Jan Müller (artist)

Infobox Person
name = Jan Müller
birth_date = December 27, 1922
birth_place = Hamburg, Germany
death_date = January 29, 1958
death_place = New York City
occupation = Abstract expressionist painter; New York Figurative Expressionist painter.
reference = http://siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=all#focus

Jan Müller (1922 – 1958) the New York Figurative Expressionists of the 1950s. According to Carter Ratcliff [Paul Schimmel and Judith E Stein, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/59997649&referer=brief_results "Carter Ratcliff assay, Selfhood Paints a Self-Portrait"] (Newport Beach, Calif. : Newport Harbor Art Museum : New York : Rizzoli, 1988.) ISBN 0847809420 9780847809424 0917493125 9780917493126] "His paintings usually erect a visual architecture sturdy enough to support an array of standing, riding, levitating figures. Gravity is absent, banished by an indifference to ordinary experience." According to the poet John Ashbery, [John Ashbery, “Jan Muller,” "Art News" 56, no. 2 (January 1958), pp.16-17.] Müller "brings a medieval sensibility to neo-Expressionist paintings."

Biography

Jan Müller was born on December 27, 1922, in Hamburg, Germany. In 1933 his family fled the Nazis to Prague, and later to Bex-les-Bains, Switzerland; [Vivian Endicott Barnett; Thomas M. Messer; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/6621692&referer=brief_results ‘’ Handbook, the Guggenheim Museum collection, 1900-1980; Jan Müller, 1922-1958’’] (New York : The Museum, 1980.) ISBN 0892070218 9780892070213 pp.464-465,] there he experienced the first of several attacks of rheumatic fever. He visited Paris in 1938 and two years later was apprehended and interned in a camp near Lyon. Shortly after the fall of Paris Müller was released, at which time he moved to Ornaisons, near Narbonne. Following an unsuccessful attempt to escape to the United States from Marseille, he was able to cross the border into Spain in 1941 and proceed via Portugal to New York.

Jan Müller began to study art in 1945.
* The Art Students League of New York, New York City, NY for six month;
* Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts for five years;He became a US citizen in 1957.

Jan Müller died on January 29, 1958, at the age of thirty-six, in New York.

elected Solo Exhibitions

* 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958: Cooperative Hansa Gallery, New York City, which he founded with Allan Kaprow and Richard Stenkiewicz
* 1955, 1956: The Sun Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts
* 1960: University of Minnesota
* 1961: Zabriskie Gallery, NYC
* 1970, 1971, 1972: Noah Goldowsky
* 1976, 1977: Gruenebaum Gallery, NYC
* 1980: Rosa Esman Gallery, NYC

elected Group Exhibitions

* 1952: 813 Broadway (Gallery), NYC
* 1953: The Art Institute of Chicago
* 1955: University of Minnesota
* 1955, 1956: "Stable Show, Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture", Stable Gallery, NYC
* 1957: "The New York School, Second Generation," Jewish Museum, NYC; "Young America," Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
* 1958: Carnegie, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; "Festival of Two Worlds", Spoleto, Perugia, Italy
* 1958, 1959: Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
* 1959: "New Images of Man," Museum of Modern Art, NYC
* 1960: American Federation of Arts, circ., NYC
* 1962: "Retrospective Exhibition" organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC

Collections

* Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina
* Museum of Modern Art, NYC
* Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey

References

* Paul Cummings, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/29564911&referer=brief_results "Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists,"] (St. Martins Press New York, 1994.) ISBN 0312084404
* Martica Sawin, “Jan Müller: 1922-1958,” "Arts," vol. 33, Feb. 1959, pp41, repr.,44

Books

* Paul Schimmel and Judith E Stein, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/59997649&referer=brief_results "The Figurative fifties : New York figurative expressionism,"] (Newport Beach, Calif. : Newport Harbor Art Museum : New York : Rizzoli, 1988.) ISBN 0847809420 9780847809424 0917493125 9780917493126
* Barbara Rose, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/256107&referer=brief_results "American Art Since 1900; a critical history."] (New York, F. A. Praeger, 1967.) OCLC: 256107 p.236, repr., 237
* Irving Sandler, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/3205093&referer=brief_results "The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties,"] (New York, Harper & Row, 1978.) ISBN 0064385051: 9780064385053 p.124, fig. 86
*Marika Herskovic, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50666793&tab=holdings "New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,"] (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6 pp.32,38

ee also

*Art movement
*Abstract expressionism
*New York Figurative Expressionism
*New York School
*Action painting

External link for image reproduction

* [http://www.michaelrosenfeldart.com/artists/artists_represented.php?i=135 "Jan Muller, (1922 - 1958), The Search for the Unicorn, 1957 oil on canvas"] from michaelrosenfeld.com