Marsden Hartley

about his own life and relationships has remained unpublished until now. Hartley's text is accompanied by photographs (some never before published), notes, and an introduction discussing Hartley's autobiography in the context of his struggle with notions of. Self-representation in art. Susan Ryan describes the circumstances surrounding the composition of Somehow a Past, and explains the distinctions between this original version and two later ones also in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Somehow a Past is compelling both as historical document and as personal narrative. Although solitary, self-involved, and saturnine, Hartley nevertheless knew nearly every figure of the international avant-garde in his day. And unfolds his life largely through a chain of personal encounters. His traffic with such major literary and artistic figures as Alfred Stieglitz, Vasily Kandinsky, Gertrude Stein, Mable Dodge Luhan, Eugene O'Neill, Robert McAlmon, and Charles Demuth is recorded, as are his travels both domestic and foreign.

"A collection of previously unpublished correspondence between American artist Marsden Hartley and avant-garde impresario, editor, and photographer Alfred Stieglitz, My Dear Stieglitz chronicles Hartley's three-year-plus European pilgrimage before - and during the inception of - World War I. Beginning with Hartley's 1912 arrival in Paris, his letters to Stieglitz provide sweeping accounts of Gertrude Stein's salons, gossip from bohemian cafes of Montparnasse, and commentary on paintings by Picasso, Cezanne, and Matisse. He records encounters with Robert Delaunay, Paul Fort, Claude Debussy, Elie Nadelman, Eduard Steichen, and Charles Demuth, as well as other commanding figures as he navigates the thriving capital of modern art and world culture during the rise of Cubism and Futurism. Searching for artistic growth and inspiration, Hartley reports, with opinionated insight, on the European world of art in the age of dealers and gallery owners such as Ambroise Vollard, the Bernheim-Jeunes, and the Durand-Ruels.". "From Germany in early 1913, Hartley writes vibrant letters about the Expressionist artists in Munich, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and their group Der Blaue Reiter. Hartley's missives are up-to-the-minute exposes on avant-garde trends in Germany and childlike lamentations on life in the bustling, modern city of Berlin. His glory in Germany turns solemn with the onset of World War I and the death in combat of his close friend, a German officer named Karl von Freyburg - a loss vividly depicted in Hartley's renowned war motif paintings.". "Stieglitz's correspondence from New York gives an American point of view of the European art climate while chronicling the effect of the 1913 Armory Show on modernism in America. Stieglitz sends Hartley money for expenses, summarizes the exhibitions held at 291, his gallery for modern art and photography, and comments upon the war raging in Europe.". "Closing in late 1915 with Hartley's return to an America filled with anti-German sentiment and to a New York City seasoned by the influx of modern art, My Dear Stieglitz provides an intimate perspective on modern art and the human condition during the tempestuous years of the early twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.

"American painter Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) lived in Europe from 1913 to 1915. After spending some time in Paris and Munich he moved to Berlin, where he painted his most impressive works. Hartley was associated with Herwarth Walden's Sturm gallery and participated in its 'First German Autumn Salon' in 1913, which featured numerous international artists. Immediately prior to and after his Berlin years, Hartley cultivated a style of painting that was moderately figurative, however the years 1913 to 1915 marked an apogee of abstraction in his career. During these years he developed a completely independent vernacular, which placed him at the forefront of the avant-garde of the time. His paintings from this period literally explode off the canvas, they are composed of bright, starkly contrasting colours that directly border one another. The theme around which these works revolve is the First World War. Flags, military standards and insignia such as the Iron Cross form recurring motifs in the paintings. Hartley's relationship with the Prussian Officer Karl von Freybourg, who died just months after the outbreak of war, led to Hartley producing such masterworks as 'Portrait of a German Officer' (1914, Metropolitan Museum, New York), in which abstract forms and military paraphanalia are so densely interwoven that the resulting portrait is composed purely of symbols."--Staatliche Museen zu Berlin website, viewed June 5, 2014.