2000.32: Spirit Forms

Identification and Creation

Object Number

2000.32

People

Emil Bisttram, American (Nadlac?, Hungary 1895 - 1976 Taos, NM)

Title

Spirit Forms

Classification

Drawings

Work Type

drawing

Date

1942

Culture

American

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/185853

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Graphite on cream wove paper

Dimensions

59.8 x 44.6 cm (23 9/16 x 17 9/16 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• Signed: graphite, l.r.: BISTTRAM
• inscription: verso, l.l., graphite: EB #7
• inscription: verso, l.l., graphite: 11/89; 7-90; 7-91; 7-92; 6/93; 7/94
• inscription: verso, l.r., graphite: Emil Bisttram / SPIRIT / FORMS

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

[G. W. Einstein Co., Inc., New York, New York]. [Skinner, Inc., Boston Massachusetts], sold; to Charles Young, Glastonbury, Connecticut, gift; to Harvard University Art Museums, 2000.

NOTE: Provenance information taken from the curatorial file.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Susan Alyson and Charles M. Young

Accession Year

2000

Object Number

2000.32

Division

Modern and Contemporary Art

Contact

am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary

About 1925, Bisttram gave up a brief, but successful, commercial art business to become a full-time painter and teacher. From 1925 to 1930 he taught at the Master Institute of the Roerich Museum in New York, a school founded by the Russian mystical philosopher and painter Nicholas Roerich, which fostered spiritual ideas drawn from Theosophy and occult philosophy. In 1932 Bisttram settled in Taos, and he eventually played an important role in establishing Taos as a regional center for the visual arts. He studied with Diego Rivera in Mexico in 1931 and worked as a muralist in the mid-1930s. A founder of the Transcendental Painting Group, Bisttram proceeded from the realism documented in the Fogg's watercolor, "Storm Clouds" (1997.209), to a non-objective art with a strong spiritual component, although he continued to produce both realist and abstract works throughout his career. "Spirit Forms," with its reference to Navajo sand painting in both design and texture, is characteristic of one aspect of his work.

Publication History

• American and European Paintings and Prints, auct. cat., Skinner, Inc. (Boston, MA, March 10, 2000), no. 411, repr.

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