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.
Natalie Van Vleck
Painting/Drawing
1901 – 1981
Predominantly a Modernist painter, Van Vleck also expressed herself through sulpture and design such as wood carvings, picture frames and screens.
- Biography/Description of Work
Natalie Van Vleck was born in New York City into a prominent family. She studied at the Art Students League under Ashcan artist Robert Henri and Cubist Max Weber. She was intrigued by Weber’s teachings, and in her work in the 1920s began to use Cubist and abstract ideas. Starting in 1922, she routinely traveled abroad, finding her greatest inspiration in the Polynesian Islands. Van Vleck built a live-in studio on her family’s farm in Woodbury in 1929, where she spent many hours exploring artistic ideas, and in the 1930s she began to experiment with a hard-edged precisionist style that spoke to the machine age. Van Vleck painted regionalist landscapes of the Connecticut countryside and Pacific islands. As she began to witness the suburbanization near her home, she determined to preserve the landscape that had inspired much of her work and established her property as the Flanders Nature Center.
- Sources view
- Westerman, Anne E. and Milnor, Arthur S.; Van Vleck Farm State Register of Historic Places Nomination; Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office, 2014.
Wardle, Marian; American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945; Brigham Young University, 2005. - Associated Resource(s)