Died 27 March 1985, Chelsea, New York City, New York, United States | ||
Bernard Childs (1910-1985) was an artist who worked in Paris and New York. He was primarily a painter and printmaker, and pioneered the direct engraving of metal plates with power tools. As a kind of counterpoint to his many layered work, which is often symbolic and a fusion of abstraction and figuration, in 1959 he also started painting portraits. Childs' formal interests were line and space, light and color, and the dialogue of contrasting elements.
Contents
Life
Childs wrote, "My work is to make pictures." He first found his vocation in high school, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where his Russian immigrant parents had moved the family from his birthplace, Brooklyn. In 1928, a scholarship took him to the University of Pennsylvania. He left two years later for New York where he worked by day and studied at night with Kimon Nicolaїdes at The Art Students League in New York. He also had the luck to meet the great Danish silversmith Peer Smed, from whom he learned his love of metal.
The economic and social problems of the 1930s took Childs away from his work as an artist, until he began drawing again in the South Pacific while serving as a quartermaster aboard the destroyer escort USS Wesson, during World War II. Childs survived a Kamikaze attack and, at war's end, two years of intermittent hospitalization after returning to New York. His recovery was complete by 1947, the year he studied with Amédée Ozenfant, who became a good friend. In 1951, thanks to the G.I. Bill, he sailed for Italy where he began his full-time life as an artist. It was there that he met and became friends with Alberto Burri and Enrico Baj.
Following a year in Perugia and in Rome and his first solo exhibition, at the venerable Galleria dell'Obellisco, Childs settled in Paris, realizing his first mature painting at age 42 and quickly becoming part of the European vanguard. He was included in many exhibitions of the Paris salons, various galleries such as Ariel and Iris Clert, Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal and the free floating group Phases along with Alechinsky, Baj, Cousins, Ernst, Fahlström, Fontana, Lam, Jaffe, Pederson, Soulages, Yasse Tabuchi, and Tajiri. He was championed by the French art critics Pierre Restany and Édouard Jaguer, and the Swedish art historian and curator Ragnar von Holten.
By 1959 he was in Documenta II and had his first solo museum exhibition, of paintings and prints, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. It was in early 1955, after a month in December 1954 at Atelier 17, that he had signed his first editions of prints and begun pioneering the direct engraving of metal plates with power tools for which he is well recognized. Childs was also one of the first post World War II Western artists invited to show in Japan where he had two exhibitions, of paintings and of prints in 1960 and 1961 respectively at the Tokyo Gallery, and received the Museum of Western Art Award at the 1961 Tokyo International Print Biennial.
From 1966 to 1977, Childs commuted between his Paris studio and his New York studio at the Hotel Chelsea. In 1969, a retrospective of his 1960's paintings, prints and engraved acrylic light sculptures was held at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY. This exhibition was the occasion for the first public view of his light sculptures - laminates of engraved sheets of acrylic lit from below - an experiment with light and color that he began the same year and continued through part of the 1970s. Although a stroke in 1978 interrupted his career, Childs never stopped drawing and soon resumed painting, remaining in New York until his death at age 74 in March 1985.
Although he exhibited extensively in group shows, Childs was essentially a loner. A renowned curator once called him a "rogue artist", one who cannot be defined by a category, a group, or a decade. Often a fusion of abstraction and figuration, at times paralled by portraiture, his is a body of work rooted in the second half of the 20th century and whose ongoing appeal defies time.
Formal interests and underlying stories
Underlying Childs' art is a story of survival – of war, of environmental disaster - expressed with consummate craftsmanship and an ever renewed search and invention in many mediums. Ancient insect species became a favorite symbol of survival. He drew their movements and strength up close and even sent them in his 1970's paintings to explore outer space for a new home, should planet Earth no longer support life. Survival of the planet and above all, survival of life in no matter what form it took, was a big concern. Creation myths, world myths, certain literary myths were close to his heart.
Childs' formal concerns were line and space, light and color, and the dialogue of contrasting elements related in time but often projecting different spatial environments. Portraiture and figuration of one kind or another are ever present, overtly or woven into abstractions. Childs took a sensual pleasure in his materials and a sensual, witty approach to many of the visual stories he told. His erotic stories of love are tender and sometimes funny. Danger is reflected in both his memories of war and his warnings of future dangers such as nuclear holocaust.
Most influential travels
Solo Exhibitions
2017 - Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art, New York,
2013 - Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2012 - Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
1994 - Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
1994 - Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
1988 - Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
1986 - Galerie Alfred Kren, Cologne
1985 - Palazzo Soriani, Biblioteche Pubbliche Comunali, Milan
1982 - Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu
1973 - New Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York
1971 - Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1969 - Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY
1968 - Boston Public Library, Boston
1967 - Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm
1966 - Weyhe Gallery, New York
1964 - New York University, New York
1964 - Galerie der Editions Rothe, Heidenberg
1963 - Transair, Malmo
1962 - Galerie St Germain, Paris
1961 - Roopa Gallery, Bombay
1961 - National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
1961 - Académie des Beaux Arts, Djogjakarta
1961 - Academy of Fine Arts, Bangkok
1961 - University of Hawaii, Honolulu
1961 - Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo
1960 - Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo
1959 - Galerie Ariel, Paris
1959 - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
1958 - Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal
1958 - Print Club, Philadelphia
1958 - Galerie Inge Ahlers, Mannheim
1957 - George M. Wittenborn, New York
1956 - Nordisk Kunsthandel - Galerie d'Art Moderne, Copenhagen
1956 - Galerie Kléber, Paris
1955 - Zimmergalerie Franck, Frankfurt-am-Main
1953 - Galerie Breteau, Paris
1952 - Galeria Obelisco, Rome
Selected Group Exhibitions
2016 - BLACK & WHITE: Modern and Contemporary Positions, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2013 - American Gestures: Abstract Expressionism, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
2013 - Atelier 17: Women Artists and Avant-Garde Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
2012 - Paper Bend, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2010 - Galaxy Cosmos, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2009 - The Pull of Experiment: Postwar American Printmaking, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.
2007 - Options within Realism, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2006 - Abstract Expressionist Prints from the Charles Randall Dean Collection, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, New York.
2005 - Sets, Series, and Suites: Contemporary Prints, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2003 - Expressive Impressions, Three Decades of Abstract American Prints, Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens,Jacksonville, FL
2003 - Mid-Century Graphics, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
2001-2003 - The Stamp of Impulse Abstract Expressionist Prints, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester; Traveled to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston
1999 - Omens of Millenium, Pacifico Fine Art, New York
1990 - A Spectrum of Innovation, Color in American Printmaking 1890-1960.Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
1985 - The Spontaneous Gesture, Australian National Gallery, Canberra
1982 - Treffpunkt Parnass, International Avant-Garde at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, 1949-65: Goethe Institut, Paris; Musées de la Ville de Bourges, Bourges ; Goethe House, London and Edinburgh.
1976 - New York '76, Riksutstalliningar, Stockholm and elsewhere in Sweden
1976 - Tokyo International Print Biennial,Tokyo
1967 - Premio International Biella per l'incisione, Biella
1966 - Whitney Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1962/1960 - International Prints, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio
1960/59/58 Galérie Ariel, Paris
1959 - Documenta II, Kassel
1958 - Americans in Europe, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Beloit, Racine
1958/1957 - Galérie du Dragon, Paris
1955 - Peintres américains en France 1955 oeuvres récentes, American Legion Paris Post No. 1, Paris
1955 - Exposizione Il Gesto, Rassegna Internazionale delle forme libere, Galeria Schettini, Milan