The Wharton Esherick Studio was the studio and home of

Wharton Esherick Wharton Esherick (July 15, 1887 – May 6, 1970) was an American artist and designer. An artistic polymath, he worked in a wide variety of art media including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. His design works range from architectural int ...

(1887-1970), an artistic polymath who is best known for his modernist sculpture and sculptural wood furniture. Built into the south slope of Valley Forge Mountain in

Malvern, Pennsylvania Malvern is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is west of Philadelphia. The population was 3,419 at the 2020 census. History The area was originally settled in the 17th century by Welsh immigrants who purchased lan ...

, the Studio was a forty year project for Esherick, who constructed, expanded, and altered the building on an ongoing basis between 1926 and 1966. The Studio reflects Esherick's wide interest in twentieth-century art and design movements, from

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

German Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

sculpture. The Studio is now preserved as part of the Wharton Esherick Museum. There are four historic structures on the Wharton Esherick Museum site: the Wharton Esherick Studio, where Esherick lived and worked; the 1956 workshop designed with

Louis Kahn Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky; – March 17, 1974) was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. Whil ...

and Anne Tyng; the 1928 German Expressionist log garage which now serves as the museum visitor center; and Esherick's woodshed. There is also a recent reconstruction of Esherick's 1920s German Expressionist

outhouse An outhouse — known variously across the English-speaking world otherwise as bog, dunny, long-drop, or privy — is a small structure, separate from a main building, which covers a toilet. This is typically either a pit latrine or a bucket ...

. The Studio, from its structural forms down to the door handles and light pulls, was designed and built by Wharton Esherick to create a total work of art, or ''

Gesamtkunstwerk A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. ...

''. The building is filled with more than 300 of Wharton Esherick's artworks and personal belongings, including sculpture, furniture, paintings and prints.''The Wharton Esherick Museum: Studio and Collection'' 1977, lists 126 individual pieces. The Wharton Esherick Museum was incorporated as a non-profit corporation in 1971, it opened for visitors in 1972, and in 1973 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The studio was declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

in 1993. and

References

External links

Wharton Esherick Museum

Trail, Malvern, Chester County, PA">Wharton Esherick House & Studio, 1520 Horseshoe Trail, Malvern, Chester County, PA
15 photos, 2 color transparencies, 6 data pages, and 2 photo caption pages at

Historic American Buildings Survey The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

{{authority control Commercial buildings completed in 1926 National Historic Landmarks in Pennsylvania

Historic house museums in Pennsylvania Artists' studios in the United States Esherick, Wharton Louis Kahn buildings Art museums and galleries established in 1972 National Register of Historic Places in Chester County, Pennsylvania Esherick Bungalow architecture in Pennsylvania American Craftsman architecture in Pennsylvania