Frederick Remahl (1901-1968)

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

“Color is of the greatest importance to me. It makes painting a constant pleasure. Indeed, I do pure abstraction largely because that affords me a great opportunity to play with color.” -Frederick Remahl, 1932

Color was everything for Remahl. His palette selections were limited and bright. He would have scoffed at the litany of colors available for artists today. In his oils he painted with primary and secondary colors and those mixtures that are defined as complementary. Orange, yellow, green, blue, red: over and over, the same palette in an unending variation of composition and subject. His watercolors have a much more expansive palette and were trials for the starkness that evolves in his in his more ascetic oil paintings. In addition to his reliance on color the unique nature of his work also depended on several other issues: his reductivism, flattened and simplified planes, primitivism, a unique set of visual metaphors and various techniques used to affect texture. In much of the artist’s work there is also a sense of that the painting might be taking place in a reverie or dream. In his most somber works there are references to isolation, the spiritual, and even to death.

Color influences in early Modernism are sometimes broken into two schools: the Synchromists – followers of Stanton MacDonald Wright and Morgan Russell, and the Orphists led by Robert Delauney. The Synchromists championed the primacy of color and color harmonies in non-objective and figurative paintings. The Orphists primary concern was also color but linked through literary, musical and visual sensations in abstract and landscape paintings. Delauney’s mantra was, “Color alone is form and subject.” Remahl, working some ten years after the European introduction of these two movements, combines the color-first elements of both schools with his own sense of abstracted landscape. He seems apologetic when he admits, “I find it impossible to disregard for any length of time subject matter and form in my work, though needless to say to anyone who has seen my paintings, I am not interested in subject matter purely as an end itself.”

Part of Remahl’s artistic style is his ability to reduce the rounded shapes of landscape, facial feature and object into simple form. The artist’s work is full of flat trees, hills that might have been cut out of construction paper, and clouds that could have been ironed on. The influence for some of this comes from the artists of the Cubist movement. They were the first to abandon conventional perspective and reform it into an intellectual version of reality. In the Cubist world the palette is primarily darkened earth tones and it if often difficult to determine subject matter. In Remahl’s world colors are bright and subject matter clear. In his attempt to create simplified forms, the artist seems to be after the most basic element to represent nature – what artists sometimes call the truth of the thing. This gives way to a sense of the primitive in his work. He avoids the tradition of illusion employed in Realism and instead, for every element of a painting, he employs an intellectual authenticity devoted to finding the most reductive kernel of icon.

One of the most obvious elements of the artist’s style is his personal library of iconography: : Dolls, Trolls, Fairies, Trees, Clouds, Smoke, Rocks, Hills, Nature, Seafaring Life. These are the principal icons in Remahl’s paintings, but the artist left little record of their meaning. Some of the inspiration for his compositions would come from his years in Sweden. The art of story telling was part of country life on the little island of Remahl’s youth. The artist would fondly recall his mother’s habit of telling and retelling provincial tales. In a short article in his scrapbook entitled “An Artist Speaks” Remahl states, “The literature of youth in Sweden is beautiful “Sagor” or fairy tales. These…make my childhood as a beautiful dream.” Scandinavian lore is full of magical dolls, mischievous trolls, bewitching fairies, and nature’s elements personified with special enchantments. The Swedish countryside, the land of the midnight sun, was alive with rich tales. But the most powerful of these Scandinavian storytellers was the great Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen's fame today rests on his fairy tales written between 1835 and 1872. "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Princess and the Pea", "The Snow Queen", and "The Ugly Duckling" all share some element with Remahl’s fairyscapes. As a writer Andersen, perhaps because of his own childhood, strikes an alliance with the unfortunate and the those outcast from the core of society. Clearly Remahl, like Andersen, could be measured amongst those artists of the late 20th Century who proudly saw themselves as “outsiders”.

AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS

American Artist Professional League
Chicago Society of Artists – 30-year member
Illinois Academy of Fine Arts
Lake View Member
Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts
North Shore Art Guild
Northwest Art League
Society of Independent Artists (Chicago) – founding member
Swedish-American Art Association

COLLECTIONS

Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago, IL
Chicago Public Library, Chicago, IL
Chicago Public Schools, Chicago, IL
Chicago Teachers College South, Chicago, IL
Cook County Hospital, Chicago, IL
Gothenburg Museum, Sweden
New Trier High School Relics of Days Gone’, Winnetka, IL
Public Work Arts Project - 12 paintings in State Institute, Chicago, IL
Laskoff Collection, Boston, MA
Sedona Arizona Historical Art Museum, Sedona, AZ
Sullivan Goss, Private Collection, Santa Barbara, CA
Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL

CHRONOLOGY

1901  Born Bohuslan Sweden June 18
1914  Immigrated to United States
1915  Moves to Two Harbors, Minnesota
1920-1922 Attends Minneapolis School of Art
1923  Moved to Chicago with fellow artist Sigfus Sigfusson
1923  Exhibits for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago
1926  Marriage to Maria
1927  Birth to daughter Peggy
1930 - 1931 Minneapolis, MI Works as artist and independent art teacher
1931  Birth to son Daniel
1932  Returns to Chicago
1935  Sanctioned with Federal Arts Project Easel Division
1937-1940 Worked for WPA project
1947  Exhibited at Riverside Museum, NY
1947  Started “Remahl’s Little Gallery”
1948  Sold ‘Relics of Days Gone’ to Mew Trier High School
1948  Won purchase prize, Swedish Club, Chicago
1966  Moves to Claiborne, Maryland
1968  Died at the age of 67

EVOLUTION OF THE ARTIST'S THEMES

Color was everything for Remahl. He was a superb colorist whose palette selections were limited and bright. He would have scoffed at the catalog of colors available for artists today. In his oils he painted with primary, complimentary and split complimentary colors. Orange, yellow, green, blue, red were applied in an unending variation of composition and subject. His watercolors, on the other hand, have a much more expansive palette and were trials for the starkness that evolved in his more ascetic oil paintings. In addition to his reliance on color, the unique nature of his work also depended on other issues: reductivism, flattened and simplified planes, primitivism, a unique set of visual metaphors and various techniques used to affect texture. The mood in much of the artist’s work is clouded in dream. In his most somber works there are references to isolation, mysticism, and death.

Part of Remahl’s artistic gift lay in his ability to reduce the rounded shapes of landscape, facial feature and object into simple, angled form. The artist’s work is full of flat trees, hills that might have been cut out of construction paper, and clouds that could have been ironed on. So many of the influences in Remahl’s work are descendant from the forces of the Armory Show of 1913: Cezanne’s flattening of planes, Gauguin’s focus on form, Modernism’s reliance on color, and the Cubists’ passion for reduction. It was the early Cubists who first abandoned conventional perspective. They reformed it into an intellectual version of reality, a practice common in Remahl’s work. The Cubists’ palette was primarily composed of dark earth tones and it is often difficult to determine subject matter in their work. In Remahl’s world, colors are bright and subject matter is clear. In his effort to create simplified form, Remahl was after the most basic element to represent nature – what artists sometimes call “the truth of the thing.” This gives way to a sense of the primitive in Remahl’s work whereby he avoided the tradition of illusion employed in Realism. For every element of a painting, he sought the most base, clear and specific icon. In much of his work his reductive effort created a childlike simplicity also found in the primitivism of Gauguin’s Tahitian canvases and some of the work of the Fauves.

One of the most curious elements of the artist’s style was his personal library of icons: Dolls, Trolls, Fairies, Trees, Clouds, Smoke, Rocks, Hills, Nature, and the Sea. Despite the importance of these symbols, Remahl left no record of their meaning. Some of the inspiration for his compositions would come from his early years in Sweden. The art of story telling was part of country life on the little island of Remahl’s youth. The artist would fondly recall his mother’s habit of telling and retelling provincial tales. In a short article in his scrapbook entitled “An Artist Speaks,” Remahl remembers, “The literature of youth in Sweden is beautiful ‘Sagor’ or fairy tales. These…make my childhood as a beautiful dream.” Scandinavian lore is full of magical dolls, mischievous trolls, bewitching fairies, and nature’s elements personified with enchantments. The Swedish countryside, the land of the midnight sun, was alive with rich fables. The most powerful of these Scandinavian storytellers was Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen's fame today rests on fairy tales written between 1835 and 1872. "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Princess and the Pea", "The Snow Queen", and "The Ugly Duckling" all share an element with Remahl’s fairyscapes. As a writer Andersen, perhaps because of the poverty of his own childhood, stuck an alliance with the unfortunate and those outcast from the core of society. Like Anderson, Remahl could be counted among those artists of the late 20th Century who proudly saw themselves as “outsiders”.

Remahl does not shy from the ultimate human curiosity – death. In the mid-ground of one of his paintings from the 1930's, “Figures on the Shore,” there is a blue and orange merchant vessel underway. In the foreground there are three figures; a woman in a bouffant dress, a dubious hooded and caped figure and to the right, what appears to be a body. Once again his icons created a sense of dream or nightmare in this painting with a complex iconography. He produced symbols for: one, the source of all life–woman; two, a close relationship to man and death in the hooded robe; and three, a frank depiction of death in the form of a supine body. He forces the viewer into the panorama of life that is juxtaposed with a bright merchant vessel and a startling background that includes three brilliant orange trees. In this tableau the artist calls the viewer’s attention to the primary elements of existence: life and death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Davidson, Abraham A. Early American Modernist Painting; 1910-1935. New York; Da Capo Press, 1994.
2. Facos, Michelle. Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination; Swedish Art of the 1890’s. Berkeley, University of California Press; 1998.
3. Falk, Peter Hastings. The Annual Exhibition Record of the Art Institute of Chicago 1888-1950. Madison, CT; Sound View Press; 1990.
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6. Falk, Peter Hastings. Record of the Carnegie Institute’s International Exhibitions. Madison, CT; Sound View Press, 1998.
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8. Jacobson, J.Z. Art of Today; Chicago – 1933. Chicago; L.M. Stein Press, 1932.
9. Kennedy, Elizabeth, et al. Chicago Modern: 1893-1945, Pursuit of the New. Chicago; Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004.
10. Kenyon, Cox. “Artist and Public.” Scribner’s Magazine, 55 (April 1914).
11. Mallet, Daniel Trowbridge. Supplement to Mallet’s Index of Artists, International. New York; Peter Smith, 1948.
12. Remahl, Daniel. Son of Frederick Remahl, living in Frankfort, Michigan. Phone and written interviews and correspondence in August and September of 2005.
13. Remahl, Frederick. Personal Scrapbook – Newspaper and magazine clippints from 1925 – 1953. Archives of American Art.
14. Robinson, Peggy. Daughter of Frederick Remahl, living in Hayward, California. Personal, phone and written interviews and correspondence in August and September of 2005.
15. Schlessinger, Alice. A History of the 57th Street Art Fair. Web Site: www. hydeparkhistory.org/herald/artfair
16. Yochim, Louise Dunn. Role and Impact: The Chicago Society of Artists. Chicago Society of Artists: 1979.