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Harold Anchel

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Harold Anchel (September 4, 1912 - April 1, 1980) Born Anchel Harold Rosenberg on September 4th, 1912, Harold lived as a child on Third Street just east of Second Avenue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His parents were both Romanian. His father, Hyman Rosenberg, was from Bucharest and his mother, Rose, was from Dorohoi, just northeast of Bucharest near the Ukrainian border. Harold had an older brother, Julian, and a sister named Harriet, who was 14 years younger.

Harold was always interested in art, even as a child. To the right is a drawing he gave to his mother as a young teenager. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School and probably did well, as we know he earned a 100 on his Algebra Regents, but it is possible he left school in his senior year.

At this point, Harold left the family home and moved in with a friend who went on to be an architect. In time he would return to the apartment on Third Street. From 1930-1932, he attended the National Academy of Design[1] on 109th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

After that, he performed in the New Dance Group for a while. "Established in 1932 by six young Jewish women on the Lower East Side of New York City. New Dance Group (NDG) trained leaders of the American dance through the twenty-first century. Founded with the desire to combine radical left-wing politics with modern dance, NDG proclaimed in its first anniversary bulletin in March, 1933: Dance is a Weapon of the Class Struggle." The NDG performed at rallies and marched during protests. They performed with other groups led by Martha Graham, Mary Wigman, Edith Segal, Anna Sokolow, Hanya Holm, and Helen Tamiris. The performers followed theatrical scripts published in The Workers Theatre magazine and collaborated with the Musicians’ League. The inspiration for works began with dance improvisation based on social themes such as Strike (1932). It seems possible that these experiences set the stage for the subject matter of Harold’s later lithographs during the WPA period.[2]

WPA[edit]

In 1937 Harold, then Harold Anchel Rosenberg, applied to the WPA. In order to apply he said he had to change his name as only 2 family members were allowed to be in the WPA. He dropped his last name and flipped the order of the other two, becoming Harold Anchel. His first job in the WPA was counting chickens, but he was soon accepted into the arts project because of his interest in art and dance. He learned how to make lithographs and soon became the youngest member of the lithography project.[3]

He produced well over 25 lithographs for the project. The Metropolitan Museum of Art now owns 17 of them.[4] His subject matter included portraits (often of family members or friends) and city scenes. He portrayed outdoor scenes in parks and recreation areas and indoor scenes in restaurants, theaters, and in the subway. His style was Social Realism and perhaps his experience in the progressive dance group performing in works like Hunger, Strike and On the Barricade, enhanced this view of life.

A workshop equipped with work-tables, and the presses necessary for printing, has been established at 6 East 39th Street in New York. Sixty-one men and women had been assigned to work there, with materials provided by the Federal Government, to make lithographs, etchings, wood engravings, linoleum cuts and drawings. Their work, when finished, would be allocated to museums, schools, hospitals, and other tax-supported institutions at a nominal price. The price covered only the cost of the materials used. Thus the project was in part self-liquidating. Through this nominal charge for the prints the workshop was expected to generate a small income in order to offset federal spending. the WPA was wary of being accused of spending money unwisely and had wished to publicly advertise their prudent economic strategies.

At the workshop, artists were given the opportunity to work side by side with some of the greatest contemporary printmakers, such as Stuart Davis, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Adolf Dehn, Louis Lozowick, Boris Gorelick, Jack Markson, Raphael Soyer, Isaac Soyer, and Samuel Margolis. Anthony Velonis was part of the project and brought the art of fine art silk screen to the WPA. Harold in the early 50's worked as a fabric designer and used this technique which he must have learned from Velonis.

1939 World's Fair[edit]

The Works Progress Administration hosted a building at the New York World's Fair, 1939-1940, featuring "documentary presentations of the achievements of the Works Program as a temporary alleviation of mass unemployment." Exhibits included live demonstrations of wool spinning and weaving, wood carving, garment work, and pottery making; the WPA's Contemporary Art Building displayed nearly 1000 works of art by living American artists. The building included an open courtyard and bandshell for music and theatrical performances, as well as a small indoor theater which presented short plays created as part of the Federal Music and Federal Theatre projects. Two visitors' books record the names and addresses of visitors to the WPA building, as well as their remarks on the exhibits. Also included are an undated list of books relating to unemployment, ostensibly compiled by WPA staff members, and key plans of the building -[5]

Harold Anchel participated in this exhibition by demonstrating the art of lithography.[6]

40's[edit]

He met his wife, Marie Snydover, in the mid 30's and and they married in 1938. (Lithograph of her knitting) Marie was not an artist, but was from a theatrical family. Her father Leon was a Yiddish actor in London where Marie was born, and had toured with a Yiddish theater company to South Africa before the family decided to move to The US in 1922. Her younger sister, Nina Dova, was a dancer in the USO during the war who became a concert artist and later an actress. She had a beautiful soprano voice and played classical guitar. Marie taught school and eventually became the director of the School of the Jewish Guild for the Blind in New York. They lived in a apartment on 8th street with the soon to be film director Nicholas Ray and his wife Jean Evans a writer.

Nicholas Ray is best known as a Hollywood director whose movies include Rebel without a Cause, Johnny Guitar, Bigger Than Life, In a Lonely Place, Bitter Victory, They Live by Night, and Party Girl. Ray produced and directed radio

Ray in the late '30's, along with Alan Lomax, traveled around the south and recorded folk musicians for the Library of Congress. The collaboration proved successful, and in the early 40's Lomax and Ray were hired by CBS to produce a regular evening program. It was sometimes broadcast from the Anchel's kitchen.

The program, Back Where I Come From, 1940–41. was an entertainment program featuring Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Leadbelly, the Golden Gate Quartet, Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger as permanent members.

WWII[edit]

In 1943, Harold was drafted. He entered the army and was an artist in residence. He first was assigned to paint insignias on planes and buildings. He soon was re-assigned to the Camouflage Battalion unit in Walterboro, South Carolina, where he designed, built, and clothed, puppets that were then used to teach camouflage techniques to visiting troops who were going overseas.

They performed a show about safety, illustrating what would happen to a soldier were he to be careless. The puppet Harold operated was able to take a cigarette from his pocket and light it. Of course, the enemy saw this and shot him as the soldier wasn't supposed to light a match outside.

Marie became pregnant while Harold was in the army and eventually went back to New York to give birth. On July 12, 1945, just prior to the end of the war, she gave birth to David. Harold was traveling from down south at the birth but saw the baby early on the 13th when he got to the hospital.

Soon Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshoma and Nagasaki and the war ended. Harold was discharged from the army and came back to New York to join his family. They lived in a small apartment on 12th st. between 2nd and 3rd avenue and remained there for the next 21 years.

Art Students League[edit]

When he left the army after the war, he entered the Arts Students League under the GI bill while working at Sachs Furniture as a window dresser and later as a textile designer and draftsman for an architectural firm.

In the years after World War II, the G.I. Bill played an important role in the continuing history of the League by enabling returning veterans to attend classes. The League had a great influence on innovative artists, fostering many of the Abstract expressionists and Pop Artists including Lee Bontecou, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Held, Eva Hesse, Roy Lichtenstein, Donald Judd, Knox Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly and many others.[7]

While at the League, Harold studied with George Grosz, Morris Kantor and Vaclav Vytlacil. Harold as a result of his teachers and the evolving art style in New York went from being a realist to an abstract expressionist. While in the Art Students League and the rest of the 50's his closest friends and colleagues in the arts were: Julio Girona, Benjamin de "Brie" Taylor, Stephen Antonakos, Evelyn Eller, Sylvia Stone and George Sugarman.

50's and beyond[edit]

During the 50's Harold often visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Moma and the Whitney as well as attending new shows at the 57th street galleries like Sidney Janis and Martha Jackson. These visits informed the development of his style. Early on he had been very impressed by exhibits of the works of Arshile Gorky, who appeared in group and solo shows at all of the above mentioned venues during the late 40s and early 50s, with shows at the Janis Gallery in '53 and Martha Jackson in '54. Below is an image of a painting by Arshile Gorky - Soft Night , 1947 and to the right an early abstract by Harold Anchel

In 1955 the Museum of Modern Art became the first public institution in the United States to acquire one of Monet’s large-scale water lily paintings. Harold was deeply impressed by these paintings as it appears many artist in the New York School were.

"Ever since Alfred Barr, the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, bought a Monet water lily panel in 1955 – despite his concerns that it would be too big for the museum – critics have stressed the formal and stylistic commonalities between Monet and the likes of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and their compatriots. Barr was eager to position these American artists as the natural inheritors to French modernism, and it has been said that Monet represented ‘a bridge between the naturalism of early Impressionism and the highly developed school of Abstract Art’ in New York. This school was, for a time, labelled ‘abstract impressionism’. It is largely an accident that the term did not stick, and ‘expressionist’ supplanted ‘impressionist’." -[8]

It is probably not a coincidence that as the 50's ended Harold's paintings became more lyrical and dreamy. In the 60's Harold began to lighten his style leading to even more abstraction. By the end of the 60's he began to work in a more geometric style but still with great subtlety of color. And in the 70's he moved to hard edge and geometric.

Harold painted through most of the '70s. By that time he and Marie were living in an apartment on 23rd street and 1st Avenue. He would go to his studio, now on 22nd street between Broadway and Park, every day, but his output decreased as his health declined. In 1976 he had his first bout with pneumonia and emphysema. Years of smoking two packs a day of unfiltered cigarettes had taken a toll. In addition, just at that time that the dangers of paint and the chemicals associated with painting were becoming known. Strong recommendations were issued for safety in work spaces. However, it was too late as he had spent most of his adult life for most of the day with paint and these chemicals in small, poorly ventilated, enclosed spaces. His emphysema became worse, leading to a 3 month episode where he had to be on a ventilator. Finally, in 1980, on April 1st, at the age of 67 he contracted pneumonia, was taken to the hospital and died that night from a heart attack as the stress on his body was too great. He was cremated, memorialized by friends and family and eventually his ashes were buried in the woods in Connecticut on the property of one of his former studio mates, Gloria Helfgott.

References[edit]

  1. "Cafeteria". Illinois State Museum Collections Online. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  2. Prickett, Stacey (Spring 1989). "From Workers' Dance to New Dance". Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research. 7 (1): 47–64. doi:10.2307/1290578. JSTOR 1290578.
  3. "Works Project Administration(WPA) Collection". Illinois State Museum Collections Online.
  4. "Harold Anchel". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  5. "New York World's Fair WPA administration building guest registers 1939-1940". The New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  6. "Today's Program at the Fail June 6, 1940". New York Times. NYTIMES.
  7. "The Art Students League". The Art Story. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  8. "How Monet's water lilies took root across the pond". Apollo magazine. Retrieved 20 June 2020.


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