17th Annual Art Exhibit Newport Harbor High School April 1962

Radio Notwithstanding Life - Major Work, 1956

38 x 48 inches | polymer tempera on masonite

John Bernhardt was born in 1921, in Indianapolis. He was the only child of William and Cora Bernhardt. His father, William, was a design maker for many years and when John enrolled at Arsenal Technical High School, he specialized in commercial art. Briefly putting his art career bated, he entered Butler University in 1939 where he studied business concern. Presently after his enrollment, he was stricken with tuberculosis and sent to a recovery hospital.

Bernhardt remained at the infirmary for the next 3 years recovering from his illness. At that time, he befriended his roommate, Herman Ziegner, who influenced Bernhardt on the arts. He became especially interested in the visual arts and began drawing seriously.

In 1943 Bernhardt had partially recovered from tuberculosis and was able to leave the hospital. By this time he had decided to pursue his interest in art seriously and enrolled as a part time student at John Herron Art School in Indianapolis, focusing mainly on painting and drawing. Once fully recovered, he moved to Colorado to report at the Fine Arts Middle at Colorado College. There he would be taught and greatly influenced by Boardman Robinson.

His educational activity career began in 1947, when became Instructor of Drawing and Painting at the University of Texas. Living so far due south, he was able to take a trip to Mexico where he interviewed the famous painter Jose Clemente Orozco.

Bernhardt moved to New York Urban center the side by side year and studied woodcutting with Ralph Mayer at Columbia Academy. He constitute work every bit a commercial designer at the studio of Will Burton. Effectually the aforementioned time he married Bunny Pritchard and moved to an apartment in the Lower East Side. During his spare fourth dimension, he would pigment and make woodcuts in his studio overlooking the metropolis streets. He also enjoyed going to the Brooklyn Bridge and making sketches for woodcuts. By 1952 he had practically given up his solar day chore as a commercial designer to concentrate on his artwork. He had his start i-man show in 1954 at the Haydn Planetarium at the University of North Carolina. His growing success and drive got him an instructing position at both the Adelphi College and "The Contemporaries" Gallery Workshop in New York.

After a living and teaching briefly in Boston, Bernhardt and his family moved to San Miguel Allende, Mexico. He concentrated on painting for the next three years and was very successful. After winning beginning prize in 1959 at the First International Art Showroom in San Miguel Allende, the Bernhardt's moved to Santa Barbara, California where he helped found the cooperative artist's Gallery 8.

Back in the United States, John Bernhardt had a cord of successful 1 human being shows. He began to work in aggregation and sculpture, concentrating on junk and discarded elements for his material. In 1962 he suffered a mild middle attack but recovered and went dorsum to working hard, continuing to exhibit his fine art and win awards. Tragically, in 1963 he died very suddenly at the age of 42 of a lack of artery circulation.

4:02 | Narrated by Jeremy Tessmer | Released forL.A.'s RISEN, 2011

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

While recovering from tuberculosis, John Bernhardt was influenced to pursue the arts by his roommate, Herman Ziegner. Ziegner introduced Bernhardt to both the literary and visual aspects of art, allowing John to take a well rounded conceptual grasp for his arroyo. His continued education, especially that under Boardman Robinson at the Fine Arts Centre at Colorado Higher, aided Bernhardt stylistically and intellectually. Well educated and living in New York City, Bernhardt was able to accept a firm yet emotive approach to his artwork, exploring ideas and concepts of modernity through printmaking.

One of his early prints done in New York was The Demagogue, 1950. In this print we tin can see some influence from his education nether Boardman Robinson. The man, who we can presume to be a demagogue, stands proud making a notion of leadership with his left hand raised up in the air. Contrastingly, his face up is withered and unexpressive. His eyes are dark and sunken into his face, unable to truly control his people. In the background, the give-and-take War is printed over a imprint reading The Demagogue, shielding the banner from clear view. The Demagogue, who we tin simply assume is the homo in the picture, is using the concept of war to shield the truth from the people he is motioning to. One cannot help just call back about the actions of the Nazis and Fascists when they retrieve about a modernistic demagogue in the 1950s. Bernhardt was living in the Lower Due east Side, a prominently Jewish neighborhood, when he made this print and must have felt some sensitivity towards the horrific treatment of Jews in Europe during World War II. Although in no way does the human being resemble Adolph Hitler, the connection is clear. The idea that he does not resemble Hitler extends Bernhardt'due south aversion to demagogues and says something nearly his ideals on staying educated and not adhering to propaganda.

Bernhardt likewise had an interest in the modern achievements of his environment. Living in New York City, he was close to some of the greatest products of industrialization and modernity. Co-ordinate to his wife, Bunny, he would frequently visit the Brooklyn Span and make sketches which would later exist turned into woodcuts . He also fabricated prints of Queens bridge, harbor storage tanks, and a power plant. Each of these prints focus on geometric elements forming abstract representations of these technological innovations. In Harbor Storage Tanks we run into a span in the front with several round, dome shapes backside information technology representing the storage tanks. Although very abstruse, the print does not seem particularly frightening. In Queensbridge the subject matter is barely recognizable.

Bernhardt moved to several cities afterward New York until he settled in Santa Barbara in 1959. At that fourth dimension, many California artists were working in assemblage. The assemblage medium fit Bernhardt's approach to modernity very well. Whereas the subjects of his woodprints were often modern, industrialized sites, he was able to use bodily pieces and scraps of industrialized products to create his assemblages. In The Starting time Airplane, a 1962 sculpture, nosotros see the Bernhardt's interest in a machine aesthetic. The sculpture is made upwards of mass produced wheels that look like cogs in a motorcar, attached to various scraps of metal. Information technology is abstract in the sense that information technology does not look anything like one'south conception of an airplane. Nothing almost the sculpture tells the viewer that this is something that can possible fly in the air. In fact, although it looks similar a car, a closer await shows that its only role is that of what it is: a sculpture. Bernhardt is making a critique on many levels here. The pick of materials is a critique on the industrialized world and the junk and refuse that it leaves backside. The cloth is no longer needed for its intended industrial purpose and is discarded for newer technology much like how the first aeroplane has become obsolete and left backside in favor of newer more than technologically advanced airplanes. Ironically, considering the first plane is obsolete and considering it is the starting time, its function is at present to be looked at in a museum setting, much similar Bernhardt's The Offset Airplane. Bernhardt would piece of work in assemblage for the residuum of his career. His near influential works came out of this medium, which seems so advisable for a human being so influenced and inspired by the mod globe.

AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS

1948 Special Prize, Indiana State Fair Fine Arts Exhibit
1948 Purchase Prize, Central States Graphic Arts Exhibition: Joslyn Memorial Arts Museum, Nebraska
1949 Board of Managing director'south Prize, John Herron Art Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana
1954 Purchase Accolade, 8th National Print Annual Brooklyn Museum
1954 Sacks-Allen Prize, Boston Printmakers 8th Almanac Exhibit
1959 Outset Prize, Starting time International Art Exhibit, San Miguel Allende
1960 Showtime Prize, fifth Biennial of 50 Indiana Prints
1961 Graphic Award, California Country Fair and Exhibition
1961 Honorable Mention, Santa Barbara County Fair, 1st Invitational Fine art Exhibit
1962 Honorable Mention, 17th Annual Newport Harbor Fine art Exhibit
1962 Ford Foundation Buy Prize for Painting, Houston Annual

COLLECTIONS

Addison Gallery of American Art
Boston Public Library
Boston Museum
Brooklyn Museum
Cincinnati Museum
Dallas Museum
Davenport Art Gallery
De Young Museum, San Francisco
Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass
Fort Worth Museum
Indiana Museum
John Herron Museum
Joslyn Museum
Library of Congress
Los Angeles Canton Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, NY
National Gallery
New York Public Library
Oakland Museum

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Bernhardt, Bunny. My New York. The Independent nineteen Aug. 2004: 39.
2. Bernhardt, Bunny. Personal interview. 23 Apr. 2005.
iii. Bernhardt, Kienholz, Wagner: Assemblage. Los Angeles: Tobey C. Moss Gallery, 2004.
4. Falk, Peter H. Who Was Who in American Art. Vol. i. Madison, CT: Sound View P, 1999.
5. John Bernhardt: A Memorial Exhibition. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1964.

quillenhimse1982.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.sullivangoss.com/artists/john-bernhardt-1921-1963

Share this post