STANISLAV REMBSKI (POLISH, 1896-1998) PENCIL DRAWING

Description: Image 14” x 23” Total framed dimensions 25-1/2” x 34-1/2”. Stanislav Rembski was born in 1896 in the village of Sochaczev, Poland. Encouraged by his father, who was an artist and an interior decorator, Rembski had an interest in art that began to flourish at an early age. Upon entering high school, a teacher recognized the young Rembski's talent, and put him through the paces of a disciplined course in drawing. While attending engineering school during World War I, Rembski began formal study at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw under Stanislav Lenc. He drew his inspiration from the works of Renaissance artists Albrecht Durer, Raphael and the German-Polish wood sculptor Viet Stoss. At the close of the war, he established a studio in Warsaw, and participated in the Salon exhibitions there in 1918 and 1919. He later studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin under Erich Wolfsfeld, developing a style along classical lines. When Berlin emerged as a center for German expressionism in the early 1920s, Rembski came to question his ability to keep in step with then-current art trends, and considered abandoning painting as a career. But the crisis passed, and Rembski, instilled with a new resolve, enjoyed a brisk portraiture practice in Germany before immigrating to America in October of 1922. In 1924, Rembski opened a studio in the Ovington Building in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York City. There he met Leon Dabo, Harry Roseland, Benjamin Eggleston, Nell Choate Jones, Carroll Leja Nichols and Robert Wickenden and other Brooklyn artists, many of whom also rented studios in the Ovington Building. Dabo, who was quite taken by Rembski's talent, and for whom Rembski was later to paint an official portrait for the National Academy of Design, predicted a bright future for the immigrant artist. In 1927, he was one of four emerging artists awarded the opportunity to show their work at the Dudensing Galleries in Manhattan. He married the same year and became an American citizen in 1929. In 1931 he completed a triptych on the life of St. Bernard of Clairvaux for the St. Bernard School in Gladstone, New Jersey. In 1932, he moved to a studio in Carnegie Hall, and about the same time, established a summer studio in Deer Isle, Maine, which he was to keep for many decades. Rembski's portraiture practice often compelled him to travel to the South, and in the early 1940s, he left New York for a more convenient location in Baltimore. Toward the end of World War II, Rembski was called to the White House to paint the portrait of Admiral William D. Leahy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Chief of Staff. Roosevelt had died the previous month, and Leahy, impressed with his own portrait, suggested that Rembski tackle one of the late president. At the admiral's direction, a member of his staff contacted Eleanor Roosevelt, who provided photographs of her husband for Rembski to work from. A year after completing the Roosevelt portrait, Rembski was commissioned to paint a posthumous portrait of President Woodrow Wilson. Both renderings hang in museums dedicated to the former presidents. In 1947, Rembski moved to a home and studio in the fashionable Baltimore neighborhood of Bolton Hill, where he actively turned out canvases until his death in September of 1998 at age 102. He had remarried in 1981 after the death of his first wife, the former Isabelle Walton Everett. Rembski completed several portraits in the 1960s of the first ladies of several Maryland governors that are on view at the State House in Annapolis. In the 1970s and 1980s, his advancing age did not prevent him from completing posthumous works of Latter Day Saints prophet Brigham Young, Polish patriot Casimir Pulaski, and baseball legend Babe Ruth. The Salmagundi Club in Manhattan hosted a retrospective of his work in 1996. Rembski frequently lectured on the philosophy of art, and wrote several essays on the subject. He was fond of demonstrating portraiture before a live audience, and would select a member of the audience who agreed to volunteer as a subject. Although portraiture was his subject of choice, because of his fascination with people, he also painted numerous still lifes and landscapes. In his social life, Rembski was an outgoing personality. He dressed colorfully, often sporting a beret, and was a presence in the social scene of every community he worked in. Rembsk's interests extended to a broad range of arts and sciences. He participated in dramatic productions, either through the design and construction of sets, or by singing and acting himself. Toward the end of his life, Rembski and his second wife, the former Dorothy Klein, would often conduct tours of his studio. A visitor might be treated to a lecture lasting hours, with Rembski standing throughout--at an age when most people are confined to a wheel chair. He was philosophically high-minded, and always retained a strong religious bent. Among the historical figures he most admired were Thomas Jefferson, Wilson and Roosevelt, all of whom he cast as champions of democracy. His outlook was certainly at odds with the atheistic, hedonistic and nihilistic mood in the art world that often prevailed during his lifetime. Rembski, for example, viewed the abstract art movement and its product as anthropological curiosities. As a result, he is sometimes characterized as a "holdover from the 19th Century academic tradition", a charge he would probably deny. A distinct change in his work from an emphasis on shadow reminiscent of Rembrandt to the use of brighter color schemes is evident as his style matured. Drawings are among his best works. While he received praise from critics, some questioned his ability to resolve what they saw as a conflict between pleasing the sitter of a portrait and creating great art. Others insisted that his style was authentic and developing, including Dabo, who in the early decades of the 20th Century had joined the ranks of Robert Henri and other artists in breaking the stranglehold of the academic tradition on American art. After a discussion of the peculiar styles of El Greco and Modigliani, which, he noted, had been attributed to the painters ocular problems, Dabo wrote of Rembski in 1935: "I do not know the condition of Stanislav Rembski's eyes, but he seems to get the character, the personality of his sitter, and perhaps that is what painters sought before the epidemic of troubled vision became so apparent." Rembski believed he could capture a strong personal presence in a portrait, beyond that conveyed in a mere literal rendering. He viewed the technical skills he was universally praised for as a language to express a deeper, metaphysical process. Rembski's one-man shows include the following: Neighborhood Club (c. annual 1924-1929) Dudensing Galleries (1927) Carnegie Hall Galleries (1934) Arthur U. Newton Galleries (1935) H. Chambers Co. (Baltimore, 1940) Baltimore Museum of Art (1947) Baltimore Institute of Art (1950 City Hall Courtyard Galleries (Baltimore, 1980) The Calvert Gallery (Washington, D.C. 1990) Salmagundi Club (New York, 1996) He participated in the following group exhibitions: Brooklyn Society of Artists (c. 1924-1929) The Ovington Group (1925) The Brooklyn Society of Painters and Sculptors (1924-1928) Exhibition of Watercolors, Pastels and Drawings (Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1927) Society of Independent Artists (1931) Portraits of Artists (Roerich Museum, 1932) Artists of Carnegie Hall (Carnegie Hall Art Gallery, 1932, 1934, 1935) Salons of America (American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, 1936) Memberships: Brooklyn Society of Artists Brooklyn Society of Painters and Sculptors The Ovington Group National Society of Mural Artists Salmagundi Club COLLECTIONS: Museum of the City of New York Newark Museum of Art Carnegie Hall Archives Franklin D. Roosevelt Museum and Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. Woodrow Wilson House, Washington, D.C. Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL the Wisconsin Historical Society Museum National Academy of Design Maryland State House, Annapolis, MD. Among his earlier portraits are those of: Arctic explorer and artist Albert Operti (drawing and oil, 1924) Nancy Middlebrook, daughter-in-law of artist William Glackens (drawing and oil, 1924) Child poetess Nathalia Crane (drawing, 1926, and oil, 1929) Arctic aviator Floyd Bennett (drawing, 1927) Swedish scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (posthumous, oil, 1929) Columbia Teachers College nursing pioneer Adelaide Nutting (1931) NBC announcer Howard Claney (1928) Operatic composer and narrator for the Disney animated production Fantasia, Deems Taylor (1935) LITERATURE REFERENCES Who's Who, 1936-1937. Catholic Review, Oct. 16, 1996:"Even after a century, he's still painting" by Stefanis Manowski. Baltimore Sun, Oct. 8, 1996: "Human spirit guides portrait artist's hand" by Katherine Marks. Seminal Thoughts, Copyright 1984 by Stanislav Rembski. Stanislav Rembski, exhibition program, the Neighborhood Club, 1927. The Artists of Poland: a biographical dictionary from the 14th century to the present, by Stanley S. Sokol, McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC and London. Who Was Who In American Art. Baltimore Sun, Sept. 16, 1998: "Stanislav Rembski, 101, renowned artist" by Fred Rasmussen. New York Times, Sept. 23, 1932, p. 18: "Art In Review: New Carnegie Hall group to open its gallery, guided by Edwin Howland Blashfield." Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.: Rembski files. Woodrow Wilson House, Wash. D.C.: Rembski files. Brooklyn Museum of Art: Rembski files. Evening Sun, Baltimore, Jan 6, 1969: "Baltimore artist views inner worlds of man" by Josephine Novak. Washington Post, Dec. 29, 1961: "First ladies in person and portrait." Washington Post, Jul. 22, 1962: "Staid Baltimore tells off a muse" by J. M. Lalley. Interviews with people who knew Rembski (private). Submitted January 2004 by Peter Duveen, freelance writer and journalist. View more great items **FREE PICKUP AVAILABLE IN NEW YORK CITY (New Britain DISTRICT MANHATTAN)** CONTACT ME FOR DETAILS IF INTERESTED IN PICKING UP THIS ITEM.

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End Time: 2024-12-21T18:48:45.000Z

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