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20th-Century Artworks

Werner Drewes

American (1899-1985)

Lighthouse and Gulls, 1948
Oil on canvas, 28 x 18 inches

Signed, inscribed and dated DREWES / 48 lower right

Literature

Julie Novarese Pierotti, Modern Dialect, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee, 2012, pg. 117, plate 68, illustrated

A note from the catalogue card:

Born in Germany, Werner Drewes studied at The Bauhaus with Kandinsky and Klee before immigrating to America in 1930. Influential in introducing the principles of The Bauhaus to this country, Drewes was a distinguished painter, printmaker, teacher and a founder of American Abstract Artists, exhibiting his work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

This lively painting employs the vocabulary of forms and spatial relationships that the artist evolved in the first years after his arrival in America.  With cheerful colors and shifting playful shapes that seem to dance on a shallow stage, this spritely work is characteristic of the optimistic mood of Werner Drewes’ geometric fantasies.

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