Arthur Secunda
(1927 - )
Arthur Secunda is
an internationally renowned artist whose
career has spanned five decades. His one
man shows have been seen worldwide in
numerous galleries and museums in
France, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Spain,
Israel, and Japan. In the United States,
he is represented in most major museums
of the country, including the National
Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian
Museum in Washington D.C., the Museum of
Modern Art in New York, the UCLA Museum,
the Detroit Art Institute, and the
Phoenix Museum. Known for his brilliant
collages and striking graphics, Secunda
has mastered all types of printmaking,
even making his own paper in France and
Japan. His impressive body of work
includes painting, mixed media,
polyester assemblage, ceramics and
welded sculpture.
His studies began at the Detroit Art
Institute as a teenager, and continued
in New York at the Art Students League
and New York University. After a stint
in the Air Force as an artist, he then
studied, thanks to the GI bill, in
Mexico, Paris and Italy, with many great
artists and teachers, beginning a
lifelong propensity for travel-- living
and working in other countries. For
decades, he maintained studios in Paris
and LA.
He considers himself a landscape artist,
and has developed his own iconography in
representing nature, the land and its
forms, as well as corresponding inner
landscapes. He is known for a specific
kind of color gradation and blending of
forms in many media. His work tends to
oscillate between the serene--striated
colors in landscapes--to the expressive,
as in many of his oil paintings.
After years in Paris, Secunda has
maintained a studio in Scottsdale for
the last decade--doing what he has done
in all of the other places he has lived
and worked in the last 50
years--creating imagery.
He has worked as a jazz musician--in
Paris in the early days to support
himself, and as a milkman; as an art
critic, lecturer, curator, writer and
publisher. Periodically, he consults at
NASA where he is an image visualizer,
helping translate scientific data into
visual images. Highly respected as a
teacher, he will spend August in Lacoste,
France teaching a master class in
collage and the creation of handmade
artists books. (Secunda has an
international following of people who
subscribe and collect his dada art
"books".)
Next year (2008), he will have a one man
exhibition at the University of Judaism
in Los Angeles, presenting a never
before seen series of expressive
portrait monotypes of noted art
personalities, after which he will
exhibit early Mexican woodcuts at
McMasters University in Hamilton,
Ontario, in a two man display with
Indian artist Mansaram Panchal.
Source: Arthur Secunda
Secundas place in the pantheon of
twentieth and twenty-first century
artists is yet to be determined. His
early art education and experiences
include studying at academies in Paris,
Rome and Florence. His exposure to some
of the greatest artists and teachers of
the twentieth century laid a groundwork
seldom excelled by even those great
names. His restless spirit and
unfettered creative energy kept his
output at levels equal to several
artists. Enterprising, (he convinced a
dozen friends and collectors to invest
in his travel abroad to paint, print and
draw; with the promise of a selection of
the results based on the amount of their
investment) Arthur devised ways to
survive when times were bleak. He would
play Jazz piano, teach, make frames,
decorate pottery and lay out newspaper
ads to insure his ability to develop his
unique vision. He developed a European
following in addition to building a
strong collector base in the U.S. In
recent years he has had to weather a
change in the international art climate
unfavorable to his particular style and
oeuvre. With waning interest in his work
in California where he last resided
Secunda looked to Arizona for respite
and new beginnings. Now working on a
catalogue raisonne of his complete works
and the creation of a new studio in
Scottsdale, Arthur Secunda continues to
reinvent himself and his art.
Commentary, George Palovich, curator,
West Valley Art Museum |
 Ethnographic Artifacts
John Dawson
Dorothy Knop
Thomas Moran
George Resler
Henry Varnum Poor
Fine Art Prints
Elaine Rothwell
Fritz Scholder
Arthur Secunda
Japanese Woodcuts
 |
