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Viterbo is a fine medieval, walled city in Tuscia, north of Rome, Italy - but the Internet access here is not top notch… Here’s hoping this might work - after three days of no Tumblr. Click for high-res photo

Viterbo is a fine medieval, walled city in Tuscia, north of Rome, Italy - but the Internet access here is not top notch…

Here’s hoping this might work - after three days of no Tumblr.

July 4, 1865 was the publication date for Alice in Wonderland… Above: one of the plates for the 1st ed. - Sir John Tenniel, 1864 or 1865. The Cheshire Cat,

July 4, 1865 was the publication date for Alice in Wonderland…

Above: one of the plates for the 1st ed. - Sir John Tenniel, 1864 or 1865. The Cheshire Cat,

Born on the 4th of July, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864), American short story writer and novelist…

Born on the 4th of July, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864), American short story writer and novelist…

Ed Garman (July 4, 1914 - 2004): No. 260, 1942 - oil on fiberboard (Smithsonian) “Ed Garman was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but grew up in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. In 1933, he entered the University of New Mexico. While working for the university theater, he discovered the work of Adolph Appia and Edward Gordon Craig, turn-of-the-century pioneers of modern stage sets whose stark, simple designs opened Garman’s eyes to the dramatic possibilities of structural form. Later, working for a WPA project, Garman sorted pottery shards at an archaeological dig and became fascinated with the patterns and arrangements of Indian designs. These two discoveries shaped his growing enthusiasm for abstraction, as did a 1935 retrospective of van Gogh’s paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Garman completed his first group of semiabstract paintings. Yet Garman was not convinced that his own future lay in abstraction. Consequently, he went to Mexico for six months in 1937 to study murals by Diego Rivera and Clemente Orozco. He found himself unimpressed, however, by the nationalistic context of the Mexican muralists. He turned instead to art history, seeking in the art of the past the clues that would enable him to better understand his own reactions to his environment. In contrast to Raymond Jonson, who worked intuitively, Garman conceived his paintings in intellectual terms, using geometries, rather than sinuous, rhythmic forms as the structural basis for his work. In Composition #261, for example, brightly colored geometric shapes dance in a yellow field, creating rhythms through color rather than through directional form.Garman described his artistic development as steady and consistent. His paintings evolved “from a highly simplified and almost primitive realism through the various shades of the abstract to the nonobjective.” In his later work he has continued to explore movement and rest through geometric form and has retained the vitality of color so important in his paintings of the 1940s.” - Virginia M. Mecklenburg. The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1989). Click for high-res photo

Ed Garman (July 4, 1914 - 2004): No. 260, 1942 - oil on fiberboard (Smithsonian)

“Ed Garman was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but grew up in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. In 1933, he entered the University of New Mexico. While working for the university theater, he discovered the work of Adolph Appia and Edward Gordon Craig, turn-of-the-century pioneers of modern stage sets whose stark, simple designs opened Garman’s eyes to the dramatic possibilities of structural form. Later, working for a WPA project, Garman sorted pottery shards at an archaeological dig and became fascinated with the patterns and arrangements of Indian designs. These two discoveries shaped his growing enthusiasm for abstraction, as did a 1935 retrospective of van Gogh’s paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Garman completed his first group of semiabstract paintings. Yet Garman was not convinced that his own future lay in abstraction. Consequently, he went to Mexico for six months in 1937 to study murals by Diego Rivera and Clemente Orozco. He found himself unimpressed, however, by the nationalistic context of the Mexican muralists. He turned instead to art history, seeking in the art of the past the clues that would enable him to better understand his own reactions to his environment.

In contrast to Raymond Jonson, who worked intuitively, Garman conceived his paintings in intellectual terms, using geometries, rather than sinuous, rhythmic forms as the structural basis for his work. In Composition #261, for example, brightly colored geometric shapes dance in a yellow field, creating rhythms through color rather than through directional form.Garman described his artistic development as steady and consistent. His paintings evolved “from a highly simplified and almost primitive realism through the various shades of the abstract to the nonobjective.” In his later work he has continued to explore movement and rest through geometric form and has retained the vitality of color so important in his paintings of the 1940s.” - Virginia M. Mecklenburg. The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1989).