NICHOLAS ANGELO
FINE ART

American art of the 1930’s has recently seen a tremendous increase in interest from collectors, institutions and the public alike. One consequence of this renewed interest is the reevaluation of the many fine painters who worked with and near such figures as Grant Wood, but whose own work has been overshadowed by their better-known contemporaries. Arnold Pyle is one such artist whose achievements and work are both noteworthy and important.

The Regionalist Art movement in America shook the continent and indeed captured the attention of the art community with the unveiling of Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic at the 43rd Annual Exhibition of American Paintings at the Art Institute in Chicago in the fall of 1930. While rumblings of this movement had begun earlier through the works of artist John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, it was Wood’s works more than any other that seemed to solidify this truly American genre. For a short time, the epicenter of this cultural quake was the small country crossroads of Stone City, Iowa together with Cedar Rapids, Iowa, birthplace and lifelong home of artist Arnold Pyle.

Arnold Pyle was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on May 27, 1908. It was from Grant Wood that Pyle first received encouragement to paint during an eighth grade art class instructed by Grant Wood. After graduation from high school Pyle became Wood’s studio assistant, building frames and taking instructions. On Pyle’s 21st birthday, (1930) Grant Wood immortalized his young protégé in one of his pivotal paintings titled: Arnold Comes of Age, now held in the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The year 1930 would also be the first year in which paintings by Pyle would be publicly exhibited, taking third prize at the Iowa Art Salon Exhibition with a painting titled Church at Old Stone City. The following ten years saw Pyle completely immersed in the world of art with his works being shown in over 25 exhibitions coast to coast giving him national recognition and garnering numerous awards. For two consecutive summers (1932, 1933) Pyle was a faculty member of the Stone City Art Colony where he met and became friends with artists John Steuart Curry. When the American Federation of the Arts provided funds for an experimental gallery in Cedar Rapids, Pyle was hired as assistant to the director, a position he held for five years. He was also a member of the Co-Operative Artists of Iowa, a progressive art group in the 1930’s and was also associated with the Art Students workshop in Des Moines. In addition he assisted Wood when Wood was appointed director of the Public Works Art Project for the state of Iowa.

In a preface written by Grant Wood for a catalog of paintings exhibited by Pyle in 1935 Wood wrote: "Arnold Pyle’s work is distinguished by the courage of color. No symphonies in soft and easy grays; his paintings successfully attempt the much more difficult feat of controlling and harmonizing full intensities." At the One Hundred Thirty-fifth Annual Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition in 1936, at which Pyle exhibited the painting, "Train Moving" Thomas Hart Benton commented: "Hell, did he paint that? That was the only thing in the show!" An equal tribute lies in the fact that the artist Alexander Brook (1898-1980) bought the painting. Both Brook and Benton were on the jury for the exhibition.

At the end of the 1930’s local business owner Arthur Collins offered Pyle the position of advertising director for his company Collins Radio. Pyle thought that he could maintain his private studio and art career while maintaining a more stable living in a relative field. However with the outbreak of World War II, Collins Radio mushroomed in size making advertising somewhat superfluous and Pyle was appointed Personnel Director. With the War effort demanding his full attention, Pyle took a hiatus from painting, a break that would last until his retirement at age 60 in 1968. Almost immediately he began to paint again and produced a significant body of work in retirement. In his later work he experimented with both abstract and figural painting. His later figural painting was much more controlled and tighter that his earlier work. On June 9, 1973 and in an ironic twist of fate, Pyle was killed in an automobile accident while returning home from the 1st Annual Grant Wood Festival. Since his death there have been a number of exhibitions showcasing the work of Arnold Pyle. Now almost 70 years after his first exhibition his works are once again fulfilling the mission of painting in the way Pyle believed they should; "To be a common means of social expression such as writing, speaking or dancing." Pyle’s passion for trains and train yards was due to the fact that Pyle’s father was an Engineer on the Chicago Northwestern Railway.

-EXHIBITIONS-

Iowa Art Salon, Des Moines, Iowa 1930-1938 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1934, 1936 Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1934 Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois 1934-1935 Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri 1935 Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1936 New York Worlds Fair, New York 1939 Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Colorado Springs, Co 1941 Joslyn Memorial, Omaha, Nebraska Oakland Municipal Gallery, Oakland, California American Federation of Arts, Barr Building, Wash., D.C. University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa Carson Pirie Scott Galleries, Chicago, Illinois Increase Robinson’s Gallery, Chicago, Illinois Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa And many others.

Watercolor - Image Size: 14" X 20" ; Mat size is 20 X 26" - Framed