PETER KRASNOW (1886-1979)

ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

Peter Krasnow had very definite ideas about what his work meant both to himself and the viewer. In an interview from January of 1975 Krasnow defines his work:

“Meaning in a painting is derived from quality. It is reciprocal and will return what has been given to it both to its creator and to the beholder, by a multiple combination in visual concept of pattern, color, form, and that undefined intangible which transcends all classifications. My paintings subscribe o no period or school. If they possess that sustaining power of meaning and authenticity which constitute the basic attributes of a work of art, as well as an awareness of the contemporary scene, they will be illustrative of the progressive trends of their time. Their visible concept may ostensibly reveal characteristics of Time and Place, but the roots reach deep into ethnic strains of ancient culture through which the archetype emerges as indicator of the universal and eternal urge toward creation.”

Peter Krasnow’s early works are most often city scenes and the palette he used was rich and dark. These paintings echo the Ashcan artists with their urban subject matter. A street scene of a market in New York City (1919) could be mistaken for a market day in Russia. The women bundled and wrapped against the cold and the dark, brooding palette are suggestive of Krasnow’s formative years in the Ukraine. These early works incorporated contemporary surroundings of buildings and people, many of mothers with their children.

After moving to California in the early 1920s, Krasnow’s palette lightens up. He created a number of landscape watercolors and other paintings that garnered him a successful exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The success of that exhibition could have been a major catalyst for Krasnow’s career, but he chose instead to experience France, the art capital of the world, to further develop his work. After a short time in Paris he and Rose removed to the countryside of the Dordogne region of France and produced a series of watercolors and paintings of a landscape that “...just cried out to be painted” (Krasnow, 1975). He was given a rent-free space in which to paint. The citizens of the small town entreated the Krasnow’s to stay and become a permanent part of their community, but Krasnow knew he would need to return to California. The compromise with the townspeople was that he exhibit the works produced in their town before his return to the United States, which he did in Paris at the Galerie Pierre in 1934.

Back in Los Angles, Krasnow spent approximately the next ten years producing wood sculptures he named “demountables”. His experience of wood sculpture in European museums was that the medium was difficult to distinguish from any other medium; the wood was not celebrated as an organic and generic product, but made to look like bronze or marble. Krasnow’s “demountables” are totemic figures of interconnecting geometric shapes. The intricacy of their configuration and the combinations of different grains and colors invite the viewer participation in understanding their interlocking patterns. They range in size from 24” to 119” high by 8” to 103” wide. These sculptures celebrated the knots and whorls within the wood, and ultimately the trees themselves, some of which came from Krasnow’s own property.

In 1944 the war was in full swing and Krasnow turned back to painting. Within the dark days of war Krasnow’s goal was produce paintings of light. The paintings produced in the 1940s until his death in 1979 were colorful, geometric designs often incorporating abstract images taken from his Jewish heritage. The paintings are symmetrical with multicolored bands and rectangles creating order and light in a chaotic world. Krasnow’s paintings show a desire for structure and symmetry and have been compared to paintings by Piet Mondrian.

AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS

1977 National Endowment for the Arts, fellowship

COLLECTIONS

Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
University of Arizona Art Museum, Tucson, AZ
DeSaisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA
Galka E. Scheyer Collection – Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA
Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, CA
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach CA
Long Beach Museum of Art, CA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, Monterey CA
Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA
Palm Springs Desert Museum of Art, Palm Springs, CA
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA
Skirball Museum, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, CA
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL
Herzliya Museum of Art, Israel
Sheldon Memorial Art Galleries, University of Nebraska
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan UT
National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
University of Judaism, Los Angeles, CA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Karlstrom, Paul J. Archives of American Art Journal, 1997 (Volume 37 Numbers 3 and 4) P. 48. Smithsonian Institution,Washington, DC.
2. WIlson, William. Krasnow, 92: Anonymity from Fame. Los Angeles Times, November 4, 1979, Calendar, P. 5.
3. Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Peter Krasnow; A Retrospective Exhibition. February 26-March 23, 1975
4. Tobey Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Exhibition catalogs 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993 and 1996.
5. Moss, Tobey. Peter Krasnow. ArtScene, September 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 1) p. 21-22.
6. Journal from t he Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, December 1976 (no. 3).
7. Los Angeles Times Art Review, November 6, 1978.
8. Hughes, Edan Milton. Artists in California, p. 644. San Fran: Hughes Pub., 1989.
9. Peter Krasnow, AskArt.com.
10. Mclelland, Gordon. California Watercolors; An Illustrated History and Biographical Dictionary. p. 144.