Theodore Fried. Pivotal Moments in Twentieth Century Art

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1 Pivotal Moments in Twentieth Century Art

2 The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art 2021 East 71st Street Tulsa, Oklahoma Created with collaborative effort by the staff of the Museum: Drew Diamond, Executive Director Dr. Karen York, Editor, Curator, Graphic Designer Charles Taylor, Preparator Melissa Schnur, Development Director Tracey Herst-Woods, Administrative Assistant, Education Coordinator Cathey Wilson, Volunteer Coordinator 2014 The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Front Cover:, In the Window, oil on canvas

3 Pivotal Moments in Twentieth Century Art The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art June 9 - September 7, 2014 Exhibit Sponsors The Sharna and Irvin Frank Foundation George Kaiser Family Foundation Ralph and Frances McGill Foundation The Kirschner Trust, Untitled landscape, ca , (above)

What makes one artist famous and not another? Is it the convergence of time and place, or the remarkable talent seen in the body of work created by the artist over a lifetime?

4 What makes one artist famous and not another? Is it the convergence of time and place, or the remarkable talent seen in the body of work created by the artist over a lifetime? In this new age of instant imaging, blogs, sharing and pinning, an artist must become a relentless self-promoter to achieve fame in his/her lifetime. But what of those who did not? Their work is stored away, or inhabits the personal spaces of their admiring patrons, to wait until the light of history shines once again on the art they lovingly created. In the spirit of rediscovery, The Sherwin Miller Museum presents the work of. The Museum was offered a rare opportunity in 2005: the gift of 1200 works of art, a lifetime s retrospective from a Hungarian Jewish artist, stored away in a dark and dusty storage room in New York City for twenty-five years as it awaited a place in an art museum. The work was offered to a number of great museums: The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney, The Jewish Museum, and they all wanted to take five or ten paintings, but none would make room for the entire body of work. The Theodore Fried Trust, a group of Fried s friend entrusted with finding a museum home for the collection, approached the Sherwin Miller Museum offering the work as a gift. The Museum accepted the gift, and we embarked on this journey of discovery.

5 Tivadar (Theodore) Fried was one of five children from the second marriage of Samuel Fried, a jeweler in Szeged. Mr Fried was a successful businessman, but died suddenly when Tivadar was only nine years old. Tivadar awoke that night and got out of bed to see what was making a noise. He crept downstairs and found, to his horror, the body of his father laid out for funeral preparations. Tivadar never forgot that night, and spent the rest of his life returning to it in his paintings. The two Fried families underwent some economic hardships after Samuel Fried died, and the reduced circumstances augmented the strife between the two families. Mrs. Fried paid close attention to her children s choices of future professions. She wanted Tivadar to study medicine, but he was interested in painting, music, and horses. Family Portrait ca After spending time with Lilly Baranyi, an aspiring pianist, Tivadar felt his talents were more suited to art, and applied to the Budapest Academy of Art for a scholarship. Fried said about his years at the Academy, I took a job carrying coal; sometimes I ate. He worked for a print shop until his professor, Gyula Rudnay, found Fried a patron. It was a brief respite from his life as a starving artist. Those students deemed talented enough were encouraged to leave Budapest and study in Vienna or Paris, the center of the Continental art world in the 1920s. In a threadbare suit, clutching a German dictionary, Fried set off to find a place in the European art world.

6 went first to Vienna, and then on to Paris. Arriving in mid-1923, he found the community that would sustain him; a group of artists from Hungary and other eastern European countries, most Jewish, who met at the Cafe du Dome in Montparnasse. They would become known as the School of Paris. Untitled ca Arriving in Paris just before his 23rd birthday, Theodore Fried set up a studio in Montmartre. His first year in Paris was lonely and frustrating; he did not speak French and had no friends in the city. Several galleries accepted Fried s paintings, and soon his work was included in the salons of the day that featured the work of modern artists such as Chagall and Soutine. His circle of friends included sculptor Jacques Lipchitz and photographer Andre Kertesz. But Fried was also invited to exhibit with a new movement of artists; one called The New Generation. These artists joined the School of Paris in the mid-1920s, after it had moved from Montmartre to Montparnasse. They were more politically active, and were distanced by a generation from the early modernists such as Picasso. Like Fried, they took what appealed to them from the modern movements of the early 20th century; Cubism, Fauvism, and Expressionism, but their work seemed to be a synthesis of elements rather than a singular extension of these movements. Fried s work in the 1930s, for example, included elements of expressionism, of cubism s geometric patterns, and of a modernistic realism, but also looked back to conventions of Renaissance portraiture. His work was concerned first with line and form, but progressed slowly to an exploration of color and light.

7 During the 1930s, before WWII, Fried married and had a son. Family life was wonderful, and his wife Anne helped support his career. But as events in Germany affected the Jews of Europe, Fried s wife and son left France for the USA. Fried, who could not get a visa, left Paris for the south of France, hiding and working for the French Underground until he also was able to come to the USA. Upon his arrival in New York, Fried worked toward establishing his career in America. He left behind, in the care of a family in Toulouse, most of his body of work done in Paris. he did not recover those paintings until However, he forged ahead, and became a successfully exhibiting artist in his new home. He had numerous one-man exhibits in the USA, and was included in shows at the Whitney. ca He met and married his second wife, Maria, and together they established an art program for underprivileged children at the Hudson School in new York; a program still in operation today. After the trauma of the Holocaust, his career destroyed in Europe, the loss of most of his family to the Nazi Final Solution, Maria helped Theodore learn to live with his losses and to begin again. Perhaps, like the gardener and teacher she was, she planted new seeds for Theodore and taught him to nurture his new life. Theodore and Maria lived and worked together in New York and at their home in Otis, Mass. for the rest of their lives, teaching, painting, entertaining, and playing music for the pleasure of all who came to know them.

8 Selections from the Exhibition Young Girl with Pinwheel, 1923 Nun, Oysters, Gift of the Trust

9 Selections from the Exhibition Carousel, (left) Self-portrait, 1940 Pastel drawing Self-portrait with Risto, 1932 Gift of the Trust

10 Selections from the Exhibition Untitled landscape, ca Cyclists, ca Gift of the Trust

11 Selections from the Exhibition The Jazz Singer, ca Untitled landscape, ca Gift of the Trust

12 , Hungarian/American The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art 2021 East 71st Street, Tulsa, OK Open Monday-Friday 10-5, Sunday 1-5

H u d s o n R i v e r S c h o o l

H u d s o n R i v e r S c h o o l A r t S t y l e s I am Mr. Lanni, Art Teacher at Columbia Middle School. I will lead you through this presentation There are many different styles of art and many artists that worked in each style. This