Arthur Osver

Infobox Artist
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name = Arthur Osver


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caption = Arthur Osver & Ernestine Betsberg, Central Park, 1939
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birthdate = 1912
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deathdate = 2006
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nationality = American
field = Painting
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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Arthur Osver (1912-2006) American painter, was born near Chicago, and later trained at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur Osver is a product of an urban environment. He spent a portion of his career living in New York with residences in Greenwich Village and Long Island City. Osver taught, among many places, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School from 1949 to 1951, at the American Academy in Rome in 1957 and 1958, and at Washington University in St.Louis during the 1960s and 1970s. He actively exhibited his paintings at numerous institutions during the 1930s through the 1950s, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Carnegie Institute, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His paintings are in numerous public collections, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

While at the School of the Art Institute, Osver was a student of Boris Anisfeld, a Russian émigré who painted backdrops for the Russian Ballet. It was from Anisfeld that Arthur received his love of landscapes, and it was from New York that Arthur received his love of urban landscapes that became his subject.

Arthur was recognized early in his career for his realistic views of the landscape -urban yet lyrical, representational though containing the seeds of his later abstractions. By the late 1940s, he was beginning to attract attention from galleries like Mortimer Brandt and Grand Central Modern; from magazines like "Fortune" and "Life" and from artists like Philip Guston who recommended Osver for the job at Washington University.

He always considered himself a landscape painter, but the landscape he painted became more and more an inner, personal one. And if an Osver canvas were to be singled as the turning of the tide from outer to inner landscape, it might well be his "Grey NIght" (1953), a milestone in his development and a sharply different treatment of the metropolis from his early vision.

External links

* [http://www.philipsleingallery.com/splish.php= Philip Slein Gallery]
* [http://lofistl.com/2006/10/30/episode-125-arthur-osver-and-ernestine-betsberg/= LoFi Saint Louis]

Bibliography

* "Coming Home: American Paintings from the Schoen Collection", Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2003, Pg. 253-255
* Weller, Allen S. "Art USA Now: 102 Vital Contemporary American Painters." Viking Press. 1963. Pg.264-267.
* Genauer, Emily. "New York Herald Tribune." 1959.
* University of Illinois, "Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture." 1961. pg. 149.
*"Life" Magazine, January 15, 1951. pg. 38.