Arnold Blanch (1896 - 1968)

The People, 1938, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 36 x 48 inches, label verso reads “348 / 89 / Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, USA / _____ The People / _______ Arnold Blanch / _______________ / Woodstock / _______________; exhibited: 1) 1938 International Exhibition of Paintings, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, October 13 – December 4, 1938 (Third Prize - $500); and 2) American Art Today, New York World’s Fair, 1939-40, no. 41; (selected) literature: 1) Jena, Jeanette, Paintings of 11 Nations Annual Carnegie Show Proves Art Has No Frontiers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 13, 1938; 2) Naylor, Douglas, Prize Awards Mark Preview of Art Tonight, The Pittsburgh Press, October 13, 1938; 3) First Prize in 1938 International Karl Hofer Wins Award of $1,000 With ‘The Wind’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 14, 1938 (illustrated); 4) Saint-Gaudens, Homer, Pictorial Tolerance A Review of the 1938 International, Carnegie Magazine, volume 12, issue 5, October, 1938; 5) Mechlin, Leila, Critic Reviews World’s Fair American Art Exhibition, Evening Star, June 11, 1939; 6) American Art Today, New York World’s Fair, National Art Society, 1939, p. 47 (illustrated); 7) Arnold Blanch, American Artists Group, Inc. New York, NY, Monograph Number 18, 1946, unpaginated (illustrated); 8) Dijkstra, Bram, American Expressionism Art and Social Change 1920 - 1950, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, NY (2003), p. 130 (illustrated); NB: the previous listing is only a representative sample of the over one hundred newspaper references to The People

$16,000

About the Painting

Arnold Blanch believed “a painting is more than a decorative spot on a wall . . . picture making can help the world to become a better place to live in,” a sentiment that had a particular resonance in the late 1930s. Blanch’s The People is a prime example of Social Realist painting born of the turmoil of the Great Depression and the run up to World War II. Widely exhibited and published, the painting was first shown at the 1938 International Exhibition of Paintings at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, where it won the $500 third prize, the highest honor among all American entries. A year later, The People was selected from among 25,000 submissions for the American Art Today exhibition at the New York World’s Fair. The People depicts a family holding a copy of the Bill of Rights seeking redress in the nation’s capital, an image that in 1938 stood in stark contrast to some of the censored entries at the Carnegie exhibition from fascist Germany and Italy. One commentator reflected, Blanch “has chosen to show the poverty of some of the people who inhabit this still opulent land,” while another noted, The People was “the only work in the prize list which has its roots in the current social struggle.” Picking up on the somewhat controversial image, another critic observed, “So many American artists in this exhibition know how to paint glibly, but they have so little to say. In visiting the show, you are sure to shuffle unimpressed past nine-tenths of the pictures, arrested only by the work of artists like Ivan Le Lorraine Albright and Arnold Blanch. You may dislike their work – but you’ll be aware they are in the show.” Continuing in the same vein, another author, who characterized Blanch’s work as “brusque,” explained, “The artist appears to have a curious distaste for the people whose cause he pleads, and in this picture the figures resemble a group of actors waiting for the cue to vent the injustice of their fate. Meanwhile one can imagine the artist laying down his brushes, and saying to himself virtuously, ‘Thank God, I’m not a lyric painter.’”

In his landmark book, American Expressionism Art and Social Change 1920 - 1950, Bram Dijkstra reflects on The People, "Arnold Blanch featured the social-expressionist side of his thirties work perhaps most effectively in his contribution to the 1938 Carnegie International. People (Plate 83) presents an unidealized and not at all glamorous, but clearly lovingly crafted portrait of a group of average Americans as the bulwark of democracy. 'These are the true faces of the American people,' Blanch seems to indicate, 'they are long-suffering, hard-working, and far too trusting of their government. They have none of the folksy glamour jingoist 'America First" painters such as Thomas Hart Benton try to give them, but without them the country could not survive. It is their belief in the basic values of democracy that forces our legislators in Washington to maintain their fragile hold on decency.' In an article for the June 1935 issue of The American Magazine of Art, Ernest Brace had pointed out that Blanch felt ' that in some way he must ally his painting with the contemporary world of events and people. Painting for him cannot exist in the vacuum of art for art's sake.' His paintings, Brace emphasized, 'are American, not only in in subject-matter but in their deep understanding of the meaning and flavor of things American.' In this painting Blanch effectively caught the difference, and also the element of fearful uncertainty about the future, that made these average Americans hesitate about engaging in action that might upset the status quo. In a sense Blanc was a regionalist without any idealizing tendency, and this was to give his work credibility among the urban expressionists."

About the Artist

Arnold Blanch was a key figure in the Woodstock, New York art community during the 1920s through the 1960s. Born in Mantorville, Minnesota, Blanch grew up surrounded by equal parts of the outdoors and art. His mother painted china and his aunt was an oil painter. Blanch recalled having a great reverence for art from a young age, though he admitted that many times he would have rather been hunting and fishing. He studied at the Minneapolis School of Arts and the Art Students League in New York with Kenneth Hays Miller, Robert Henri, and John Sloan. During World War I, Blanch served as a solider in France, the first of many times that he would journey to Europe. He taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, at the Colorado Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs, and the Art Students League in New York, as well as several other art schools. From his home in Woodstock, Blanch helped define the look and feel of rural modernism in New York state. Drawing on American vernacular scenes and an earthy, vaguely northern European palette, Blanch followed the dictum that he should paint the local surroundings of wherever he found himself. Blanch was fortunate to be a favorite of Juliana Force of the Whitney Museum of American Art, which acquired a half dozen of his works. His style during the 1930s and 1940s is what the American art world of the time viewed as a rationale modernism. Writing of Blanch’s solo show in 1930 at Chicago’s prestigious Walden-Dudensing Gallery, the Chicago Times art critic Eleanor Jewett wrote, “The exhibition of paintings by Arnold Blanch . . . comes as a complete surprise. Blanch is a young painter, an American a modernist and an active member in the Woodstock group. Woodstock, modernist, young, are three adjectives whose qualifications are practically limitless. In the case of Blanch none of their tritest meanings are with significance. He is of the Woodstock clan, without being inseparably so; he is young, with a refreshing dignity of poise; he is a modernist in the sense of being original. His paintings are neither banal, imitative, vulgar, commonplace, nor bizarre. They are spiritly American.” During the Great Depression, Blanch worked as a muralist on government sponsored art projects and his easel paintings often contained a hint of Social Realism as he depicted the struggles and triumphs of common folk. During the 1950s and 1960s, Blanch significantly simplified and flattened his forms into barely recognizable shapes in his increasingly abstract landscape and still life paintings. Blanch was married to the artist Lucille Blanch and later around 1939, he began a life-long relationship with another Woodstock artist, Doris Lee, who was also his former student, though they never married. Blanch’s work is many important museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and scores of others. He is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and all other standard references.