SEATTLE, WA.- Frederick Holmes and Company - Gallery of Modern & Contemporary Art in Seattle, WA, announced its exclusive representation of the estate of the late American painter, Walter Quirt (1902-1968); a seminal artist most of the art world had forgotten.
"Walter Quirt: Works on Paper- A Curated Survey of Paintings on Paper, 1956-1964", an important grouping of the artists later work is currently on exhibition at the gallery. This show is the gallery's second major Quirt survey, the first being a major retrospective in May 2015, "WALTER QUIRT: REVOLUTIONS UNSEEN", featuring 30 paintings on canvas from 1936-1964.
Both shows mark the first time these works have been seen or available for 35-50 years.
Quirt, a WPA painter and progressive social activist, was one of the most prominent and critically lauded artists of his day, pioneering the "Social Surrealist" movement followed by Louis Guglielmi, James Guy, and David Smith. Their innovative use of Surrealist-inspired automatism would also prove to be an important precursor to the New York School. Quirt's work caught the eye of legendary New York art dealer, Julien Levy, renowned for his representation of some of the most significant of the European avant-garde. In 1936, Levy gave Quirt his first solo show describing the artist as a "radical painter."
Robert Coates, critic for the New York Times, described Quirt in 1943 as "the most impassioned artist alive today." and later wrote the catalogue for the solo retrospective of Quirt that toured the US between 1960-1962, sponsored by The American Federation of Art. Quirt was an important part of the emerging American avant-garde, like his best friend, Stuart Davis, and colleagues Romare Bearden and William Steig, as well as contemporaries, Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes, and Arshile Gorky; and included in the seminal publication, "Abstract and Surrealist Painting in America", written and published by Sidney Janis in 1944.
Walter Quirt left New York in 1944 to accept a teaching position, ultimately at the University of Minnesota, while continuing to exhibit in NYC through 1959. A solo retrospective, sponsored by the American Federation of Arts with a grant from the Ford Foundation, toured the U.S. between 1960-1962. Walter Quirt passed away in March 1968.
With the exception of a retrospective sponsored by the University of Minnesota in 1980, Quirt's work remained in the possession of the family, due to the wishes of his widow, Eleanor Quirt, for the next 35-50 years. Over the decades that followed, without gallery shows, museum retrospectives, or auction records of any note, Quirt slowly slipped off the radar of collectors, critics, and writers, and became forgotten to all but a critical few. Since her passing several years ago, the collection of historic paintings and works on paper has been managed by the couples' three adult sons who, with the cooperation and support of the gallery, are determined to begin the process of restoring their fathers legacy.
The "re-discovery" of Quirt began in May 2015 in Seattle at Frederick Holmes and Company Gallery with the major retrospective WALTER QUIRT: REVOLUTIONS UNSEEN, curated by Bay Area Independent curator, Travis Wilson, and featuring 30 original oil paintings dating from 1936-1964. The show was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue with introduction by Prof. Peter Selz, former MoMA curator from 1958-1965, and founder of The Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, in which he states, "...the time has come to reconsider the work of Walter Quirt."
The legacy and oeuvre of Walter Quirt represent a critical chapter in the narrative of America's emerging Modernist and Post-War artistic development, that is only now being re-discovered today.
Walter Quirt's paintings are in over 25 permanent collections including MoMA, NYC; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art; San Francsico MoMA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, CT; and recently, the DeYoung Museum, San Francisco.
