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Konrad Cramer
Glass Bowl of Fruit, 1928
This modern work is inspired by a 19th-century form of folk painting known as a "theorem" -- a still life made using stencils to paint on velvet. Countless early modernists, like Konrad Cramer, were fascinated with the potent form and emotional content of American folk art, particularly its dialogue between abstraction and representation.
Emigrating from Germany at age twenty-three. Cramer spent his career experimenting with modernist painting and photography in the progressive artist colony of Woodstock, New York. According to his wife, Florence, he "took up photography to clarify aesthetic issues in painting," such as representation, space, and symbol -- all evident in this dynamic still life. |