American Drawings and Paintings

K o n r a d =C r a m e r - - 1 8 8 8 - 1 9 6 3

Born in Wurzburg, Germany, Konrad Cramer was to become an important America painter, printmaker, illustrator, photographer and teacher. He received traditional art training at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe, with Hans Thoma, Wilhelm Trübner, Ludwig Schmidt-Reutte and Ernest Schurth. By 1910 he had moved to Munich where his work was influenced by his associations with Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and members of the Blue Reiter group. He moved to the United States in 1911. Dividing his time between New York City and Woodstock, he joined the ranks of woodstock’s experimental, modernist artists, bringing with him a sophicated understanding of the German avant garde.

Supported by Alfred Stieglitz, his first New York exhibit was held at the MacDowell Club in1913, and showed a series of abstract paintings that were amoung the most radical works being produced in the United States at the time. At the suggestion of Stieglitz, his work was also included in two major modernist exhibitions organized by Stanton Macdonald-Wright; the first held in Los Angeles in 1919, and the second in Philadelphia in1921. His abstract, painterly works, were characterized by intense colour and dynamic compositions in the tradition of Kandinsky. By the late teens Cramer began pursuing a representational, cubist inspired style, sometimes employing collage elements in his paintings. Cramer returned to Europe to study industrial art education on a Rockefeller grant in 1920, and in the same year he helped found the Woodstock Artists Association.

Cramer became interested in photography in the mid 1930’s. Encouraged by Alfred Stieglitz, Eva Watson-Schutze and Russell Lee, he abandoned painting to devote himself to the medium, while

continuing to make drawings. His photographs, like his other work, were modernist and often experimental. He frequently employed the techniques of solarization, multiple exposure and the photogram to produce evocative and poetic images. His late, manipulated photographs of sulptures, which he made specifically for this purpose, brought his original, innovative work back full circle to his early, purely abstract explorations.

Cramer exhibited at the Florence Gallery in New York City, 1919 - 1920; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1920; Brooks Memphis Art Gallery, Memphis, 1921; Dudensing Gallery, New York City (award), 1929; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1930 -1931, 1936; Art Institute of Chicago, 1932; Club Latin, Cincinnati, 1932 (solo); Warwick Gallery, Philadelphia, 1932; Corcoran Gallery, 1935, 1937 - 1939; Carnegie Institute, 1933, 1937,1938; Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933, 1936, 1946, 1953; Albany Institute, 1936; American Federation of Arts traveling exhibition, 1946; Woodstock Art Association, 1952 (solo),1960; State College, New Paltz, NY, 1952 (solo); Long Island University, 1958 (solo); M. Diamond Fine Art, NYC, 1984 (solo).

The artist’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Woodstock Art Association. He was a member of the American Society of Painters, Sculptors and Graphic Artists; the Wodstock Art Association; and president of the Woodstock Guild Craftsmen, 1953-56. He taught at Bard College from 1940 to 1946.

Colored Drawing Studio Party No. 2- - 1930, Monotype.

Unique. Signed, dated and titled in pencil, lower right.

Image size 7 1/4 x 10 3/16 inches (184 x 259 mm); sheet size 9 3/4 x 14 inches (248 x 356 mm).

A fine, spontaneous work, on cream laid paper, with full margins (1 1/8 to 2 5/8 inches); in excellent condition.

$1400.

Nude No. 1 - - 1931, Litho Crayon.

Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.

Image size 15 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches (387 x 191 mm); sheet size 11 1/4 x 16 5/8 inches (286 x 422 mm).

A fine, spontaneous work, on cream wove paper, in excellent condition.

$800.

Nude No. 14- - 1931, Litho Crayon.

Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.

Image size 9 x 9 inches (229 x 229 mm); sheet size 14 x 9 7/8 inches (356 x 251 mm).

A fine, spontaneous work, on cream laid paper; brown paper hinge remains on the top right sheet edge, recto; in excellent condition.

$800.

Nude No. 15- - 1931, Litho Crayon.

Signed in litho crayon, lower right.

Image size 13 x 7 1/2 inches (330 x 191 mm); sheet size 13 5/8 x 10 5/8 inches (346 x 270 mm).

A fine, spontaneous work, on cream laid paper; original brown paper hinge remains on the top left and right sheet corners, recto; in excellent condition.

$800.

Kneeling Nude No. 4- - 1931, Litho Crayon.

Signed and dated in litho crayon, lower right.

Image size 11 1/4 x 7 inches (286 x 178 mm); sheet size 17 1/8 x 12 inches (435 x 305 mm).

A fine, spontaneous work, on cream laid paper; original brown paper hinge remains on the top left and right sheet corners, recto; water stain and small loss in the bottom left sheet corner, well away from the image; otherwise in excellent condition.

$800.

3 Pears- - 1931, Litho Crayon.

Signed and dated in litho crayon, lower right. Annotated No 11 – 3 Pears –Litho Crayon in pencil, lower left

Image size 9 x 11 3/4 inches (229 x 298 mm); sheet size 10 3/4 x 14 inches (273 x 356 mm).

A fine, spontaneous work, on cream laid Japan paper; the full sheet with original brown paper tape hinges in on the top sheet corners, recto, in excellent condition.

SOLD