Gouache.
Signed in the image, lower left. Annotated verso, April 1953, Minewski, ‘Dock Side’.
A fine, modernist composition, with fresh colors, on cream wove drawing paper. Original brown paper tape on the sheet edges, recto; in excellent condition.
Image size 14 x 20 inches (356 x 508 mm); sheet size 14 7/8 x 22 3/16 inches (378 x 564 mm).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
“I have tried to stress the conceptual value of things ‘seen’ rather than simply what the eye ‘looks at.’ Through inner force I hope to develop the physical image. By avoiding the picturesque, I want to reach beyond the image alone. The work, in the end, must speak for itself. Painting should be an expression of life’s experiences.”
—From the Exhibition catalog, Ulster County College, 1981.
Born in Detroit, Alex Minewski (1917-1979) left home as a teenager and joined the circus. He returned to Detroit to begin his art training at the Society of Arts and Crafts and then moved to New York City to continue his studies at the Art Students League, where his teachers included Jean Charlot, Ernest Fiene, George Grosz, and Vaclav Vytlacil. During WWII, serving as a combat engineer Minewski was wounded in Burma while fighting with the famed special operations jungle warfare unit Merrill's Marauders. While in recovery, he continued his studies on the G.I. Bill at the Grande Chaumiere in Paris. He returned to New York City to study independently with the renowned teacher and artist Hans Hofmann from 1952-1953.
In 1954, Minewski began spending summers at the historic artist’s colony in Monhegan Island, Maine. In the early 1970s, he was awarded a research grant to study the sea life on the Maine coast. He became fascinated with the structure of fish, and studies of their forms filled his Monhegan portfolio. In 1966 Minewski was appointed Professor of Art at SUNY, New Paltz, teaching there until he died in 1979.
Minewski exhibited in New York City, Maine, Detroit, and New Paltz in group and one-man shows throughout his career, including Michigan Artists, 1937-39, 1938 (purchase), 1945-47; Audubon Artists, 1947-48; Detroit Institute of Art, 1946 (solo); Contemporary Art Gallery, 1947; PAFA Annual, 1949; National Society of Painters in Casein, 1955, 1956; Ball State Teachers College, 1956 (purchase); Butler Institute of American Art, 1957; Columbia Museum of Art, 1957 (solo); National Academy of Design (solo); Washington Irving Gallery, 1957; New Paltz State University, 1979 (retrospective). Exhibitions of his work continued after his death throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Minewski’s works are included in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, Monhegan Museum of Art & History, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (SUNY New Paltz), and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
