Arthur Osver

Arthur Osver
"Interior" (1939) - Oil painting by Arthur Osver
Born(1912-07-25)July 25, 1912
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
DiedJuly 24, 2006(2006-07-24) (aged 93)
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
OccupationPainter
Spouse
​
(m. 1937)​

Arthur Osver (July 25, 1912 – July 24, 2006) was an American painter from Chicago, Illinois. He was known for his urban landscapes, as well as his later turn towards abstraction and mixed media. Many of his notable paintings feature rooftops, rooftop ventilators, and chimneys as subjects, and employ forced perspective.

Early life

Arthur Osver was born in Chicago to Herschel and Yetta Osver, immigrants from Russia. In 1930, he enrolled in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. After one year, he transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he trained under Boris Anisfeld. At the Art Institute in 1934, he met fellow painter Ernestine Betsberg, whom he would later marry in 1937.

Career

Early work and urban landscapes

After graduating from the Art Institute, Osver was support as an artist in the Illinois Art Project, the state branch of the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program under the Works Progress Administration.

In 1940, Osver and Betsberg moved to Greenwich Village, and then later to Long Island City, where they lived for eight years. Osver described his time in Long Island City as "...the most productive years of my life." In New York, Osver began to find success in the art world. In 1942, the Museum of Modern Art purchased his work "Melancholy of a Rooftop" after he solicited them to view his paintings. He presented a one-man exhibition, which included his painting Majestic Tenement, at the Grand Central Galleries in 1947. His exhibition received favorable response in Art News. Hired by the Art School of the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the same year, he taught students including Lorenzo Homar.

Time in Rome and turn to abstraction

After winning the Rome Prize in 1952, Osver worked in Italy until 1955. The break from familiar forms of American industrial structures lead to a development of abstraction in his work. Many of his paintings began to lose the recognizable forms that had come to define his work, and instead used pastel colors to mark the impression that sunlight on foreign forms left in him. He would later paint with compromise between structure and abstraction; The Tall Red (1959) has been described as "a temporary armistice between landscape and pure abstraction."

Return to the US

Osver returned to New York in 1955 and taught at Cooper Union. In 1960, Osver was hired to teach at the Washington University in St. Louis after encouragement from Philip Guston and Kenneth Eugene Hudson to accept the position.

In his late career, he began experimenting with new painting media. In April 1959, he presented his first showing of water color paintings at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. He also experimented with latex house paints and acrylic enamels.

Style

Osver's work has been variously described as cubist, geometric abstraction, and associated with New Objectivity and Magical Realism. His early work has been contrasted to the more sharp and pristine industrial subjects of the earlier precisionists like Charles Demuth and Charles Sheeler, while drawing comparisons to the surrealist works of Giorgio de Chirico.

Osver described his industrial subjects in naturalistic terms, stating of his painting "Nocturne":

Yes, my painting derives from nature. It is no accident that I live in a large city--the things I paint are found there. The ability to deal directly with my subject results in an ever-growing awareness of its possibilities. And that's the big thing. For I feel very strongly that it is only through such a living, energetic contact with nature that I can realize whatever happens to be unique and personal in my work.

He found interest in these subjects in his youth, stating

My father had a meat market and a grocery store in Youngstown, Ohio, right opposite the steel mills. They used to come and dump slag, and there would be these wonderful billows of smoke. It looked scary—it looked like hell—but it appealed to me, the ambiguity of it, the elegance, the beauty of the structure and, underneath it all, this hot fire, the energy of it. That contrast.

Legacy

The Ernestine Betsberg and Arthur Osver Scholarship was established by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis in Osver and Betsberg's honor in 2008.

Selected paintings

Awards

Publications

References

  1. 1 2 Padgett, Jennifer (2018). "Chronology". In Miller, Angela (ed.). Arthur Osver: Urban Landscape, Abstraction, and the Mystique of Place. St Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-936316-44-4.
  2. ↑ Jarrett, Linda. "Arthur Osver". Webster-Kirkwood Times. WKTimes LLC. Retrieved August 22, 2026.
  3. ↑ Brown, Robert (1975). "Regional Office Reports". Archives of American Art Journal. 15 (4): 18. Retrieved August 25, 2026.
  4. 1 2 Caba, Susan (April 12, 2007). "Never, Unless Invited". St. Louis Magazine. SLM Media Group. Retrieved August 27, 2026.
  5. ↑ Mavigliano, George J.; Lawson, Richard A. (1990). The Federal Art Project in Illinois: 1935-1943. Southern Illinois University. p. 129. ISBN 0809315807.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Shields, Chris. "Arthur Osver: The Inner Landscape". Art & Antiques Magazine. Art & Antiques Worldwide Media, LLC. Retrieved August 25, 2026.
  7. 1 2 3 Otten, Liam (April 11, 2019). "A world of visual impressions: New monograph surveys the paintings of Arthur Osver". WashU Magazine. Washington University in St. Louis. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  8. ↑ Jewell, Edward Alden (April 20, 1947). "BROOKLYN BIENNIAL; International Water-Color Exhibition -- Drawings -- Lovis Corinth -- Others". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. p. 245. Retrieved August 22, 2026.
  9. ↑ Frankfurter, Alfred M. (November 1947). "Two States of the Union". Art News. No. 46. pp. 14–17.
  10. ↑ "THE ART SCHOOL PRESENTS SIX TALENTED STUDENTS". Brooklyn Museum Bulletin. 11 (2): 15–18. Winter 1950. Retrieved April 18, 2026.
  11. ↑ Miller, Angela (2018). "Creased by Time: Arthur Osver's "Memory Haunted" Urban Landscapes of the 1930s and 1940s". In Miller, Angela (ed.). Arthur Osver: Urban Landscape, Abstraction, and the Mystique of Place. St Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. pp. 28–31. ISBN 978-0-936316-44-4.
  12. ↑ Bailey, Matthew (2018). "From Story to Form: Arthur Osver's Abstractions". In Miller, Angela (ed.). Arthur Osver: Urban Landscape, Abstraction, and the Mystique of Place. St Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. pp. 35–39. ISBN 978-0-936316-44-4.
  13. ↑ Miller, Angela (2018). "Introduction and Acknowledgements". In Miller, Angela (ed.). Arthur Osver: Urban Landscape, Abstraction, and the Mystique of Place. St Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-936316-44-4.
  14. ↑ White, Theo B. (1965). "The Golden Years". The Philadelphia Art Alliance: Fifty Years, 1915-1965. University of Philadelphia Press. p. 112.
  15. ↑ Padgett, Jennifer (2018). "Chronology". In Miller, Angela (ed.). Arthur Osver: Urban Landscape, Abstraction, and the Mystique of Place. St Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-936316-44-4.
  16. ↑ "Osver, Arthur". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford University Press. October 31, 2011.
  17. 1 2 Miller, Angela (2018). "Creased by Time: Arthur Osver's "Memory Haunted" Urban Landscapes of the 1930s and 1940s". In Miller, Angela (ed.). Arthur Osver: Urban Landscape, Abstraction, and the Mystique of Place. St Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. pp. 18–25. ISBN 978-0-936316-44-4.
  18. ↑ Bethers, Ray (1951). How Paintings Happen (1 ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 121.
  19. ↑ Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES (January 26, 1947). "L.I. City Painter Wins Art Award". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. p. 55. Retrieved August 22, 2026.