Charles Green Shaw
1892 – 1974
“Flotilla” |
Biographical information from
V. M Mecklenburg exhibition catalogue – The Patricia and Phillip
Frost Collection : American Abstraction 1930 – 1945
published for the National Museum of America Art by the Smithsonian
Press.
Charles Green Shaw was a 1914 Yale graduate who completed a year of architectural studies at Columbia University and did not begin to paint until his late thirties. He studied in 1927 with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in New York and also privately with George Luks.
After initial study with Benton and Luks, Shaw continued his artistic education in Paris by visiting museums and galleries. During the first week of a 1932 trip, he surveyed thirteen galleries, and was particularly impressed by the work of Cezanne and Picasso. From 1930 to 1932, his paintings evolved from a style imitative of Cubism to one inspired by it through simplified and more purely geometric.
Shaw was also a poet, novelist and journalist which allowed him to promote his ideas and the emerging themes in painting in New York City from the 1930’s on. He earned a respectable reputation among individuals and galleries securing a solo exhibition at Valentine Gallery in 1934 and in 1935. He became an advocate for American Abstract Art as well as a founding member of the American Abstract Artists.
Evolving from a strict geometrical format of polygon paintings he softened his edges and modulated color in later works beginning in the 1940’s. The current painting on view at Bert Gallery, “Flotilla” is from this later painting period in his life. For further information on the painting contact the gallery.