Albert Swinden (1901–1961) was an English-born American abstract painter. He was one of the founders of the

American Abstract Artists American Abstract Artists (AAA) was founded in 1937 in New York City, to promote and foster public understanding of abstract art. American Abstract Artists exhibitions, publications, and lectures helped to establish the organization as a major f ...

, and he created significant murals as part of the Federal Art Project.

Life

Albert Swinden was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

, England in 1901. When he was seven, he moved with his family to Canada, and in 1919 he immigrated to the United States. He lived in Chicago, where he studied for about a year and a half at the Art Institute. He then relocated to New York City, where his art education continued briefly at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

. He soon changed schools again, to the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

, which he attended from 1930 to 1934. He studied with

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

and gained an appreciation for

Synthetic Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

and

Neoplasticism Neoplasticism or neo-plasticism, originating from the Dutch , is an avant-garde art theory proposed by Piet Mondrian in 1917 and initially employed by the De Stijl art movement. The most notable proponents of this theory were Mondrian and anoth ...

. According to painter and printmaker George McNeil, Swinden "could have influenced Hofmann ... He was working with very, very simple planes, not in this sort of Cubistic manner. Swinden was working synthetically at this time." While still a student, Swinden began teaching at the Art Students League, in 1932. Swinden married Rebecca Palter (1912–1998), from New York. Their daughter, Alice Swinden Carter, also became an artist. Carter, who attended the

School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is a dedicated art school within Tufts University, a private research university in Mass ...

, received an award from the

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple name chang ...

for her large sculptures.

Work

Swinden was hired for the

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...

(FAP) of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

(WPA), and he is best known for the murals which he painted as part of that project. In 1935, New York City Mayor

Fiorello La Guardia Fiorello Henry La Guardia (born Fiorello Raffaele Enrico La Guardia; December 11, 1882September 20, 1947) was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives and served as the 99th mayor of New Yo ...

attended the opening of the inaugural exhibit at the Federal Art Project Gallery, accompanied by

Audrey McMahon Audrey McMahon (1898 – August 20, 1981) was the Director of the New York region of the Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943;O'Connor, Francis V. "Audrey McMahon." in O'Connor, Francis V., ed. ''The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Mem ...

, New York regional director for the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project. Among the works on display was ''Abstraction'', a sketch by Swinden; it was the design for a mural planned for the College of the City of New York. A newspaper account described it as consisting of "brightly colored T-squares, triangles and rulers in horizontal, vertical and diagonal positions". La Guardia asked what it was, and upon being told it was a mural design, he said he didn't know what it depicted. Someone joked that it could be a map of Manhattan. The displeased mayor stated that "if that's art, I belong to Tammany Hall." (

Tammany Hall Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was an American political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789, as the Tammany Society. It became the main local ...

, which the Republican mayor referenced, was the New York Democratic Party political society.) Fearing that the mayor's negative attitude could jeopardize the future of abstract art within the Federal Art Project, McMahon dispatched an assistant to summon an artist who could speak to the mayor in defense of abstraction. The assistant returned with

Arshile Gorky Arshile Gorky ( ; born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, ; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian Americans, Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent the last years of his life as a national of the ...

. Swinden played an important role in the founding of the

. In 1935, he met with three friends,

Rosalind Bengelsdorf Rosalind Bengelsdorf (April 30, 1916 – February 10, 1979) was an American painter, art critic and educator. She is also known as Rosalind Bengelsdorf Browne and as Rosalind Browne. Biography Rosalind Bengelsdorf was born April 30, 1916, in N ...

, her future husband Byron Browne, and

Ibram Lassaw Ibram Lassaw (May 4, 1913 – December 30, 2003) was an Egyptian-born American sculptor of Russian heritage, known for non-objective construction in brazed metals. Early life and education Lassaw was born on May 4, 1913, in Alexandria, Egypt, o ...

, with the goal of exhibiting together. The group grew and started meeting in Swinden's studio, which adjoined those of Balcomb and

Gertrude Greene Gertrude Glass Greene (1904 – November 25, 1956) was an abstract sculptor and painter from New York City. Gertrude and her husband, artist Balcomb Greene, were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstrac ...

. The A.A.A. evolved in 1937 out of these meetings among twenty-two artists. One of the artists attending those meetings was painter

John Opper John Opper (1908–1994) was an American painter who transitioned from semi-abstract paintings in the late 1930s to fully abstract ones in the 1950s. He became known for his handling of color and in particular his ability to create dramatic in ...

, who said in an interview that Swinden was very quiet, shy, and inhibited. He also said that Swinden was one of the best painters in the group. "His paintings were very powerful, very strong. You would think he would be one of those robust persons like Gorky, for instance. But he was the opposite of Gorky. He was very withdrawn." Around this time, Swinden may have painted abstracts exclusively. But later, according to

Irving Sandler Irving Sandler (July 22, 1925 – June 2, 2018) was an American art critic, art historian, and educator. He provided numerous first hand accounts of American art, beginning with abstract expressionism in the 1950s. He also managed the Tanager Gal ...

, "it was sort of a mixture between figurative and geometric abstraction. It was a kind of hard-edge figure towards the end."

Burgoyne Diller Burgoyne A. Diller (January 13, 1906 – January 30, 1965) was an American abstract painter. Many of his best-known works are characterized by orthogonal geometric forms that reflect his strong interest in the De Stijl movement and the work of ...

selected Swinden to create a mural for Brooklyn's

Williamsburg Housing Project The Williamsburg Houses, originally called the Ten Eyck Houses (pronounced ), is a public housing complex built and operated by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. It consists of 20 buildi ...

. The other artists chosen for this project were

Paul Kelpe Paul Kelpe (; January 15, 1902 – December 8, 1985) was a German-born American abstract painter. His constructions integrating found objects into paintings were the first such works created in the United States and he painted two of the fiv ...

, who painted two murals, and

Ilya Bolotowsky Ilya Bolotowsky (July 1, 1907 – November 22, 1981) was an early 20th-century Russian-American painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and geometric ...

and

Balcomb Greene Balcomb Greene (1904–1990) was an American artist and teacher. He and his wife, artist Gertrude Glass Greene, were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstract art and were founding members of the Am ...

, each of whom created one. The murals were commissioned in 1936 by the Mural Division of the WPA/FAP in New York. Diller headed the Mural Division. Swinden's large – – untitled abstract mural has been described as a "carefully balanced, disciplined composition of rectangular shapes punctuated by occasional biomorphic forms". He was not able to execute the mural exactly as he had originally conceptualized, due to constraints of the installation space; for example, the unpainted upper corners which were inserted during restoration are where structural beams were present at the Williamsburg site. The black strip at the top and the broken blue one on the right were probably also changes made due to requirements of using the particular space. The murals, owned by the

New York City Housing Authority The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is a public development corporation which provides public housing in New York City, and is the largest public housing authority in North America. Created in 1934 as the first agency of its kind in the ...

, are on loan to the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

. These five paintings were the first abstract murals anywhere in the United States, and they're considered to be some of the most significant. Art historians have praised the murals as "extremely important artworks, quite courageous and extraordinary ... painted in the most radical style you could get at the time", "key to American art between the wars", and "national treasures". Among the other murals he created was one for the

1939 New York World's Fair The 1939 New York World's Fair (also known as the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair) was an world's fair, international exposition at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City, New York, United States. The fair included exhibitio ...

. Although he did not often write about his art, a short essay of his was published in the ''American Abstract Artists Yearbook'' of 1938. This yearbook featured, among other things, essays such as Swinden's which expounded on theories and practices of abstract art. In his essay, "On Simplification", Swinden wrote: "We are moved not only by particular, or individual forms, but by the relationships between the particular forms and their significance as a unity." A 1940 fire at Swinden's studio destroyed the majority of his early work. His mural for the Williamsburg Project, which had been painted over and considered lost before being rediscovered and restored, is a rare and very significant painting from the period before the fire. In a 1942 review of the American Abstract Artists' sixth annual exhibition, influential art critic

Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...

wrote that among the "geometricians", Swinden "shows as much promise perhaps in his single unsuccessful painting as the others in their successful ones." Although he was respected by the prominent artists he associated with, had his paintings exhibited in many group shows (including such prestigious venues as the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

and the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

), and created significant murals, he was not able to promote his art in a commercially successful way. Instead, he often had to work in other capacities, supporting himself as an engineering

draftsman A drafter (also draughtsman / draughtswoman in British and Commonwealth English, draftsman / draftswoman, drafting technician, or CAD technician in American and Canadian English) is an engineering technician who makes detailed technical drawi ...

or a

textile design Textile design, also known as textile geometry, is the creative and technical process by which thread or yarn fibers are interlaced to form a piece of Textile, cloth or Textile, fabric, which is subsequently printed upon or otherwise adorned. Texti ...

er. He died in 1961 in New York City. In 1962, a

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...

exhibit of his work was mounted at New York's Graham Gallery. Swinden left behind a relatively small oeuvre of "calmly classical visions".

Collections

Museums with Swinden's work in their permanent collections include: *

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art is an art museum in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The museum was originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was formerly located ...

, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania *

Fogg Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

, Cambridge, Massachusetts *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the list of largest art museums, 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 painting ...

New Jersey State Museum The New Jersey State Museum is located at 195-205 West State Street in Trenton, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The museum's collections include natural history specimens, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, and cultural history and fin ...

, Trenton, New Jersey *

Sheldon Museum of Art The Sheldon Museum of Art is an art museum in the city of Lincoln, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Previously called the University of Nebraska Art Galleries and later the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, the institution ...

, Lincoln, Nebraska *

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

, Washington, D.C. *

, New York City

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swinden, Albert American abstract painters 20th-century American painters American male painters Art Students League of New York faculty Art Students League of New York alumni National Academy of Design alumni School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Painters from New York City Painters from Birmingham, West Midlands British emigrants to the United States 1901 births 1961 deaths Federal Art Project artists 20th-century American male artists