With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Deane Keller
Education/Curation, Painting/Drawing
1901 – 1992
Keller served as a ‘monuments man’ in Italy during World War II to protect cultural property from damage, notably Campo Santa in Pisa. He had a long academic career in the arts, influencing generations of artists. Known for his portraiture, he painted and taught in a traditional representational mode, though his work was out of fashion during the modernist period.
- Biography/Description of Work
New Haven native Deane Keller studied at Yale and earned a B.F.A. from the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1926. After three years in Rome, Keller began teaching at his alma mater in 1929. During the WPA, he painted a mural of “The New Haven Green in the Nineteenth Century” for the main hall of the New Haven Free Public Library. During World War II, he was asked by School of Fine Arts dean Theodore Sizer to serve as a fine arts officer in the U.S. Army’s Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program. He worked with a team of Italian and American soldiers to recover and protect 14th century frescoes and fragments after a mortar hit to Campo Santa in Pisa. After the war, he returned to the Yale School of Fine Arts faculty, where he taught for forty years, retiring in 1979. He was also professor emeritus of painting at the Paier College of Art and taught at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. The New Haven Museum mounted an exhibition in 2015 entitled “An Artist at War: Deane Keller, New Haven’s Monuments Man.”
- Sources view
- Keller, Deane. Wikipedia. Accessed at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deane_Keller
See references in Wikipedia.
'Deane Keller: Serving His Country in Italy; Pursuing His Art in New Haven,' a talk by William Keller, the artist's son was presented at the New Haven Museum on December 7th, 2014. Accessed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzug_o90Bs4 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/nyregion/in-new-haven-an-exhibition-on-a-yale-professor-who-helped-rescue-art-during-world-war-ii.html - Associated Resource(s)