a well-rounded life. An accomplished musician, Manfred Schwartz played the cello and the piano. In fact, he paid for his early painting lessons with money he earned as a piano teacher. He was also a gifted writer, a wordsmith who was known to be a magnificent conversationalist. With this circle of artist and art dealer friends he often talked through the night, taking up the occasional chess game.

Henri Matisse was forty years Manfred’s senior when the two artists first met. In 1950, Matisse took Schwartz under his wing and advised him to go to Étretat, France for the light and inspiration. Manfred’s first visit to Étretat was the beginning of a stunningly beautiful body of work. He returned to Étretat in 1960. This time, rather than creating impressionist landscapes of beaches and cliffs, he created a series of pointelist paintings and drawings showing the way the light moves upon the sand and pebbles of the beach. These glorious color compositions were exhibited and sold by art galleries in New York and Paris, and purchased for the permanent collections of some of the most prestigious art museums in the world including the Guggenheim and the Whitney.

Among Manfred’s inner circle of artists were Marcel Duchamp, Manfred’s senior by 22 years, and Roberto Matta who was Manfred’s contemporary. Many of the influences by these great artists were absorbed by Manfred Schwartz however without interfering with his own particular exploration of color and light.

With a burst of creativity that carried Manfred Schwartz through the next two decades, the artist challenged himself and created several series of paintings. The work was unified by a theme of semi-abstract images.

In 1960, Manfred Schwartz created the Ring Series, images that keenly denote a Matissian influence. In the same decade, after finishing the Ring Series, Manfred moved on to the Étretat Series showing the pebbles on beach at Étretat and the way the sunlight drifts through the tiny circles creating larger concentric circles. When real light plays upon the painted light of Manfred’s Étretat Series the effect is a visual sensation of movement.

In the same decade came his geometric images of knights in armor that were created in oils and pastels. As one looks at these semi-abstract works of art one is reminded of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase and its power in creating movement. The cluster of knights in each painting have that same feeling of movement. They are classic knights in armor but thoroughly modern in composition and form. It is an intellectual game on canvas. One can imagine Schwartz sitting in the park of the Palace du Luxembourg playing a game of chess and the image forming in his mind. These images of marching knights and knights on horseback are Manfred’s last works to contain figures.

He was not an old man when he died, but Manfred Schwartz did live to enjoy a fruitful and respected art career. Manfred Schwartz passed away at the age of 61. He one of the most successful living artists in New York and was at the time of his death under contract to the renowned Knoedler Gallery in New York. The Knoedler held two posthumous exhibits, and The Rhode Island School of Design and the Whitney Museum both gave retrospective exhibitions shortly after Manfred passed.

A half a century has passed since the dealth of Manfred Schwartz, yet his work lives on. Art collectors from around the world find pleasure in the company of such a distinguished artist’s work. His work on the open market is becoming increasingly rare; the lithographs were created in very small editions, some as small as 25 pieces worldwide. Even more rare, an original oil or pastel coming into the light of an art gallery. The pastels have retained their brilliance, and the images themselves still engage the mind.

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
The Brooklyn Museum, New York City, NY
The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
The Frick Collection, New York City, NY
Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY
R The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY
New School for Social Research Art Center, New York City, NY
New York Public Library, New York City, NY
The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI
Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, NY
Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, Syracuse, NY
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
University of Minnesota University Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum, New York City, NY

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Lilienfeld, New York City, NY: 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943
Durand Ruel, Paris, France: 1946, 1947, 1949
Otto Gerson, New York City, NY: 1953, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958
Albert Landry, New York City, NY: 1962, 1963
New School, New York City, NY: 1964
Wientraub Gallery, New York City, NY: 1984
Modern Art Gallery, Boca Raton, FL: 1996

SOLO RETROSPECTIVES
The Brooklyn Museum, New York City, NY: 1961
The Whitney Museum, New York City, NY: 1971
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI: 1974
Knoedler Gallery, New York City, NY: 1974, 1978

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Brooklyn Museum, New York City, NY
Carnegie Institute, Washington, DC
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
Durand Ruel Gallery, Paris, France
Fine Art Associates, New York City, NY
The Frick Collection, New York City, NY
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
L'Enfant Gallery, Washington, DC
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
M. Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA
Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY
Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, WI
Musee' Cantini, Marseille, France
Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY
National Academy Gallery, New York City, NY
Nepenthe Gallery, Alexandria, VA
New School for Social Research Art Center, New York City, NY
New York Public Library, New York City, NY
The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, NY
Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, Syracuse, NY
St. Paul Art Gallery, St. Paul, MN
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
University of Minnesota University Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT
Whitney Museum, New York City, NY
World Art Gallery, Ladera Ranch, Orange County, CA

BIBLIOGRAPHY
New York Times, Art Critic John Canaday, April, 1963
New York Times, obituary, November, 1970
New York Magazine, August, 1971
New York Times, Hilton Kramer, 1971
New York Times, Peter Schjeldahl, September, 1971
New York Times, Hilton Kramer, April, 1974
Arts Magazine, January, 1985
Architectural Digest, November, 1987
Art & Antiques Magazine, November, 1988
Art in America, April, 1991