Robert Gwathmey was an American social realist painter. His wife was photographer Rosalie Gwathmey (September 15, 1908 – February 12, 2001) and his son was architect Charles Gwathmey (June 19, 1938 – August 3, 2009).
Robert was born to Robert Gwathmey Sr. (1866-1902) and Eva Mortimer Harrison (1868-1941). His half sisters were Kathrine and Ida Carrington. Robert Sr. was killed at work by an explosion and his wife was killed in a vehicular accident.
Gwathmey attended North Carolina State College in Raleigh, studying business from 1922-1923. He did not think this path would take him anywhere so he got a job on a freighter and later studied a year at the Maryland Institute of Design in Baltimore. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia is where he completed his education of the arts; he spent four years there.
In 1929 and 1930, Gwathmey was the winner of the Cresson Traveling Scholarship, which allowed him the opportunity to study abroad in the summers. He traveled to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Venice, Vienna, Munich, and London.
Throughout his studies, Robert Gwathmey was influenced by many artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, and Rufino Tamayo from the European modernists, French satirist Honoré Daumier, realist painter Jean-François Millet along with Daumier and Degas.
Gwathmey is known for simplifying compositions and using symbolic abstraction to create his messages. His style is recognized by the color, shapes, and figures he uses in his artwork.
When asked about being a "social artist" this was his reply:"I'm a social being and I don't see how you can be an artist and be separate....Artists have eyes...You go home. You see things that are almost forgotten. It's always shocking."
After finishing school, Robert Gwathmey was a professor at several colleges: Temple University in Philadelphia (1930-1932), Beaver College in Glenside, PA (1930-1937), Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA (1939-1942), the Cooper Union School of Art, New York City (1942-1968), New School for Social Research, New York (1946-1949), and Boston University (1968-1969). He was an instructor to artists Faith Ringgold and Alvin Carl Hollingsworth.
He was also an activist for several political movements; because of this he was watched by the FBI for the last twenty-seven years of his life.
In Elia Kazan's novel The Arrangement when Evangelos is describing to Florence the property that she can keep for herself he says: "...all paintings, even that by Picasso and Gweathmey."
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