Peppino Mangravite Exhibits at Lehigh University Art Gallery

Continuing our discussion of artists supported by Francis Quirk through curated exhibitions, we now look at Peppino Mangravite who was part of a two man show with Kenneth Evatt that opened on November 4, 1962.

Peppino Mangravite  

Mangravite was a well-respected painter and teacher whose oeuvre found its way into numerous museum collections. He had a semi-abstract style, yet his work was approachable and, in some ways charming in its execution.

There were several areas of potential overlap with Francis Quirk. Both were active in academia. Both had exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Both had contact with the Rehn Gallery in New York. 

In checking up on recent sales we were a bit surprised to see his paintings sell for $5,000-$10,000. This is unusual for an artist that we thought we were literally pulling back  from obscurity. 

The Senate in Session by Peppino Mangravite

Biography

Peppino Mangravite, an artist of Italian descent, created poetic works based on personal experience and observation, and filtered through his romantic sensibility. His paintings deal more with mood and sensuous effects than with description.

Mangravite was born in 1896, on Lipari, an island north of Sicily, where his father, a naval officer, was stationed. As a child he began a traditional Italian art education in Carrara. Mangravite and his family later immigrated to the United States.

1914, at the age of eighteen, Peppino Gino Mangravite settled in New York City with his father. He had already completed six years of study at the Scuole Techiniche Belle Arti in his native Italy, where coursework included the study of anatomy and Renaissance fresco techniques. Upon arrival in New York, he enrolled at Cooper Union, and by 1917 was studying under RobertHenri at the Art Students League. 

Peppino Mangravite with students

Mangravite began his teaching career - one that lasted half a century - as assistant to Hans Peter Hansen at the Hansen School of Fine Arts in New York during the academic year 1918/19. He was an involved and committed teacher who worked equally well with young children and college students. For several summers in the 1920s, he ran summer art camps in the Adirondacks for children and adults. From 1926-1928 Mangravite lived in Washington D.C., where he taught at the Potomac School. Most of his life was spent in New York where he served on the faculties of Sarah Lawrence College, Cooper Union, the Art Students League, and, most notably, Columbia University. In addition, he spent 1937-38 as head of the art department of Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and from 1940-1942 taught at the Art Institute of Chicago. Mangravite was active in professional arts and education organizations. He wrote several articles about art education and served as chairman of the College Art Association's Committee for the Study of the Practice of Art Courses, 1943-1944.

Mangravite also was a working artist; represented by Dudensing Gallery, and later Rehn Galleries, he exhibited widely throughout the United States, and, occasionally, abroad. He won a few awards, including a gold medal for mural painting at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exhibition, 1926; the American Gold Medal Purchase Prize, Golden Gate Exposition, San Francisco, 1939; Alice McFadden Eyre Medal for best print, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1946; and a silver medal for mosaic design, Architectural League of New York, 1955.

Mangravite was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1932 and 1935, and during that same period was commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department to paint murals for post offices in Hempstead, N.Y. and Atlantic City, N.J. Other commissions of note include a mural for the Governor's Mansion in the Virgin Islands, and a mosaic mural for the main altar of the Workers' Chapel, St. Anthony's Shrine, Boston, Mass. 

Family Recreation by Peppino Mangravite  Atlantic City NJ

Settlement of Hempstead by Peppino Mangravite  Hempstead, NY

Arrival of British dirigible R.34 with the first air mail in 1919 by Peppino Mangravite  Hempstead, NY

Development of Jackson Heights by Peppino Mangravite  Flushing, NY

Sponsored by Columbia University and with the assistance of the United States Information Agency, Mangravite met with art department heads of several European universities in 1955 to discuss the University's plans for a new arts center. He also interviewed eight artists - Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Giorgio De Chirico, Marino Marini, Henry Moore, Giorgio Morandi, Georges Rouault, and Graham Southerland -recording their ideas about art, life, and education.

With the passing of Covid, we were able to visit the Workers Chapel, St. Anthony's Shrine in Boston's Financial District. There we were able to obtain the following images of Mangravite's mosaic behind the altar,. It is quite nice.

Peppino Mangravite's Mosaic at the Workers' Chapel, St. Anthony's Shrine Boston, Massachusetts USA

Peppino Mangravite's Mosaic at the Workers' Chapel, St. Anthony's Shrine Boston, Massachusetts USA

Peppino Mangravite's Mosaic at the Workers' Chapel, St. Anthony's Shrine Boston, Massachusetts USA

Peppino Mangravite's Mosaic at the Workers' Chapel, St. Anthony's Shrine Boston, Massachusetts USA

Peppino Mangravite's Mosaic at the Workers' Chapel, St. Anthony's Shrine Boston, Massachusetts USA

Francis Quirk TV Star! Broadcasting Pioneer Brings Art to the Masses

Throughout his time at Lehigh University Quirk championed art and its appreciation on campus as well as the broader community. He brought many prominent and cutting edge artists to campus for exhibitions, participated in exhibitions and supported local art competitions. But, perhaps one of his most far reaching efforts to spread art appreciation would be through his involvement in television.

Philadelphia Families Enjoy Francis Quirk on Television on Friday Nights

Through our ongoing research effort we obtained information on his hosting several programs:

·       Art and I   WGLV WGPA   1956-1957

·       Its Happening There  WGLV WGPA   1957

·       These Our Own (American Art) WFIL 1955 

·       You Should Know What You Like  WFIL Philadelphia 1954-55

The first broadcast television came out of Schenectady, New York in 1928 from a General Electric facility. Television really began in 1950 when CBS was licensed to form a national network. In 1954, the first color television broadcast was made of Pasadena’s Rose Parade, but the sets were too expensive and did not enter the main stream until the mid-1960’s. During that period, most broadcast programming was in black and white during that time, so a color set was of little benefit.

Quirk was active in the early days, when the broadcasts were live. The comedian-TV-pioneer Milton Berle broadcast from 1948-1956. So, Quirk had to present well and think on his feet. The fact that he put on multiple programs in a significant market indicates that he had a reasonable to high level of proficiency.  While we cannot substantiate it, we think it is highly likely that Quirk also prepared his own material as well. 

Below we share the image of the 1956 story in Lehigh University's Brown and White Student Newspaper. 

 

Sculptor Victor Riu Exhibits at Lehigh in Show Organized by Francis Quirk

 

In March of 1962, sculptor Victor Riu would have his second show in twelve years at Lehigh University Art Galleries. At the time he was 74 years old. Works were borrowed from museums  including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and private collections.

Riu made Coopersburg, Pennsylvania world-famous by promoting the igneous blue-black granite (Gabrogrannidiorite) that is eponymous with the town. Coopersburg granite is an extremely hard material generally avoided by sculptors because of the difficulty of working with it. The stone is often compared to Egyptian basalt that has endured in sculptured form for 5000 years. The beautiful granite takes a high polish and resists staining.

Riu’s sculptures include figures of mathematical concepts such as the Moebius curve, emotions, or animals such as birds and cats. In an article published at the time Riu said his aim was to create a “fluid form pleasing to the eye from every angle.” Riu went on “Sometimes it is necessary to change the form. If a line is lost or vague, I must find it. Frequently, the raw stone suggest – but never dictates to me.”

Photos of a Riu sculpture provided by a Pennsylvania collector. 

Lehigh Professor Francis Quirk was quoted as saying “Nobody has ever handled this high-density material better than Riu. His fluid moving planes of stone seem to exceed the limitations of the material.”

Born in Trieste, Italy, in 1887, Mr. Riu studied at the Scuola per Capi d'Arte in Trieste from 1899 to 1903. Afterwards he worked in his grandfather and uncle's Studio of Fine Monuments before coming to the United States in 1906 at the age of 19. He was an ornamental stone worker on projects like the New York Public Library, the new Grand Central Station, and the Chicago Court House. It would be an interesting historical tidbit if he worked on the famous lions: Prudence and Fortitude. He continued his work in Barre,Vermont where he also ran a farm and experimented with plaster sculpture.

Still later, he became superintendent of the Montpelier  (VT.) Granite Co. whose memorials and monuments were sent throughout the U.S.  In 1922 he moved to Coopersburg and bought the Coopersburg Granite Co. The famous Coopersburg “blue-black” granite was shipped to users throughout the world.

Sculptors also came to Coopersburg to see the stone and Riu worked with many of note including Wharton Esherick, Jose de Rivera and Ahron Ben Shmuel. Schmuel’s Fairmont Park sculpture of the Boxers is made of Coopersburg granite. Rui collaborated with these luminaries on monuments to Connie Mack, Sherwood Anderson, World War II heroes and other notables. Jose deRivera also exhibited at Lehigh and is on our agenda for a dedicated blog post. 

Rhythm by Victor Riu   Photo courtesy of Woodmere Art Museum 

Riu’s sculptures are in several museum collections including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Woodmere Art Museum and numerous private collections. In addition to exhibits at Lehigh University Art Galleries and the Woodmere Art Museum he showed at galleries in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. 

Victor Riu   Resurgent Harmony 1957   Photo courtesty of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art

Victor Riu’s business continues to operate and you can learn more about them at this site- Coopersburg Granite Company.

Walter Murch Exhibits at Lehigh University and Quirk Writes Review for Bethelehem Newspaper

We continue our exploration of artists whoe showed their work at Lehigh Univeersity Art Galleries in exhibitions organized by Francis Quirk. Walter Murch's work was included in the annual exhibition of contemporary works in both 1965 and 1966. But in the spring of 1966, Murch would have a solo show at Lehigh on exhibit from March 13 through April 17. Francis Quirk reviewed the exhibit for the local paper, the Bethlehem Globe-Times.

Walter Tandy Murch (August 17, 1907 – December 11, 1967) 

Walter Murch  Self Portrait

Murch was a painter whose still life paintings of machine parts, brick fragments, clocks, broken dolls, hovering light bulbs and glowing lemons are an unusual combination of realism and abstraction. 

Murch was born and grew up in Toronto, Ontario.He attended the Ontario College of Art in the mid-1920s, studying under Arthur Lismer, a member of the Group of Seven, a group of Impressionist to Post-Impressionist painters mostly active from 1910 to 1940. Murch moved to New York City in 1927 and studied at the Art Students League of New York under Kenneth Hayes Miller and later, with Arshile Gorky at the Grand Central School of Art.

In 1929 he married Katharine Scott, and from then until 1950 Murch supported himself and his family through a number of jobs on the fringes of the art world including department-store window design, book illustration, restaurant murals, freelance illustrations (notably covers for the magazines Fortune and Scientific American) and advertising commissions while he continued painting and studying contemporary art. Other paid work included windows at Lord & Taylor, and the Viennese Roof at the St. Regis Hotel. 

April 1949 Scientific American Magazine Cover by Walter Murch

October 1949 Fortune Magazine Cover by Walter Murch

June 1947 Fortune Magazine Cover - Fine Chemicals by Walter Murch

Viennese Roof at the St. Regis Hotel New York, NY

In 1941 Betty Parsons presented Murch's first one-man exhibition at the Wakefield Gallery in New York City. When Parsons established her own gallery in the mid-1940s, Murch moved with her, mounting one-man shows every two years until his death in 1967. After 1950, he also began teaching at Pratt Institute and later at New York University, Columbia University and Boston University. In 1966, Murch had a one man show at Lehigh University under the aegis of Francis Quirk. Later that year Daniel Robbins at The Rhode Island School of Design organized Murch's first major retrospective, a year before his death from a heart attack on December 11, 1967.

Murch's style remains difficult to classify, although he has been variously described as a Magic Realist, Surrealist, Romantic Realist or just plain Realist. For subjects, he favored motors, tools and scientific equipment which would often be incongruously arranged with more traditional still life elements such as fruit, bread and fragments of rock. These mysterious and eccentric juxtapositions seem to imply poetic associations although Murch himself tended to dismiss this sort of interpretation of his work, saying of the objects he chose to paint that they were simply an excuse to paint. This response seems perfectly appropriate because the broken surface of his work gives it a visibility equal to the virtual image (the objects depicted), which themselves are depicted with undistorted clarity and geometric precision. This creates a fascinating ambiguity.

Murch's works are in numerous museum collections around the country. Both his personal art and his business commissions occasionally come up for auction.

Through the catalog published by the the Rhode island School of Design at the Walter Murch Retrospective, we were able to trace down images of two Murch paintings that were exhibited at Lehigh.

Radio by Walter Murch

Doll by Walter Murch

Portrait of the Artist's Father Ed Quirk

A relative of Francis Quirk provided us with an image of the painter's portrait of his father Edward. The painting depicts him sitting in the pew at St. Mary’s Church in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Pawtucket is located just North of Providence and was a prosperous town with a healthy middle class. It still retains a great deal of charm. 

Edward was a church stalwart, regularly taking the same place at mass, so the location is fitting. We estimate that the painting dates from around 1940 when Francis Quirk was 33 years old.

Portrait of the artist's father Ed Quirk in St. Mary's Church. Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Ed Quirk had great faith in two things: the Church and the Union. The ray of light shining in highlights a union-pin on his lapel.  One of his sons would go on to hold a significant position in the AFL-CIO.

Since Pawtucket is not too far, we decided to capitalize on the geographic proximity to go and visit this location. The Deacon at St. Mary’s graciously opened the beautiful church and allowed us to explore the space. We sought to recreate the location of the painting, which provided some interesting insights into Quirk’s technique.

The Church had changed a bit in the intervening years as the interior paint had been lightened considerably from a dark green in the painting to a more subdued, and esthetically pleasing, palette of light pastel hues. Thanks to the arrangement of windows and the station, we were able to find the site of the seating with little difficulty.

Side-by-Side Images of Portrait and Location 

When we compare Quirk’s painting with the image of the space we can see the similarities. Quirk captured the pillar perfectly and the alignment of the window and station of the cross. The light does stream in through the windows in those powerful white beams.

But there also were a number of differences. We thought the angle of our photo was too high, but the camera was held fairly low, so it seems that the painter chose to exclude the pew rails receding into the painting. Quirk modified the station of the cross relief to make it more ornate. He also simplified the shape of the pew end pieces.  

Close up of Portrait Detail  Church Pew End Pieces

Quirk changed the stained glass of the window; adding in considerably more red than in the original window. If one imagines the windows as being painted with the more translucent clear glass, the affect of the light beam illuminating the pin would have been diminished. All four of these changes were discretionary acts as none of these structural features have changed during the interim.

We looked to see if we could find the source of the image used for the window. In the back of the church there was one window with some similarity. In the image on the right one can see how the light streams in and how Quirk effectively captured it in the portrait.

Close up of Portrait Detail  Stained Glass

This visit gave us insights into Quirk's technique in that he was not ironclad in holding to a view to paint reality. Instead he added, subtracted and tweaked the world to enhance its beauty. 

We cannot thank Deacon Patrick enough for his hospitality and support. If you are ever in Pawtucket and want to see a beautiful church St. Mary’s is well worth a visit.  When one is enthralled by the great beauty created in response to faith, one cannot help but feel the touch of God just a little bit. Below are a few other photos of the church.

Entrance of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Altar of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Interior of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

St Cecilia iplays the organ n center of stained glass above the entrance of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Penguin Painting by Francis Quirk

Through a relative of Francis Quirk, we received an image of a painting of penguins.  We were a bit surprised to see this particular painting as we had not seen cold or wintery images in his work with one exception. It seems ironic that a man who owned homes in Maine and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania seemed to have an aversion to paintings with snow. 

Adult Penguin and Chick by Francis Quirk

The painting depicts a parent penguin with a chick in an icy enviroment. The painting has four basic tones- white, beige, black and blue. The execution is typical of Quirk's painting with well executed line and attention to detail. 

We wonder if there might be some symbolism of the birds in the image that is relevant to his family.

Addendum

As it turns out the painting was executed at the request of Francis' daughter Ada-Lee. So the parental-offspring relationship may indeed reflect the personal affinity between the consignor and the artist. 

Francis Quirk's One-Man Show at the Women's City Club of Philadelphia

One thing we have learend about Francis Quirk is that he was prolific. As we have built our image library we have been amazed at how many paintings and images of his paintings have surfaced. They continue to emerge on a monthly basis. We have posted rather substantial preseentations of his work on slideshare and the production of an updated omnibus presentation is long overdue. The description of the paintings at a 1946 one man show lead us to conclude that there are many more waiting to be discovered. 

In 1946,  Quirk was 39 years old and teaching at Ogontz College, a prestigious school for girls. He was active in the Philadelphia art community.  And in February his one man show opened at the Women's City Club of Philadelphia. 

Philadelphia Inquirer Write up of Francis Quirk's one man show. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer covered the opening in its Sunday Arts Column describing Quirk as being "frequently represented at exhibitions" so he must have been actively promoting his work.  The exhibition consisted mostly of oils with protraits of boys reading, women and a military man.  He also included people painting in a landscape and a still life. We have only found one still life by Quirk, although he was adept at painting objects including plants in many of his portraits. 

The still life included two bits of Quirk humor. The first is the inclusion of an image of another  Quirk painting in the still life. He famously did this in his self-portrait of his painting of Edgar Lee Masters that is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. (You can see it and a discussion here.) The second was the nature of the painting reproduced in that it featured dogs near a car tire  and was entitled "Going for the Mail."  We have begun searching for the painting, but thus far, it has been fruitless.