Arnold Blanch The Dock, 1959

Arnold Blanch 1896-1968  The Dock, 1959 Oil paint on masonite, 17” x 27” Signed and dated.  Arnold Blanch came from Minnesota, my home state. He was a teacher, and wrote books about painting. He ended up in Woodstock NY, where many artists lived and worked in the mid-twentieth century. Before the music festival put the town in the history books. His work is either modern blocks of color, as in this example, or a realist style influenced by European old masters and the emerging modern painters in Paris, and later the WPA aesthetic that seemed to have an anime quality.  This piece is a playful and jumbled abstraction. One of my favorite paintings in the collection.