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.
Sewell Sillman
Education/Curation, Painting/Drawing, Printmaking
1921 – 1992
Sillman’s own work includes sinuous ink ‘wave’ drawings from the 1950s and 1960s, suggestive of undulating natural shapes; bold and vibrant paintings of the late-1950s that explore the complexity of geometrical forms and the effect of color; ‘portal’ paintings of the 1960s that expand on the use of color; and, from the late-1970s onwards, watercolors and pen and ink drawings of an increasing size that distill much of the earlier paintings into simple and graceful works of precision and light.
- Biography/Description of Work
Sewell Sillman grew up in Georgia and served in the army during World War II. After starting to study architecture, in 1948 Sillman transferred to Black Mountain College, in Asheville, North Carolina where he studied with former Bauhaus teacher Josef Albers. In 1950, he followed Albers to Yale; the latter for a teaching position, the former to obtain a BA and MFA. Sillman subsequently joined the faculty until 1966, and later taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Michigan, and finally the University of Pennsylvania from 1985 until his retirement in 1990. In 1962 Sillman and fellow-Yale faculty member Norman Ives established the print publishing company Ives-Sillman, Inc. Over the next sixteen years the company published portfolios and individual prints by many artists, including Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Ad Reinhardt, Willem De Kooning, Romare Bearden, Jean Dubuffet, Jacob Lawrence, Richard Lindner and, most importantly, the work of Josef Albers, including the two influential portfolios ‘Interaction of Color’ (1963) and ‘Formulation:Articulation’ (1972). He lived in Lyme in his later years.
- Sources view
- http://www.artesmagazine.com/2010/03/griswold-museum%E2%80%99s-krieble-gallery-features-modern-art-of-sewell-sillman/ http://florencegriswoldmuseum.org/shop/shop-sewell-sillman-pushing-limits/ http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/08/arts/sewell-sillman-67-artist-and-publisher-is-dead.html
- Associated Resource(s)
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