John Walter Stephan (1906–1995) was an American painter in the Hard-edge style. His magazine ''The Tigers Eye'' was widely read and is considered a lastingly influential magazine of art and literature. He was a contemporary and friends with such notable artists as

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Lat ...

, Clyfford Still and William Baziotes

Early life

John Stephan was born in

Maywood, Illinois Maywood is a village in Proviso Township, Cook County, Illinois, United States in the Chicago metropolitan area. It was founded on April 6, 1869, and organized October 22, 1881. The population was 23,512 at the 2020 United States Census. Histor ...

to a father who was a dentist and a mother who was a nurse, and his family moved to

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

in 1917 he attended the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...

and later the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum an ...

Career

After attending the

he worked as an Art Instructor at

Jane Addams Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage i ...

Hull House Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Char ...

, in Chicago and later was a Draftsman, at

Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. His first solo exhibition was in 1931 with many other solo and group exhibitions of note.

Personal life

He was married to Ruth Walgreen, than Ruth Stephan, who was the daughter of Walgreens founder Charles Rudolph Walgreen.

Notable exhibitions

* 9th Street Art Exhibition

Notable collections

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and 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 ...

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 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

* Rose Art Museum

References

External links

Interview with John Stephan, ca. 1987
from the Smithsonian

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

John Stephan Biography, Wyeth Alexander galleries

John Stephan Biography, Rhode Island international film festival

Askart.com information
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stephan, John 1906 births 1995 deaths Modern painters Painters from New York City 20th-century American painters American male painters Painters from Illinois Hunter College faculty Federal Art Project artists School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni People from Maywood, Illinois 20th-century American male artists