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View Images USA East

New York City, NY Israel Litwak 1868-1960 Paintings

Information: "Although many are over 80, the world looks fresh and poetic to "primitive" painters "The artists whose works appear on these pages are called "primitives." Unlike most painters who come to their art after many years of work, much gallery haunting and museum study, these natural painters rarely if ever sought art in museums or galleries. Self-taught, they came to painting late in life and they work as though nobody had ever before put color to canvas." "The source of their art is not art but their own inner vision. A Louisiana laundress, an ex-cabinetmaker, a New York dowager, a retired businessman, scattered over the country in dramatically different environments, produce paintings that are strangely akin." "They all paint real things but they paint them from memory. The significant detail is magnificent, the trivial, however big, is ignored. Their real people, their real flowers, their real landscapes have the reality of a dream, the emotional force and directness of a vivid personal adventure." Clementine Hunter in her Louisiana cabin surrounded by her quilts, dolls and paintings. A charwoman and laundress, she has been painting for 15 years. "The world on their canvases seems as wondrous and newly-born as it does to the eyes of children, whose innocence these natural painters have by some happy miracle recaptured." Look Magazine article: "Innocence Regained" June 16, 1953

	Reference / Links:
	Look Magazine
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Bibliography: Look Magazine article: "Innocence Regained" June 16, 1953 "20th Century American Folk, Self Taught, and Outsider Art" by Betty-Carol Sellen, Cynthia J. Johnson, Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, 1993. "Flying Free: Twentieth-Century Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Ellin and Baron Gordon" by Ellin Gordon, Barbara L. Luck and Tom Patterson, exhibit catalog for The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, 1997. "American Self-Taught Art: An Illustrated Analysis of 20th Century Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies" by Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, 2003.

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