Walter Halsey Abell (1897–1956) was an American Art teacher and theoretician.

Early years

Walter Halsey Abell was born in 1897 in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, New York. The Barnes Foundation sponsored him to study in France. He became a teacher of art and an art theoretician, interpreting art from Marxist and psychological viewpoints. He taught at

Antioch College Antioch College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection and began operating in 1852 as a non-secta ...

Yellow Springs, Ohio Yellow Springs is a Village (Ohio), village in northern Greene County, Ohio, United States. The population was 3,697 at the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census. It is part of the Greater Dayton, Dayton metropolitan area and is home to Antioch ...

(1925–27).

Career

Abell taught at

Acadia University Acadia University is a public, predominantly Undergraduate education, undergraduate university located in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, with some Postgraduate education, graduate programs at the master's level and one at the Doctorate, doctor ...

in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada from 1928 to 1943. He was one of the first professors of fine art at a Canadian university. Abell helped to found the Maritime Art Association, and was founding editor of ''Maritime Art''. The first issue of ''Maritime Art'', the first magazine in Canada devoted to the visual arts, appeared in October 1940. The

Carnegie Corporation The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Since its founding, the Carnegie Corporation has endowed or othe ...

provided a small grant to help with starting up, and the Maritime Art Association gave organizational support. Abell was editor, but Violet Gillett was responsible for production of the first issues. In the late 1930s Abell saw Canadian modernists, particularly women such as Pegi Nicol and perhaps Paraskeva Clark, as a "very important group of young Canadian painters ... more important than the Group of Seven."

André Charles Biéler André Charles Biéler (8 October 1896 – 1 December 1989) was a Swiss-born Canadian painter and teacher. His work was modernist, at first with strong emphasis on line, later with more interest in light and colour. He is known for his genre pictu ...

organized the first conference of Canadian artists in

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the northeastern end of Lake Ontario. It is at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River, the south end of the Rideau Canal. Kingston is near the Thousand Islands, ...

. Abell told the delegates at the Kingston conference that Canada was a "cultural plutocracy ... determined by a small group possessing great wealth." He proposed that experiments in children's art, folk art and amateur creative workshops were "movements of modern art that have broken old forms and prepared the way for new ones, with increasing emphasis upon the creative possibilities in the common man." The Kingston conference led to the foundation of the Federation of Canadian Artists in 1941. The Federation was divided into regions, each with a regional organizer. Abell was head of the Maritimes region. Walter Abell's journal ''Maritime Art'' became ''

Canadian Art Canadian art refers to the visual arts, visual (including painting, photography, and printmaking) as well as plastic arts (such as sculpture) originating from the geographical area of contemporary Canada. Art in Canada is marked by thousands of ...

'' in 1943 when Abell moved to Ottawa to join the staff of the Art Centre of the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

. Abell moved on to

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

where he taught from 1943 to 1956. He died in 1956 in

East Lansing East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. Most of the city lies within Ingham County, Michigan, Ingham County, although a small portion extends north into Clinton County, Michigan, Clinton County. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 ...

, Michigan.

Writings

*Representation and Form: A Study of Aesthetic Values in Representational Art. New York: Scribners, 1936 *Canadian Aspirations in Painting. Quebec: Culture, 1942 *Pleasure From Art : a Guide to Reading. Ottawa: Canadian Legion Educational Services, 1944 *Collective Dream in Art: A Psycho-Historical Theory of Culture based on Relations between the Arts, Psychology, and the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957

References

Sources

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Abell, Walter Halsey 1897 births 1956 deaths American art historians