Andrew Michael Dasburg (1887 - 1979) France
Pastel and Pencil on Paper
Measure 11 1/2"in H x 19"in W and 20"in H x 27 1/2"in W with frame
Known for: Modernist landscape, portrait and still-life painting
Name variants: Michael Dasburg, Andrew Michael Dasbury
Biography: Raised in Germany, Dasburg came to the United States with his mother in 1892. He studied at the Art Students League with Kenyon Cox and DuMond, privately in Woodstock with Birge Harrison and at the New York School of Art with Henri. He studied in Paris in 1908, the same year as Benton, returning in 1911. "Young Andrew Dasburg abandoned the tepid manners he had learned from Kenyon Cox and soon painted a vase of tulips with the rugged force of Cezanne and reduced American trees and roof tops to their underlying shapes and colors." He exhibited three oils and a sculpture at the epochal 1913 Armory Show, acting as the butt of the critic Thomas Craven's dated denunciation, "What find old American families were represented! Bouche, Dasburg, Halpert, Kuniyoshi, Stell, Zorach—scions of our colonial aristocracy!" In 1923 Dasburg was one of the leading proponents of Cubism. From there, he progressed toward "pure" art, but later returned to a modified version of Cubism, finding "in the landscape of the Southwest an apt vehicle for his Cubist vision." Dasburg had visited New Mexico in 1917 at the urging of Maurice Sterne, and finally settled in Taos in 1930. Applying Cezanne and Cubism to New Mexico produced both powerful Western landscapes and a shock wave for New Mexico artists. His new European ideas affected even the older Taos group, Higgins, Berninghaus, and Blumenschein. As an influence for pioneering modernism, for re-evaluating the same subjects originally painted by Couse and Ufer, Dasburg was of the greatest importance in New Mexico. In turn, Dasburg became less abstract.