Born in Jassy, Rumaniain 1899, De Hirsch Margules was brought to America while still an infant. By age eleven he had won an award in the Wanamaker Children's Art Contest. He studied briefly with Edwin Randby in Pittsburgh (1917 1918) before returning to New York where, with further encouragement from Myron Lechay, he embarked on a career that would lead to more than thirty one-person shows, constant exposure at the Whitney Annuals (1938 1956), and the acquisition of his work by nearly twenty museums including the Birobidjian Collection in Russia, Tel Aviv Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
By 1943 he had won a Brooklyn Museum Purchase Prize, and his work was consistently the focus of attention in the New York art press. Elaine de Kooning wrote a lengthy consideration of his working methods for the December 1951 edition of "ARTnews".
Alfred Stieglitz and Margules met in 1929 and quickly became friends. They carried on a twelve-year correspondence and Margules asserted, "Stieglitz was to me what Socrates was to his friends." Stieglitz introduced Marin and Margules in 1929 and thereafter a lasting friendship ensued. It was in John Marin that Margules found his artistic mentor and academy. "Marin was the only person Margules ever knew who could answer his questions about color, space, form, line movement; and it was from Marin he learned that what seems to come out of mysticism and wonder is rooted in knowledge and study and technique."
Marin himself recognized in Margules "an art lover with abounding faith and sincerity, with much intelligence and quick seeing ".
John Driscoll
Michael St. Clair
Babcock Galleries, 724 Fifth Avenue, New York . June 1994
Further information on the artist, as well as the sources for the above quotations will be found in:
Harry Salpeter, " The Talking Artist", Esquire Magazine , April 1946, pp. 74,75, 173-176;
Emily Genauer, "Margules Exhibition", New York World Telegram, November 16, 1946, p.11:
Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints A Picture", ARTnews, December 1951, pp. 42-45, 55-57.
See also Hilary Dunsterville and Alexander King, Time Painting, De Hirsh Margules, privately printed, circa 1960; and The New York Times, "'The Village' Mourns Lost Baron and Recalls the Old, Vivid Days", February 8, 1965, p.26
Mentored by John Marin, befriended by Alfred Stieglitz, and further influenced by Stuart Davis and Jan Matulka, under-recognized artist De Hirsch Margules is beginning to get the long overdue attention he deserved.
“So animate and vivacious a presence in American art…..we accede to his delight in boats, streets, piers, and flowers: all spinning about in a kinetic riot of sharp primary sensations. His paintings express the experience of living in New York City”.
-ArtNews, May 1961
Color and viscosity best describe De Hirsch Margules’ passion as an artist. He sought to create a technique which would serve as a new artistic language for the third dimension of physical presence and a fourth dimension of time, using the balance of color and texture as a basis. His works have a transcendental quality about them, one which is inherent in both perspective and in medium.
Margules became an intrinsic part of the art world in New York City as early as 1929. His endearing friendship with Alfred Stieglitz, artist and major patron/dealer, allowed him the opportunity to meet and learn from some of the most renowned artists of the period: Stuart Davis, Jan Matulka, and John Marin. It was John Marin, a very accomplished watercolorist, who Margules looked up to as a mentor.
Margules created impactful works of brilliant vivid color with a viscosity that paralleled the overly applied works of the Abstract Expressionists. His works were aimed at recreating the psychological impact of the time of the day in tandem with expressing the tangibility of the objects represented. Such became known as “time perspective” paintings. Margules spent his career alternating between these paintings and his watercolors, but ultimately within the construct of both mediums, Margules was able to prove himself amongst his contemporaries as a master colorist, abstractionist and an explorer of the time continuum.
Within his lifetime career Margules had over thirty one-man shows, and consistent representation at the Whitney Museum of American Art Annuals from 1938-1956. His work is currently in the permanent collections of major museums such as the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name a few.
2008/ courtesy of Askart.com / Levis Fine Art
The Boat Yard
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